Speaker 1: Hello, snaff universe. It is I Ed Helms, your ever
Speaker 1: dutiful captain, steering this ship straight into the iceberg of
Speaker 1: history's biggest screw ups. And this week we're going live, baby,
Speaker 1: well sort of. I mean, you're not going to be
Speaker 1: listening to something that's happening live, but it is a
Speaker 1: recording of a thing that was live, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: All Right?
Speaker 1: So, during my book tour for Snafu, The Definitive Guide
Speaker 1: to History's Greatest screw Ups, I had the absolute pleasure
Speaker 1: of stopping by the legendary ninety second Street Why in
Speaker 1: New York City, where I got to sit down with
Speaker 1: a dear old friend who also happens to be an
Speaker 1: Emmy winning comedian, producer, writer, and professional destroyer of pomposity.
Speaker 1: I am talking about none other than the great Samantha B.
Speaker 1: Sam and I go all the way back to our
Speaker 1: daily show days, which feels like roughly four hundred years
Speaker 1: ago in time. So it was really a joy to
Speaker 1: just hang out and reminisce about the salad days and
Speaker 1: also dig into some juicy stuff, you know, like the
Speaker 1: decades of epics screw ups I write about in the book,
Speaker 1: How the book actually came together, and even some reflections
Speaker 1: on how the screw ups in the book might inform
Speaker 1: how we navigate the present moment. And doing all of
Speaker 1: this live on stage in front of a fired up
Speaker 1: New York crowd, it just gave the whole night a
Speaker 1: kind of electric buzz and it was just an absolute treat.
Speaker 1: So stick around for my conversation with sam B. And Hey,
Speaker 1: if you're in the market for a gift that's equal
Speaker 1: parts history, lesson, comedy show and stocking stuffer, look no
Speaker 1: further than my book, Snafoo, The Definitive Guide to History's
Speaker 1: Greatest screw Ups. It's available at snafoo, dashbook dot com
Speaker 1: or wherever fine books are sold. The audiobook, narrated by
Speaker 1: Yours Truly is also out. Now think of that as
Speaker 1: kind of cozy little ear muffs for your brain, only
Speaker 1: instead of warmth, they're packed with shocking blunders and questionable
Speaker 1: decision making. Okay, that's it now, please enjoy my chat
Speaker 1: with the brilliant Samantha B.
Speaker 2: All right, this is.
Speaker 3: So oh my god, this cheer is so comfortable. I
Speaker 3: had no idea the cheers would be so amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good because I just came from my
Speaker 1: YMCA workout.
Speaker 3: That's right, I'm so sweaty.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited to be here with you.
Speaker 3: Because I miss you, although I haven't seen you in
Speaker 3: ages ed when you asked me to do this talk
Speaker 3: with you, I could not have been more excited. I
Speaker 3: love everything that you do. I love Snaffoo. I love
Speaker 3: the podcast. If you don't know what you really should like,
Speaker 3: download like subscribe all those.
Speaker 4: Where we get your podcast wherever we get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Okay, the world is bananas basically, yes, So.
Speaker 4: Thank you for writing a book.
Speaker 2: I'm had to point it out about how the world.
Speaker 4: Yes, the world was always.
Speaker 3: Bananas, is what I'm hearing from this book. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: the book is called Snaffoo. Tell us right off the bat,
Speaker 3: what is a snaffoo? What does that acronym stand for?
Speaker 1: Well, snapfoo it was an acronym that started during World
Speaker 1: War Two. It stands for situation, normal, all fucked up, great,
Speaker 1: and most of us know it just as a term
Speaker 1: that means disaster or terrible situation or a pickle.
Speaker 2: Maybe it would be a lighter usage.
Speaker 1: Yes, and yeah, the soldiers used it because I guess
Speaker 1: World War two is pretty fucked up and and it
Speaker 1: became just sort of a catchy, catchy phrase that made
Speaker 1: it into the lexicons.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit like fubar. It's a little bit
Speaker 4: like fubar.
Speaker 1: It's exactly like fubar, which I think and I haven't done.
Speaker 1: I haven't done the research, but I think came from
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 4: Same time, upped up beyond all repair.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's got a little more punched here.
Speaker 4: They're both very good. Okay, so okay.
Speaker 3: It's the definitive guide to history's greatest scripts. And I
Speaker 3: have to say that it was a soothing like It's
Speaker 3: pretty bizarre that a book that contains many stories about
Speaker 3: us on the precipice of nuclear meltdown actually cheered me up.
Speaker 4: And I think that that says a lot about where
Speaker 4: we are.
Speaker 3: So we've got you know, one of the first, one
Speaker 3: of the first stories in the book is about a
Speaker 3: fun toy set for kids called the Gilbert Atomic Energy
Speaker 3: Science Kit that contained really uranium. You all haven't read
Speaker 3: the book yet, but you're about to, and it's excellent.
Speaker 4: We've got nuclear reactors melting.
Speaker 3: Down, we've got apps with spy equipment implanted into.
Speaker 4: Their ears, Howard Hughes related giant plow machines, retrieving Russian subs.
Speaker 4: It's excellent.
Speaker 3: Okay, was it difficult to narrow down all of the
Speaker 3: world's fuck ups into only one volume?
Speaker 4: Because I feel like it's kind of endless?
Speaker 2: Great question, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes, which is why I kind of just kind of
Speaker 1: put some parameters on the whole thing, just the curatorial
Speaker 1: decision making boiled down to. It's mostly American stories. It's
Speaker 1: also mostly recent.
Speaker 2: The book is.
Speaker 1: Divided up into sections by decade. Yes, so it's it's
Speaker 1: basically the fifties to now, So that's a pretty small
Speaker 1: window for human volleys. There's a lot of other stuff
Speaker 1: that people did that was dumb.
Speaker 3: These blunders, these bad ideas are epic. Many of them
Speaker 3: are potentially world ending, but so many of them are
Speaker 3: childish and silly.
Speaker 2: I love Yes, I love that observation.
Speaker 4: Childish.
Speaker 3: They're like, should we detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon?
Speaker 2: This is this is full loony tunes. That's that's a
Speaker 2: chapter in the book.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: Just to give you another little bit of.
Speaker 1: A sort of structural breakdown, there are thirty one chapters
Speaker 1: that are sort of that are divided up into decades
Speaker 1: and each chapter is its own snaff woo, which makes
Speaker 1: it great for just like episodic reading.
Speaker 2: You could just pick it up.
Speaker 1: Yes, leave it on your toilet. I won't judge you.
Speaker 1: If you're reading. It's good anywhere.
Speaker 3: Tell me about Okay, So the podcast that you do
Speaker 3: snafoo the book. The format of the book differs from
Speaker 3: the podcast because the podcast is like one big deep
Speaker 3: die anyone else shaking through the Yes, the subways.
Speaker 1: I've been living in La too long. I'm like earthquake earth.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I forget that. That ninety second three y
Speaker 1: and the Angelica film theater Rattle with the trains.
Speaker 3: That's right, you know that every time I go to
Speaker 3: every time I go to La, I've experienced a minor
Speaker 3: earthquake every time I go. I'm a harbinger of doom,
Speaker 3: just like a tiny little you are.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Well, so what I'm saying is that was an earthquake.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What what is the difference between the podcast process, which
Speaker 3: is very long form and I mean it's long form
Speaker 3: to write a book, but it's more chapterized. So what
Speaker 3: is the difference between the process of doing those two things?
Speaker 1: So the podcast came first We started working on the
Speaker 1: podcast about three years ago, and it's it is a
Speaker 1: very different thing because it's each season of the podcast
Speaker 1: is a very deep dive into one thing, one snafu.
Speaker 1: So so there are now three seasons of the podcast
Speaker 1: out and uh, it's each season is eight episodes and
Speaker 1: again deep dive into one thing. And the book, as
Speaker 1: I just described, is lots of things perfect less of
Speaker 1: a deep dive.
Speaker 4: Perfect for the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, describe, let's talk more about how perfect it is
Speaker 1: for bathroom. But the process for building both of these
Speaker 1: things is not dissimilar, because it's an amazing team or
Speaker 1: that worked on both.
Speaker 3: So about your team, because this is an incredible I mean,
Speaker 3: these people must be professional. Is it a group of historians,
Speaker 3: professional researchers, fact checkers.
Speaker 2: Like podcast nerds?
Speaker 3: Podcast nerds is a team of how damn nerds?
Speaker 4: Much there?
Speaker 1: This is an amazing team researchers and and just pulling
Speaker 1: together so much information, helping structure information.
Speaker 3: How do you, I mean, how do you as a team,
Speaker 3: how do you curate the stories that you want to tell?
Speaker 4: How do you decide?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 4: What is the research process?
Speaker 1: Like it's building a pool of possibilities pouring through them.
Speaker 2: And then in the case of.
Speaker 1: The in the case of the podcast, it's it's like,
Speaker 1: do we have the depth, does this story have the
Speaker 1: depth to carry a whole season? And then do we
Speaker 1: have access to the materials or the people that we
Speaker 1: want to talk to?
Speaker 2: And uh. And then for the book.
Speaker 1: Again we it was it was a matter of finding
Speaker 1: these sort of organizing principles or or like kind of
Speaker 1: cure itorial limitations that that would guide a little bit
Speaker 1: of decision making. Ultimately, the other the other critical component
Speaker 1: to both the podcast and the book has been are
Speaker 1: these stories really well known or not? And the book
Speaker 1: avoids things like the Titanic or you know, the Donner
Speaker 1: Party or things that which which are actually amazing and
Speaker 1: like just epic stories that are incredible to learn about.
Speaker 1: But I think what makes what we made a decision
Speaker 1: early on to kind of like chase things that are
Speaker 1: less known to the popular memory. Yes, and that I
Speaker 1: think has really been an exciting thing about the podcast
Speaker 1: and and and the book. A lot of these things
Speaker 1: people just don't.
Speaker 4: Know, They really don't know.
Speaker 3: I many of the stories were surprising to me, and
Speaker 3: so many of the stories actually have a modern a
Speaker 3: really modern relevance. I mean, I'm sure you could not
Speaker 3: have expected this when you were curating the book, that
Speaker 3: we would be talking so much about Greenland right now.
Speaker 3: And there is an amazing story about Greenland in the book.
Speaker 3: And I really had no idea. And it not only
Speaker 3: is a very interesting story about something we knew very
Speaker 3: little about, but is it kind of an origin story
Speaker 3: about the United States and their relationship to Greenland and Denmark?
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So there's an entire chapter dedicated to Project
Speaker 1: ice Worm.
Speaker 2: So, and you're right, it's so wild how prescient it is, because.
Speaker 1: As early as the nineteen fifties, it was very clear
Speaker 1: that Greenland was strategically excellent for launching missiles. And so
Speaker 1: Project ice Worm is exactly what it sounds like. Greenland
Speaker 1: is a giant sheet of ice. So someone hatched.
Speaker 2: The idea, well, what if we could build.
Speaker 1: A railroad system underneath the Greenland ice sheet and fairy
Speaker 1: missiles around and launched them from wherever we wanted.
Speaker 2: In Greenland?
Speaker 4: What great idea?
Speaker 1: Great, I mean, a flawless ideas. So they opened up
Speaker 1: Camp Century, which was a sort of military a US
Speaker 1: military installation that had some cover stories, but was essentially
Speaker 1: a research project to see if this was feasible. And
Speaker 1: they put a nuclear reactor in it because they needed
Speaker 1: power and everybody loved nuclear stuff in the fifties. And
Speaker 1: they started to build basically an army base under the ice,
Speaker 1: and then they started digging tunnels to see if they
Speaker 1: could get train tracks out, you.
Speaker 2: Know, across the whole country.
Speaker 1: And needless to say, ice is an unstable.
Speaker 2: Structural shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, so many things went wrong. They realized
Speaker 1: that that the breathing that people were doing was accumulating.
Speaker 1: The moisture from people's breath was adding to the thickness
Speaker 1: of the ice over time, and so the walls were
Speaker 1: shifting constantly. The ceilings were they basically installed. They dug
Speaker 1: out these massive holes and then installed prefab structures like
Speaker 1: kind of like.
Speaker 4: Prefram structures and nuclear reactor.
Speaker 2: And a nuclear nuclear reactor just.
Speaker 1: For just for funds, and the the the Danish government
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, you guys are cool, just
Speaker 1: don't tell us what's up.
Speaker 4: We do not want to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it just none of it worked.
Speaker 2: No, none of it worked.
Speaker 1: And sadly now there is still a ton of nuclear
Speaker 1: waste and a ton of human waste because they just
Speaker 1: dug a giant pit in the ice for all the soldiers'
Speaker 1: bathroom activity, right, which is a great place to read.
Speaker 4: My it's a great place to pick up a book.
Speaker 3: And so essentially the subway rumbling that we felt that
Speaker 3: was so minor was just constantly happening under the ice
Speaker 3: as people were living and working, and nobody really knew
Speaker 3: what the outcome was. Eventually they took everything out, but
Speaker 3: now we have a long legacy.
Speaker 1: Well now there's a lot of nuclear waste frozen under
Speaker 1: the ice and people got sick from that local Greenland,
Speaker 1: indigenous people and it was tragic. And there is also
Speaker 1: just all of that human waste, and it's a lot
Speaker 1: is frozen and global warming will reveal it and it's
Speaker 1: one of one of the things global warming will do
Speaker 1: that's bad.
Speaker 3: I feel great because I feel that when we purchase Greenland,
Speaker 3: which is going flawlessly, we'll probably clean it up because
Speaker 3: we have a really good track record of that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a hundred Actually, as soon as it's ours,
Speaker 1: we probably will.
Speaker 4: We probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really takes a lot of promises.
Speaker 1: Were made that it would get cleaned up and it
Speaker 1: never did.
Speaker 3: And of course, yeah, actually talking, I mean on the
Speaker 3: subject of global warming. There's a really great, pretty short
Speaker 3: chapter about the ozone layer in the in the kind
Speaker 3: of section on the nineteen eighties, and it was it's
Speaker 3: a great reminder that scientific consensus is possible, and sometimes
Speaker 3: we act in our own best interests after tremendous you know,
Speaker 3: tremendous push and pull, but sometimes we can get there.
Speaker 3: Does that feel realistic anymore? I'll show myself out.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of that story in that context that
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you made that connection, because that really
Speaker 1: is that that is a great example of like seeing
Speaker 1: a problem, understanding the problem, and then actually pushing hard
Speaker 1: against industrial interests to fix that problem.
Speaker 2: And it worked. It really worked.
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that it wasn't a complicated
Speaker 3: journey to get there, and I'm sure it took a
Speaker 3: long time, but there was a kind of a sense
Speaker 3: that you could harness people's personal activity and people.
Speaker 4: You could tell people, population would act.
Speaker 1: You could actually inform people that maybe things were bad
Speaker 1: or unhealthy for them or the world right, and they
Speaker 1: might listen.
Speaker 4: Oh dear, any.
Speaker 3: Way, One thing that this is more this is more
Speaker 3: a comment than a question, is that the book is
Speaker 3: it's very funny, and it's of course it's like it's chilling,
Speaker 3: but it's very interesting. But it is a great reminder
Speaker 3: that the world is now, but it has always been
Speaker 3: a scary place with incompetence and institutional chaos and insane ideas.
Speaker 4: Those are forever.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's happening at.
Speaker 4: A speed, like a real a velocity that is.
Speaker 3: Really frightening right now in particular. And what really strikes
Speaker 3: me about many of the stories in the book is
Speaker 3: that all of this, like subterrifusion, all these crazy ideas
Speaker 3: really happen behind the scenes, like behind a very secretive
Speaker 3: and we just learned about them by accident. Someone's going
Speaker 3: through Carl Sagan's old applications for grants and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: what now, what are you're reading?
Speaker 4: Is this real?
Speaker 3: But we're seeing so much incompetence so openly, can you?
Speaker 2: I guess, I mean, that's your opinion, that's my.
Speaker 3: Opinion true, And I just wonder if we want to
Speaker 3: take a minute and consider what we're going to find
Speaker 3: out in the future about what was happening now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're right.
Speaker 1: This is a what's what feels different right now is
Speaker 1: how transparent the incompetence is or seems to be.
Speaker 2: But that also like we're probably just.
Speaker 1: Seeing that the top ten percent of the iceberg, right,
Speaker 1: and it will be decades of unfolding insanity. There are
Speaker 1: a few threads that I think emerge in studying these
Speaker 1: things things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one is one.
Speaker 1: That I mean hubris obviously, and the secrecy is a
Speaker 1: big one that you just mentioned.
Speaker 2: Another one is.
Speaker 1: The the the group think of a close of people
Speaker 1: in a closed.
Speaker 2: Bubble, right, And that's what that's what happens in.
Speaker 1: Like institutions like the CIA or the FBI. Season two
Speaker 1: of the podcast is a deep dive into an incredible
Speaker 1: story about citizen activists in the seventies who broke into Basically,
Speaker 1: they felt that the FBI was being very dastardly surveilling people,
Speaker 1: harassing people, encroaching civil liberties.
Speaker 2: But who do you go to when law enforcement is
Speaker 2: out of line?
Speaker 1: And also at the time, Jadegar Hoover was the head
Speaker 1: of the FBI and an American hero. Everybody loved him,
Speaker 1: which was a very curated image. He was very deep
Speaker 1: into kind of manipulation of pop culture. He was involved
Speaker 1: with movies that starred Jimmy Stewart, as you know, the
Speaker 1: ideal FBI.
Speaker 2: Agent and so forth.
Speaker 1: But these activists realized that they had one option, which
Speaker 1: was to somehow infiltrate.
Speaker 2: They decided to stage.
Speaker 1: An elaborate heist, and they, at insane personal risk to
Speaker 1: themselves and their families, broke into an FBI office in Media,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and stole all the files. And that was at
Speaker 1: a time when this we didn't have hard drives, so
Speaker 1: most branch offices of the FBI had most FBI files,
Speaker 1: and they took everything and they poured through it, and
Speaker 1: they found actual documentation and evidence of some of this
Speaker 1: horrible malfeasance that Jadegar Hoover's was up to. And they
Speaker 1: sent it to a number of congress people and reporters
Speaker 1: and most of them chickened out.
Speaker 2: One person.
Speaker 1: Published those papers, and I think she is in the
Speaker 1: audience tonight too, and it's Washington Post reporter Betty Metzger.
Speaker 2: And all that that gave me chills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it's an incredible story of citizen activism and
Speaker 1: heroism and and people putting themselves at risk for just
Speaker 1: to do the right thing, and it led to the
Speaker 1: fallout was incredible.
Speaker 2: It led to.
Speaker 1: The exposure of co intel pro, which was Hoover's counterintelligence program,
Speaker 1: which was basically an institutional harassment of so many different groups,
Speaker 1: civil rights activists, anti war activists, and others. And and
Speaker 1: it led to the to the church hearings, which is
Speaker 1: the only reason we now have any congressional oversight over
Speaker 1: all of these intelligence agencies. The n Essay, the CIA,
Speaker 1: the FBI. I don't know how much good that's doing.
Speaker 1: I still have that, but here's what But here's here's
Speaker 1: what's I think also incredible about that story and this
Speaker 1: moment is that we're in a moment where the FBI
Speaker 1: feels like a political tool again.
Speaker 2: But the keyword is again. You know it really it was.
Speaker 1: It was a terrifying institution through j Edgar Hoover's epic reign.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was in charge of the FBI for
Speaker 1: so long and and and used it just for so
Speaker 1: many petty grievances and so forth. And it feels like
Speaker 1: we're getting there, if not already there.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say this in a way that
Speaker 1: diminishes the sort of terror.
Speaker 2: Of the moment or.
Speaker 1: The the intensity of the moment. But what that JEdgar
Speaker 1: Hoover's story shows us is that there can be light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 3: You do say that in the intro to the book
Speaker 3: that you sort of see the book as a force
Speaker 3: for optimism in a very chaotic world, which feels kind
Speaker 3: of counterintuitive, but I see, I take the point we
Speaker 3: have made. We have majorly blundered in the past, and
Speaker 3: we have the force of human good has prevailed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a choice to see things that way. It's
Speaker 1: almost like, but I think it's a good choice. But
Speaker 1: I do think that what these blunders and face plants
Speaker 1: and terrible snapfoos throughout history show us is is a
Speaker 1: resilience also, right, and a kind of like tendency towards
Speaker 1: equilibrium of some kind.
Speaker 4: Right does it?
Speaker 3: How much does it frighten you that our civic edge
Speaker 3: cation is so inadequate? Like I feel that people just
Speaker 3: don't really understand the function of government. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: the people in this room, we all know what the
Speaker 3: function of government is, but I feel like that's a
Speaker 3: there's a really there's a missing piece right now, and
Speaker 3: that it's not really Todden's schools.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no question. I think.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, the rise of a strong man is
Speaker 1: generally the function of of of an anxious population and
Speaker 1: a population that is not that isn't rooted in in.
Speaker 2: The fundamentals of.
Speaker 1: Civil society and the process of civil society, and and
Speaker 1: a and a in our case, a constitutional democracy and
Speaker 1: what And I'm just agreeing with you.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're disagreeing with each other.
Speaker 2: But I will say, the.
Speaker 1: Other great thing about read about so so studying snaffoos
Speaker 1: can and be a little bit uplifting for the reasons
Speaker 1: we just discussed. The other reason that studying staff who's
Speaker 1: can feel really good is that you get to say.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm not that dumb.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot better about a lot of your
Speaker 1: own life choices.
Speaker 4: This is again, this is not a question, but I
Speaker 4: wrote this down.
Speaker 3: Much of our history is very stupid. Are we condemned
Speaker 3: to repeat our stupid history? I think maybe no, of course.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the one thing, oh, that we know
Speaker 1: for sure, is that we never we never learned from history.
Speaker 1: I think human enlightenment is not a straight line. It's
Speaker 1: a game of shoots and ladders and you're just constantly
Speaker 1: there's a step forward. Oh shit, I fell down the
Speaker 1: slide and I'm going backwards again, and it just you know,
Speaker 1: we have these huge stumbles, and unfortunately there the cost
Speaker 1: is tremendous human suffering. And I hope, I well it's
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know where we're Well, you know what.
Speaker 3: We could talk about cats with microphones embedded in their cat?
Speaker 2: Can we talk more about human suffering?
Speaker 4: Can we.
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: I do want to I do want to say that
Speaker 3: every time I read something about cats with embedded implanted
Speaker 3: listening devices and pigeons with backpacks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, with aerial photography. That's pretty cute, that's pretty cute.
Speaker 1: They put little camera pouches on pigeons to turn them
Speaker 1: into spies.
Speaker 4: To turn them into pigeons spies. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 4: cats make.
Speaker 3: The best spies because they're so incredibly trainable and they
Speaker 3: listen to everything you say and they go exactly where
Speaker 3: you want them to go and do exactly as they're told.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just ask Siegfried and Roy.
Speaker 2: They're not trainable.
Speaker 1: This is like like anybody knows that. And this is
Speaker 1: this is where that like Bubble Group think of like
Speaker 1: just somebody who didn't have dozen't no cats, was like, hey,
Speaker 1: they're they're very sneaky and sly. If we can implant
Speaker 1: a microphone in their ears and train them to go
Speaker 1: sit next to bad guys, yeah, then we'll be able
Speaker 1: to hear what the bad guys are saying. This is
Speaker 1: another chapter. Sorry, this is this is a chapter from
Speaker 1: the book. There's teams of adult people workshopping these ideas.
Speaker 1: Is spending taxpayer dollars to put these ideas on a whiteboard,
Speaker 1: and everybody's backslapping and going, great idea, Hank, I love this.
Speaker 1: In the book, there's a there's a section of five
Speaker 1: of the six hundred and thirty four attempts by the
Speaker 1: CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now, the.
Speaker 1: A lot of them didn't necessarily get past the drag board,
Speaker 1: but there there is a record of them. And at
Speaker 1: what point, uh, like, that's a comedy writer's room. I mean,
Speaker 1: the ideas are so nuts. There was one idea to
Speaker 1: put thallium salts in his shoes, which is a specific,
Speaker 1: certain kind of poison toxin to the human body that
Speaker 1: will make your hair fall out. Why is that advantageous? Well,
Speaker 1: the theory that. The thinking was that'll make his beard
Speaker 1: fall out, and the beard is what really tethers him
Speaker 1: to leadership in the in the Cuban culture, and without
Speaker 1: his beard, he'll be dethroned and humiliated. Like the steps,
Speaker 1: like it's so rude Goldberg just to get get from
Speaker 1: a to and then maybe he'll he'll get overthrown because
Speaker 1: his beard fell out.
Speaker 3: That's a really that's like, that's really long game thinking,
Speaker 3: like will step by step, hair by hair, we will
Speaker 3: destroy his manliness.
Speaker 2: It's going to take a minute, but it's we're going
Speaker 2: to get there.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's a season three of the podcast and these
Speaker 3: are really these are such complimentary endeavors. But the I'm
Speaker 3: listening to season three of the podcast now and it
Speaker 3: is built around a story I really have never heard before.
Speaker 3: It takes place during Prohibition, and the story is really
Speaker 3: about the government poisoning the industrial alcohol supply. And it's
Speaker 3: a really fascinating story.
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 1: It's really Yeah, so everybody knows prohibition, it's part of
Speaker 1: our collective memory. I was pretty resistant to this story
Speaker 1: because I was like, everyone knows prohibition. Everybody you know,
Speaker 1: like is this really that of a deal. But the
Speaker 1: more we dug into it, it.
Speaker 2: Was like, oh, this is this is this is horrible.
Speaker 1: Well, during probition, the consumer alcohol supply was eliminated, so
Speaker 1: bootleggers would start to pull from the industrial alcohol supply,
Speaker 1: but most of that alcohol had been through a process
Speaker 1: called denaturing, which is basically the government adding things to
Speaker 1: alcohol to make it extremely yucky and just not palatable
Speaker 1: and maybe even give you a tummy ache. And that
Speaker 1: was for a long time enough, but bootleggers were very,
Speaker 1: very driven, and so they for figuring out ways to
Speaker 1: sort of work around that. Also, people were just drinking
Speaker 1: it anyway and getting sick. But then as part of
Speaker 1: the prohibition effort, they thought, well, maybe if we can
Speaker 1: deter like, what are some ways we can deter people
Speaker 1: from drinking. Oh, let's let's make the industrial alcohol supply
Speaker 1: like fully poisonous, fully poisonous to point where it will
Speaker 1: anyone who drinks it like will get severely ill or die.
Speaker 1: And that that will be great because then people will
Speaker 1: start dying and they'll be like, well.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't drink anymore because that's how people behave. This
Speaker 2: is and thousands of people.
Speaker 4: Died, thousands of people died.
Speaker 3: Did anybody experience consequences based on this?
Speaker 4: No, not at all.
Speaker 2: No, and it was fully exposed.
Speaker 4: Fully exposed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that is actually another theme that really
Speaker 3: emerged for me is that we are not consequence oriented people.
Speaker 3: A lot of people who had ideas that were this
Speaker 3: bad that resulted in tragedy or near tragedy just sort
Speaker 3: of got other jobs yep, or failed upward. We're not anyway,
Speaker 3: We're not big on consequences.
Speaker 4: We all know that.
Speaker 3: Now. Are their favorite stories that you tossed about in
Speaker 3: the writer's room, which you must have so much fun
Speaker 3: in your rooms, Like they sound.
Speaker 4: Really raucous, Like they sound really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's mostly zooms, mostly zooms virtual.
Speaker 2: It's hard to be roucous on a zoom.
Speaker 4: I guess that's true. Are their favorite stories that you
Speaker 4: had to leave out? There must be so.
Speaker 3: Many more stories in your arsenal. Do you have a
Speaker 3: volume of twenty bucks lined up?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: One?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, there are hopefully mini books to come tell
Speaker 1: all your friends about it so it sells really well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can just keep churning these out. But the
Speaker 1: ones that fell by the wayside, tended to be tended
Speaker 1: to just not meet the criteria, which would be mostly
Speaker 1: things that are too well known.
Speaker 2: So and then I think once we found a good.
Speaker 1: Number, we were like, okay, let's it's just time to.
Speaker 2: Start the research.
Speaker 3: I liked that you covered mk Ultra, which is a
Speaker 3: story that people.
Speaker 1: That's that's probably one of the most well known stories
Speaker 1: in here, that in the Suez Canal uh containers.
Speaker 3: But but you did, but you did cover an angle
Speaker 3: of mk Ultra that I did not know anything about.
Speaker 3: So it is in a in a kind of a
Speaker 3: familiar story there is. It is a kind of a
Speaker 3: side story in a larger story. Can you talk about
Speaker 3: that one?
Speaker 4: It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the mk Ultra, for those of you who
Speaker 1: don't know, was the thank you so much. I guess
Speaker 1: that's the the queue that.
Speaker 3: Were your transition is that.
Speaker 4: Of question U M.
Speaker 2: K Ultra is a really.
Speaker 1: Hilarious and totally heartbreaking and horrific chapter in CIA history where.
Speaker 2: Essentially the world's supply of LSD.
Speaker 1: Was purchased by the CIA and it was administered to
Speaker 1: people in prisons and in mental institutions and sometimes just
Speaker 1: people on the streets in the name of science and
Speaker 1: research try to understand. Basically, again, it's Cold War and
Speaker 1: the thing is maybe this new psychedelic drug is a
Speaker 1: secret to either a truth serum or mind control. And
Speaker 1: these were things that the Soviets and the American government
Speaker 1: were taking very seriously and researching extensively, but so many
Speaker 1: people were experimented on with no knowledge. The kind of
Speaker 1: like funny sick part is that within mk ULTRA was
Speaker 1: this guy George White was basically given free reign to
Speaker 1: He built an apartment in San Francisco that had a
Speaker 1: two way mirror, and he would have sex workers bring
Speaker 1: their customers back to this apartment and he would watch.
Speaker 2: That and they then they would.
Speaker 1: Dose them right somehow unbeknownst to them, and then he
Speaker 1: would watch them and take notes.
Speaker 2: Among other things, presumably, And.
Speaker 1: So many people were traumatized, hurt, taken advantage of exploited
Speaker 1: throughout the whole mk ULTRA process, which lasted years and
Speaker 1: including by the way, Whitey Bulger, the famous Boston mobster,
Speaker 1: he was in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown,
Speaker 1: and actually consented to what he thought was.
Speaker 2: Research into.
Speaker 1: Different kinds of mental illnesses and uh and was given
Speaker 1: massive doses of LSD for months and he had nightmarish
Speaker 1: visions for the rest of his life. And who knows.
Speaker 2: If the CIA helped create Whitey Bulger. Who knows.
Speaker 3: On a happy note, at least Jimmy Carter helped stave
Speaker 3: off a nuclear catastrophe in Canada a young Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an awesome one.
Speaker 1: This is like some of the snaffoos have have like
Speaker 1: a little hero story baked old of them, and that's
Speaker 1: that's what you're bringing. One of them up where a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor. It was a research reactor in Ontario, just
Speaker 1: up up the Ottawa River from the city of Ottawa,
Speaker 1: and the reactor starts to melt down, but it's based
Speaker 1: the supervisor gave the wrong instructions to somebody and then
Speaker 1: couldn't pick up the phone because he's punching buttons that it.
Speaker 4: Was and the rods are coming out like a Simpson.
Speaker 2: It's very Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very simpence moment and a meltdown initiates
Speaker 1: and it's the first, I believe it's the first nuclear
Speaker 1: meltdown in human history.
Speaker 3: And the change the game in Canada. Oh yeah, we
Speaker 3: have a lot of rules in Canada.
Speaker 1: Now, well could be Canada for long.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's true.
Speaker 3: That's going to be exciting anyway.
Speaker 1: The nuclear reactor starts to melt down. They call the
Speaker 1: US military for support, and Jimmy Carter, is twenty five
Speaker 1: years old and is working on nuclear subs and is like,
Speaker 1: knows a lot about nuclear stuff, brings his men up there.
Speaker 1: They have to dismantle this reactor, but it's so radioactive
Speaker 1: that they can only be exposed to it for ninety
Speaker 1: seconds at a time, so they build a replica of
Speaker 1: the reactor on a tennis court nearby. They start rehearsing
Speaker 1: this dismantling process basically in a tag team fashion. So
Speaker 1: they run in, undo some bolts, and run out in
Speaker 1: ninety seconds.
Speaker 4: They're like a Formula one pick.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a great analogy. I love that.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it's like like.
Speaker 2: With those Rivet guns. And they run in there and.
Speaker 1: They get it done, and Jimmy Carter is one of
Speaker 1: the leads of that whole operation. And what I love
Speaker 1: about it is I love Jimmy Carter, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people think he's kind of a whim which I
Speaker 1: think is a cynical tragic take on his legacy. This
Speaker 1: is one of the most heroic things you could ever do.
Speaker 1: And it's so badass.
Speaker 4: It's so bad ass. We need, you know what I do.
Speaker 3: Feel like America is like full of Jimmy Carter's We
Speaker 3: just have to summon We just actually have to summon
Speaker 3: the will to save the day. Anyway, Okay, we have
Speaker 3: some audience questions, and.
Speaker 4: They're very good questions.
Speaker 3: This is the first question from Caroline is will any
Speaker 3: of these stories become a movie?
Speaker 4: They are cinematic. I agree with.
Speaker 2: You, God willing, God willing.
Speaker 4: And everyone.
Speaker 1: Our partner in the podcast is Film Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you have a favorite snaffoo? Oh? Would you
Speaker 3: have an all time favorite? Or that's a good question.
Speaker 4: It's hard to pick a favorite.
Speaker 1: A lot of the snaffoos I forgot. I left out
Speaker 1: a criteria in the curatorial process. One of the criteria
Speaker 1: is like, can we find the funny? And that's that's
Speaker 1: an important one. Some things are just too tragic or
Speaker 1: too horrifying, and and so what we in season two
Speaker 1: of the podcast, which is the one I told you
Speaker 1: about with the burglary, the citizen activists that broke into
Speaker 1: the FBI.
Speaker 2: That one is.
Speaker 1: We found some funny, but also felt like it was
Speaker 1: just a great enough story and a powerful and meaningful
Speaker 1: enough story that we didn't need to be as funny.
Speaker 1: Season two of the podcasts and I'm so proud of
Speaker 1: that one, which is ironic because it's probably the least
Speaker 1: funny of the three seasons. It's still funny. It's still funny,
Speaker 1: but it's also incredibly poignant and incredibly moving. And as
Speaker 1: you learn about these individuals and the risk that they undertook.
Speaker 3: Is there a role for me in the movie?
Speaker 4: Okay? What has this is a good question.
Speaker 3: What has been the hardest historical event to research? Maybe
Speaker 3: the one hidden behind the most kind of layers?
Speaker 1: Well, Season one of the podcasts. That season one of
Speaker 1: the podcasts has a hero who is an historian that
Speaker 1: we interview extensively throughout the pod throughout that season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he basically uncovered what is the story of season one?
Speaker 1: And he did it just by doggedly, uh, just chasing
Speaker 1: down like he was the one that just submitted infinite
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act requests and just beat the door
Speaker 1: down and finally got the goods.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know what, I want to take a second
Speaker 3: to celebrate, like we got I mean, we worked with
Speaker 3: The Dealer Show together for a bunch of years, and
Speaker 3: we always got a lot of credit for the work
Speaker 3: that we did. But I actually like, there's no world
Speaker 3: in which we could do the work that we did
Speaker 3: without the work of journalism, without the work of like
Speaker 3: dogged journalists like like, but really it's no, Like.
Speaker 2: We couldn't make fun of them if they weren't great,
Speaker 2: if they.
Speaker 3: Weren't and if they weren't like, if they weren't working
Speaker 3: to reveal the layers of hypocrisy, we.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't have had anything to make jokes about.
Speaker 3: Like, there's no Daily Show without great journalism. There's no
Speaker 3: John Oliver without great journalism. There's none of us, you know,
Speaker 3: none of that exists without that like dogged work.
Speaker 4: And then we then vampire off of it and have
Speaker 4: fun with it and make it.
Speaker 2: We make it silly.
Speaker 4: Oh, this is good.
Speaker 3: Are there any crazy New York City historical events that
Speaker 3: you can tell us about?
Speaker 2: There are so many.
Speaker 1: There's there's one that, uh.
Speaker 3: Let's see, well, I loved in the in the season
Speaker 3: three of the podcast, in the Prohibition one that you
Speaker 3: have on one of the creators of Boardwalk Empire that's.
Speaker 4: At Atlantic City.
Speaker 3: But I mean it's like regionally, sure, regionally. And he
Speaker 3: didn't even know the story.
Speaker 4: He didn't, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Terry Winter created Boardwalk Empire, and man, he is
Speaker 1: such a fun interview.
Speaker 2: He gets his own episode.
Speaker 1: There's a bonus episode that's just that interview with Terry
Speaker 1: Winter and and he he researched prohibitions so much. And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with the first season of the podcast,
Speaker 1: which is a crazy story. I won't launch into it,
Speaker 1: but essentially it's it's the story of the movie Wargames,
Speaker 1: but the real version and.
Speaker 2: It really did happen.
Speaker 1: And I interviewed Matthew Broderick, who was the star of
Speaker 1: war Games and told him about this, and he was
Speaker 1: he had no idea about that.
Speaker 2: And it's just wild. It's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Like the dig, the deeper you dig on so many
Speaker 1: of these things, the more there's more is there.
Speaker 3: We're going to have so much to talk about in
Speaker 3: ten years about this period in time.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I don't know, just don't know.
Speaker 4: Just a hand I'm pretty sure a leap forward. Cash
Speaker 4: matel is going to fix the culture. It's gonna be New.
Speaker 1: York City staffoods. I mean, where do you start, right?
Speaker 1: I felt a drop of liquid hit me today and
Speaker 1: it's that I feel like that is a universal New Yorker.
Speaker 1: It's just like, where did that come from?
Speaker 4: Liquid?
Speaker 1: It's not raining, and I hope that it's like a
Speaker 1: pure drop of of air conditioning condensation, but it's probably
Speaker 1: something way grosser.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites truly is the City Corp Buildings.
Speaker 2: You guys know that.
Speaker 1: Story, The City Corp Building right here on the upper
Speaker 1: east side. It was built and fully constructed, and a
Speaker 1: grad student, an engineering grad student, was was reading, researching
Speaker 1: it and writing about it and realized is that it
Speaker 1: didn't have the proper engineering to withstand hurricane force wins
Speaker 1: at a certain direction. Okay, it was engineered to I
Speaker 1: think take like hurricane force winds at the sides, but
Speaker 1: a diagonal could have.
Speaker 2: Knocked it over.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And so they they like, what do you do in
Speaker 1: that situation? It's done, it's fully occupied, and they surreptitiously
Speaker 1: went in and chant and like added news struts and
Speaker 1: bolts to the building.
Speaker 2: To fix it.
Speaker 1: Over over many, I think many months or years, and
Speaker 1: residents of the building, occupy or tenants of the building
Speaker 1: had no idea.
Speaker 4: Do you know what, that's not.
Speaker 3: What you want to that's not what you want to
Speaker 3: find out when you're like trying to buy into the
Speaker 3: building and they go by the way, it's not structurally sound.
Speaker 4: It's probably frying.
Speaker 3: Do you remember, Okay, do you you did this happen?
Speaker 3: Or did I dream it that? When you were living here?
Speaker 3: A building fell down behind your building? Is that your building?
Speaker 3: Someone at the Daily Show was had it lived in
Speaker 3: an apartment and they were building an apartment building behind
Speaker 3: the apartment and the whole thing collapsed one night.
Speaker 4: It all fell down.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't remember that.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, well City Corp. That's great. I love
Speaker 4: you know what. Oh I'm going.
Speaker 3: To walk out this door and so much fluid is
Speaker 3: going to go on my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is, you know what it is?
Speaker 4: Lets This was so fun for me. What a joy? Sam,
Speaker 4: comfy chairs. I never want to leave.
Speaker 3: What are you going to inscribe in people's books?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I want your life stories. I'm going to tell you right.
Speaker 4: Put everything long, long wisdom.
Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for coming joy, Thank.
Speaker 2: You, Oh Ladies, and Gentle.
Speaker 1: Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapfo Media,
Speaker 1: a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 1: Our post production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
Speaker 1: and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
Speaker 1: direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
Speaker 1: Brett Harris. Logo and branding by the Collected Works. Legal
Speaker 1: review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Isaac Dunhom, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone
Speaker 1: at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Niki Etoor,
Speaker 1: Nathan O'towski and Alex. While I have you, don't forget
Speaker 1: to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo, The
Speaker 1: Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now
Speaker 1: from any book retailer. Just go to snaffoodashbook dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and see you next week.