Speaker 1: It's great to know that even back then, when the
Speaker 1: criminal needs to flee somewhere, where do you go?
Speaker 2: Florida? Florida, you're so incorrigible, has this kind of like
Speaker 2: mischievous pirate thing going that I kind of like, oh, Florida,
Speaker 2: you've gone and done it again. Welcome to Snaffu, the
Speaker 2: podcast about history's greatest screw ups. I am your host
Speaker 2: ed helms, and each episode I drag a brilliant guest
Speaker 2: through one of these disasters and we ask ourselves, what
Speaker 2: the hell does this tell us about us as human
Speaker 2: beings today? My guest is one of my oldest and
Speaker 2: dearest comedy pals. He's a writing legend snl The Office,
Speaker 2: co created Parks and rec Brooklyn ninety nine, The Good
Speaker 2: Place Rutherford Falls, And by the way, he directed tons
Speaker 2: of all those episodes as well, and oh don't let
Speaker 2: me forget out of all of us who worked on
Speaker 2: the Office, he was also the best actor. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: the one who brought the legendary Mose Shrewd into all
Speaker 2: of our hearts and nightmares. Of course, he just got
Speaker 2: a very well deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
Speaker 2: and at this point, I'm pretty sure NASA might be
Speaker 2: trying to name a planet after him. Please welcome Mike. Sure, Hello, Mike.
Speaker 2: What a wonderful introduction.
Speaker 1: Thank you, I mean thank you first of all for
Speaker 1: highlighting my acting, because I think you know that's the
Speaker 1: legacy that I hope to leave this earth with more
Speaker 1: than anything else.
Speaker 2: I don't think you get enough credit for your acting,
Speaker 2: and I don't agree you act enough. I think you
Speaker 2: need to be in more stuff.
Speaker 1: I will take any acting job that requires me to
Speaker 1: a remain mute and be run along the side of
Speaker 1: a car like a dog.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about most for a second, because what went
Speaker 2: into your choices, the choices that you made as an actor.
Speaker 2: Was that something that like the writer's room really kind
Speaker 2: of broke down and was like, it'd be really funny
Speaker 2: if he was just sort of spooky and almost like
Speaker 2: a horror movie character just sort of popping up. Or
Speaker 2: was that just your own brain sort of chewing on
Speaker 2: it and then showing up to set and being like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get weird.
Speaker 1: Certainly, the way that Greg Daniels and the writers wrote,
Speaker 1: and I'm putting that in quotes wrote the character of
Speaker 1: Mo's was spooky and weird and just kind of off.
Speaker 1: My choice is as an actor, I would describe as
Speaker 1: coming from a white hot panic, just pure panic. Just
Speaker 1: no one had told me what to do. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do. I'm not an actor, and I
Speaker 1: just did anything. I just did anything that I could
Speaker 1: think of in the moment, and people kept finding it amusing,
Speaker 1: and so I just kept panicking and doing whatever came
Speaker 1: to mind.
Speaker 2: I love it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was
Speaker 2: a gift to all of America. So thank you the world,
Speaker 2: really truly. Sure. Yeah, I'm really eager to dig into
Speaker 2: this snafoo with you today. But before I do, I
Speaker 2: just wanted to tell you something because I was thinking
Speaker 2: about you know, we've known each other for twenty ish years,
Speaker 2: and we've collaborated very closely in many different ways over
Speaker 2: the years, and I've talked about you in publicly in
Speaker 2: interviews a lot over the years, and I realized there's
Speaker 2: something that I kind of say when your name comes
Speaker 2: up in interviews frequently, but I don't know that I've
Speaker 2: ever said it directly to you. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I got to tell Mike this. I got to get
Speaker 2: on the record with Mike Sure, and let you know
Speaker 2: that the character Andy Bernard on the Office never would
Speaker 2: have clicked for me without you. You were such an
Speaker 2: instrumental part of like helping me find his voice and
Speaker 2: shaping who he became, and that whole process, all of
Speaker 2: our fun little huddle ups and just hard laughs and
Speaker 2: brainstorming sessions about who Andy Bernard could be and why
Speaker 2: Andy was funny or what made him funny, And it's
Speaker 2: just like one of my favorite memories of show business.
Speaker 2: That's so kind of you to say. I mean, I
Speaker 2: will say that.
Speaker 1: You know, you joined the show in season three and
Speaker 1: the plot was that, you know, Jim had moved to
Speaker 1: a different office, and the office that would happened to
Speaker 1: be chosen was in Stanford, Connecticut. And I grew up
Speaker 1: in West Hartford, Connecticut, which is maybe an hour and
Speaker 1: changed north of Stamford, and I just instantly knew and
Speaker 1: I grew up with Andy a lot of Andy's and
Speaker 1: it was a very familiar character to me at the
Speaker 1: sort of preppy, like good time Charlie guy who went
Speaker 1: to an Ivy League school and just wanted to be
Speaker 1: liked and was just desperate for like you know, was
Speaker 1: maybe a little clumsy in the way that he went
Speaker 1: about it, but had a good soul and a good heart.
Speaker 1: And I just remember thinking the combination of that character
Speaker 1: description and you as an actor. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I get this, I get this. I know
Speaker 1: exactly who this guy is. And I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of as I'm sure you do, specific memories of
Speaker 1: like little moments of like figuring out the exact right
Speaker 1: little mannerism or sort of prepster little turn of phrase
Speaker 1: or something that he would give. There was the episode
Speaker 1: where you all get drunk in the office having to.
Speaker 2: Work late at night.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and start you start singing an Indigo girls
Speaker 1: Closer to Find, Closer to Fine song, and then Jim
Speaker 1: chimes in and you pop up a go tuna, like
Speaker 1: so excited that he also knows all the lyrics to
Speaker 1: Closer to Find. I mean, that's that was my childhood.
Speaker 1: That was exactly my child That was like sitting around
Speaker 1: with my friends and listening to that album in particular.
Speaker 2: That's really where I think our friendship forged. Like that's
Speaker 2: when I met you, was coming onto the office set
Speaker 2: and just immediately like you were one of one of
Speaker 2: that handful of people that put me at ease immediately,
Speaker 2: and I'm so glad. Yeah, I mean, it's just yeah,
Speaker 2: it's awesome. It was a good time.
Speaker 1: It was a very fun, fun time, and I think
Speaker 1: all of our lives it felt like we were just
Speaker 1: in a very creative world with a bunch of creative
Speaker 1: fun people, and our only job was to figure out
Speaker 1: what was the funniest thing that could have happened at
Speaker 1: any given moment.
Speaker 2: That's exactly our only job was to make each other
Speaker 2: laugh as hard as possible. Yeah, And I mean, there's
Speaker 2: no better job, no better job. Well, Mike, I am
Speaker 2: thrilled your because today's story is basically a political sitcom excellent,
Speaker 2: only with a lot more graft, more fistfights, and way
Speaker 2: more dark money changing hands under the table. Today we're
Speaker 2: talking about Tammany Hall and the legendary Boss Tweed. Fantastic. Yes,
Speaker 2: how familiar are you with this story? A fairly familiar,
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 1: In the broad strokes, The Powerbroker by Robert Moses is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite books ever written, and Tammany Hall
Speaker 1: is a human part of Robert Morris's origin story. And
Speaker 1: you know, Robert Moses's story is legendary and have covers
Speaker 1: many chunks. But he his like understanding of politics was
Speaker 1: forged in Tammany Hall.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's start with some baseline info here,
Speaker 2: because I think a lot of people have heard of
Speaker 2: Tammany Hall, but might be one like, what is it exactly?
Speaker 2: Was it a building? Was it some sort of club
Speaker 2: or was it a symbol of something opaque and powerful,
Speaker 2: maybe even a little bit sinister. Well the answer is
Speaker 2: actually yes, all of the above. Tammany Hall was indeed
Speaker 2: a series of buildings in New York City, the most
Speaker 2: famous of which stood at fourteenth Street in Park Avenue South.
Speaker 2: But it is in fact so much more than that.
Speaker 2: When historians say Tammany Hall, they're actually referring to the
Speaker 2: democratic political machine that controlled New York City politics for
Speaker 2: well over a century from the early nineteenth century to
Speaker 2: the mid twentieth century. Tammany Hall was part fraternity, part mafia,
Speaker 2: part city council. Think the Sopranos only the front business.
Speaker 2: Instead of being a strip club, it was city.
Speaker 1: Hall, right, Yeah, it was the machine that ran New York.
Speaker 2: And a political machine, by the way, was actually the
Speaker 2: term for this type of It was not just a
Speaker 2: kind of random metaphor that I'm using, it was actually
Speaker 2: what these operations were called for over one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Tammany Hall decided who got jobs, who got contracts, and
Speaker 2: often who won elections in the biggest city in America. So, Mike, sure,
Speaker 2: how did it all begin? Well, let's rewind a little bit,
Speaker 2: shall we back all the way to seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: the same year George Washington became president. Coincidentally, back then,
Speaker 2: there were a number of prominent fraternal organizations like the
Speaker 2: Freemasons or the Society of the Cincinnati, and these groups
Speaker 2: tended to be a bit crusty and aristocratic, little snooty
Speaker 2: like country clubs. The Cincinnatians were even accused of trying
Speaker 2: to set up a kind of American hereditary nobility, which
Speaker 2: is pretty rich considering we had just fought a massive
Speaker 2: war with England to get rid of all that crap.
Speaker 1: The most the most American thing, right is you you're like,
Speaker 1: no more sovereigns, And then as soon as the king
Speaker 1: has gone, you're like, what if we had a king?
Speaker 2: Nobility's nice good points. So the modern version of these clubs,
Speaker 2: I think is like we see around as like Masonic temples,
Speaker 2: or or the Shriners. The Odd Fellows, which actually started
Speaker 2: in England around this time or even earlier, was also
Speaker 2: happening at this time, and I think that largely, or
Speaker 2: the Rotary club Lions.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not just those, it's also you know, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about like societies that aim to pull levers
Speaker 1: of power, you're also talking about like in the modern day,
Speaker 1: there's Bohemian Grove and there's the Davos Conference, and there's
Speaker 1: as long as there have been societies, there have been
Speaker 1: people seeking to form organizations that secretly control things. And
Speaker 1: so you know that some of those clubs are more
Speaker 1: civic minded, some of them are more you know, charity minded.
Speaker 2: But you're social.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's it is always the case that there
Speaker 1: have been people in every society, even ones that purport
Speaker 1: to be purely democratic or republic or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call them, that are like, wait, we're rich, and
Speaker 1: maybe if we quietly meet in a room somewhere, we
Speaker 1: can divvy up the society and capital in a way
Speaker 1: that will benefit us and not other people. So it's
Speaker 1: a it's as tale as old as time.
Speaker 2: Yah. Indeed, what's funny is that is that they're just
Speaker 2: as dumb as everybody else, but all kinds of conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories get ascribed to them. And I just think if
Speaker 2: you could probably get into those rooms, you'd be like,
Speaker 2: what the oh, these idiots, this is the group of people.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing in the world is when a billionaire
Speaker 1: does something stupid and the reaction is like, well that
Speaker 1: he's probably not doing that. He's a billionaire, and no,
Speaker 1: I promise he's just as dumb as everybody else.
Speaker 2: Of course, all right, so enter into this landscape of
Speaker 2: sort of crusty aristocratic societies. The Society of Saint Tammany
Speaker 2: founded in New York basically as a deliberate fuck you
Speaker 2: to all of these aristocratic clubs. So this was to
Speaker 2: be a patriotic club for the common man. It was
Speaker 2: named after taminind A Lenna Lenape chief, mythologized as a
Speaker 2: patron saint of America and liberty. Of course, the Society
Speaker 2: of Saint Tammany also massively appropriated Native American attire, rituals
Speaker 2: and nannings and you're kidding, yes, yeah. They not not
Speaker 2: a real progressive, woke crew at this time, but they
Speaker 2: threw large events, parties and parades. They were rowdy, populous,
Speaker 2: and kind of a bit campy or silly. They had
Speaker 2: a big sense of humor and uh and also probably
Speaker 2: quite a bit cringe as well. Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 2: guess who shows up real early in this in this zone.
Speaker 2: Who's Aaron Burr? Yeah? Yeah, that guy revolutionary war Vet,
Speaker 2: the third vice president and yes, the guy who murdered
Speaker 2: lin Manuel Miranda. He's a national treasure in Miranda.
Speaker 1: Does someone fact check these podcasts or should we do
Speaker 1: it in real time?
Speaker 2: Because I I I asked the Internet and they said
Speaker 2: that there's a video of it.
Speaker 1: I swear to you you got the AI overviewed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that Aaron. This is all AI generated, including me.
Speaker 2: I am fast asleep in my house right now. Okay,
Speaker 2: so no, he didn't murder Miranda. He murdered Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 2: And Burr is the one who really saw early on
Speaker 2: the political potential of Tammany Hall. He saw it not
Speaker 2: as just a bunch of rowdy fund dudes, but as
Speaker 2: a ready made voter base. And he's the one who
Speaker 2: really steered Tammany Hall straight into politics. Okay, So now
Speaker 2: jump ahead to the early eighteen hundreds, New York is
Speaker 2: being flooded with immigrants, especially from Ireland. Between eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: and eighteen sixty, more than one point six million Irish
Speaker 2: arrived in America, and most of them funneled right through
Speaker 2: New York City, of course, the famous Ellis Island, right
Speaker 2: by the Statue of Liberty there in New York Harbor.
Speaker 2: Tammany as an organization not happy about this. They were
Speaker 2: deeply xenophobic, as were all lot of Americans at that time,
Speaker 2: and they really resisted this massive influx of immigrants and
Speaker 2: sometimes violently, not a real welcoming, not rolling out the
Speaker 2: red carpet, not exactly. But this will change, Mike, sure,
Speaker 2: this will This will completely flip because somebody at Tammany
Speaker 2: Hall did the math, all right. Irish immigrants meant Irish votes,
Speaker 2: and votes meant power, and so Tammany did a one
Speaker 2: to eighty and they did, in fact roll out the
Speaker 2: welcome matt and by welcome Matt, I mean jobs, food,
Speaker 2: social services, and even protection from the angry Nativists movement.
Speaker 2: In return, the Irish delivered loyalty at the ballot box.
Speaker 2: By the mid eighteen hundreds, they weren't just part of
Speaker 2: Tammany's political machine, they were basically the engine inside of it.
Speaker 2: Real talk, Mike, sure, do you see this as smart
Speaker 2: politics or just ugly exploitation or just maybe exactly the
Speaker 2: kind of two faced move that defines American politics in
Speaker 2: every era.
Speaker 1: It's a familiar story. They were smart enough to understand
Speaker 1: the way the wind was blowing. It's also a classic
Speaker 1: American thing to have a bunch of immigrants to come
Speaker 1: over to this country and then within a generation be
Speaker 1: like I don't like immigrants.
Speaker 2: It's like what what what? Yeah, you're doing?
Speaker 1: But they were, and this was the source of all
Speaker 1: of their power was they were smart enough to understand
Speaker 1: that there were waves crashing on the shores of America
Speaker 1: and they could either try to fight them or surf them,
Speaker 1: and they decided to serf them. And so that is
Speaker 1: the method, by the way, thank you very much. That's
Speaker 1: the key to all of these movements is I understand them,
Speaker 1: and whether they survive or disappear is do you get
Speaker 1: on board with what is inevitable or do you try
Speaker 1: to fight it? And getting on board is a much
Speaker 1: smarter move politically. You mentioned the Sopranos there's the scenes
Speaker 1: in the Sopranos where it's Thanksgiving and the guys in
Speaker 1: the in Tony's carewer like handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, Tammany Hall, same thing invented it
Speaker 2: only handing out turkeys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that one, like having a giant free turkey
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving meal is like, that's a year's worth of votes
Speaker 1: that they just bought for for you know at the time,
Speaker 1: what like seventy five cents worth of foul Yeah, fabulous insight.
Speaker 2: Mike, Sure, I love the way your brain works. We're
Speaker 2: going to cut all that out though, yeah, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 2: I assume you're cutting all of this out right. This
Speaker 2: isn't going to air. So we have now set the
Speaker 2: stage and here comes our headliner. Are you ready, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, please welcome the man who, well, not well,
Speaker 2: he's not going to join us, he's dead. But welcome
Speaker 2: to our narrative, the man who would come to embody
Speaker 2: Tammany Hall's power, greed and epic corruption, William Boss Tweed.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of Boss? You know you're familiar with
Speaker 2: Boss Tweed? What is his name? What is his name?
Speaker 2: Conjure for you.
Speaker 1: It conjures an enormous, barrel chested gentleman who strolls through
Speaker 1: the streets of New York and everyone knows his name
Speaker 1: and he is legendary, and people whisper and point and
Speaker 1: wave and he waves back.
Speaker 2: And gosh, you're just it sounds like an episode of Cheers.
Speaker 2: It basically is.
Speaker 1: He's basically norm but on the streets of nineteenth century
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 2: And also not afraid to just hit you with an axe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a very complicated guy because he was enormous both
Speaker 2: in stature and in girth, and by all accounts are
Speaker 2: very gregarious and jovial guy. Yeah, really like the kind
Speaker 2: of like you know, backslap in good time, Charlie, but
Speaker 2: also like capable of like horrific violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, combination of people like breaking into huge smiles and
Speaker 1: waving and him waving back, and also moms grabbing their
Speaker 1: kids and hustling them inside when he walked down the street.
Speaker 2: That's what I picture, all right, So let's get into
Speaker 2: old old Boss tweet here. Born in eighteen twenty three
Speaker 2: on Manhattan's Lower East Side, son of a chair maker,
Speaker 2: he actually apprenticed at the family trade, but he had
Speaker 2: much more lofty ambitions. His first step in chasing those
Speaker 2: ambitions was the rough and tumble, politically connected world of
Speaker 2: New York's volunteer fire companies. Isn't that kind of interesting?
Speaker 2: Kind of interesting? Yeah, because back then, fire companies weren't
Speaker 2: the noble, Dalmatian loving institutions that we think of today.
Speaker 2: They were basically street gangs with hoses they or buckets like.
Speaker 2: Crews would literally fistfight over who got to put out
Speaker 2: a blaze because whoever controlled the fire fires were so common,
Speaker 2: and whoever could control the fires had significant control over
Speaker 2: the neighborhood and then of course all of the political
Speaker 2: clout that came with that. So think think of politics
Speaker 2: by way of pro wrestling, but with a lot more
Speaker 2: water damage. Yeah. Sure, thank god we don't have to
Speaker 2: rely on for profit emergency services anymore for now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where this airing exactly. So as we were,
Speaker 2: as we mentioned before, Tweed was a very gregarious guy.
Speaker 2: He first joined Engine Company Number twelve before helping found
Speaker 2: Americas Fire Company Number six in eighteen forty eight. This
Speaker 2: company was nicknamed the Big Six and their symbol a
Speaker 2: flashy tiger. Tweed rose to foreman of this fire company,
Speaker 2: a position he parlayed into membership in the Society of
Speaker 2: Saint Tammany. Again if there these fire companies were very
Speaker 2: politically connected because they had it was just all power
Speaker 2: broker between these sort of rough and tumble figures and
Speaker 2: politicians and the leaders of the various wards throughout New
Speaker 2: York City. So from there he bounced around a few
Speaker 2: different roles. He was an Alderman congressman for a spell,
Speaker 2: found that very boring. Came right back to New York
Speaker 2: City from Albany. He was even a lawyer for a minute,
Speaker 2: but he finally found real power on the New York
Speaker 2: County Board of Supervisors as deputy street Commissioner. What a
Speaker 2: street commissioner? That just sounds mobbed up? It really does
Speaker 2: the street commission.
Speaker 1: Well, Dodger's an image of like, this is the guy
Speaker 1: who knows all the other people in the neighborhood, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's a guy who's like, we need sixty people
Speaker 1: to do some task, and he's like, I got it,
Speaker 1: and he just goes out and knocks on all the
Speaker 1: doors and gets rounds up the crew and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very mob very mobbed up sounding job.
Speaker 2: Well as Deputy Street commission. Old Tweed controlled city contracts,
Speaker 2: jobs and construction. And this is where tweeds genius for
Speaker 2: corruption truly flourished. If you wanted your cousin on the
Speaker 2: city payroll, you slipped Tweed some cash. If you wanted
Speaker 2: your construction company to build a new school, you cut
Speaker 2: Tweet a slice, or maybe you would just get the
Speaker 2: contract and never even have to build the fucking school.
Speaker 2: It's like they were just cranking out all the cash.
Speaker 1: So you've been in New York for twenty years and
Speaker 1: three of your cousins come over from from Dundalk, Ireland,
Speaker 1: and they don't know what to do. And you go
Speaker 1: to see Boss Tweed or one of his minions, and
Speaker 1: you say, we need construction jobs, and they go, here's
Speaker 1: three construction jobs. You give us twenty percent of your
Speaker 1: salary or whatever, and you take that deal because the.
Speaker 2: Alternative is And by the way, you vote for us,
Speaker 2: and you vote for you show up and you vote
Speaker 2: for us, and if we tell you to, you go
Speaker 2: to the ballot box five, six, seven, eight, ten times. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you change your name ten times. It was common like
Speaker 2: they like they were just stack in ballots. I want
Speaker 2: to be clear. So this wasn't something that Tweed brought
Speaker 2: to New York City government. This was the culture of
Speaker 2: New York City government at the time. It was just
Speaker 2: a profoundly corrupt apparatus across the board. The group of
Speaker 2: twenty aldermen and then there were twenty assistant aldermen who
Speaker 2: were who were a sort of like governing body in
Speaker 2: the city, and they were known as the forty thieves
Speaker 2: like that. That's how people were barnd to them. And
Speaker 2: this was well before Tweed even entered the picture. So
Speaker 2: he just kind of came in and was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I get how this works, and just kicked it up
Speaker 2: a huge notch. He basically industrialized political corruption in New
Speaker 2: York City. And oh, don't forget New York City. You know,
Speaker 2: it's nothing like it was today in scale, but it
Speaker 2: was massive for the time, and the economy of New
Speaker 2: York City was on par with entire other countries nations. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When we were researching parks and rec we learned about
Speaker 1: a group of people in a city in California that
Speaker 1: shall remain nameless, that they incorporated the town and then
Speaker 1: this group of people who'd been living there for a
Speaker 1: long time. Basically were like, we want to control this forever.
Speaker 1: And so the way they formed the government was it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, there was a planning committee and
Speaker 1: a sewer committee and a construction committee and everything, and
Speaker 1: they had it had three members, and the way it
Speaker 1: worked was, you know, you served like a six year term,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the term, you it was
Speaker 1: some mechanism by which like you named your own successor
Speaker 1: to the committee, and so then they just all they
Speaker 1: would like just all switch committees. So they just like
Speaker 1: it was brilliant. Yeah, so they and they they their
Speaker 1: name was the Dirty thirty. It was thirty thirty people
Speaker 1: controlled the entirety of this town for decades. Because there
Speaker 1: were rules about how you could only serve on these
Speaker 1: such committees. State laws, you could only serve on the
Speaker 1: committees for a certain amount of time. So they just
Speaker 1: were like, all right, we'll only serve on the committee
Speaker 1: for six years and then we'll just switch and hand
Speaker 1: it to someone else. And we just they kept rotating
Speaker 1: and as a result, they just controlled every single aspect
Speaker 1: of the planning of the community.
Speaker 2: I'm very curious, how do you think how do you
Speaker 2: think Leslie Nope would do in Tammany Hall not well.
Speaker 1: Now, she as a person who believed in fairness and
Speaker 1: equality and meritocratic system of achievement.
Speaker 2: Sure, and also I think she's someone who assumes the
Speaker 2: best intentions and others. Yes, yeah, I mean she was
Speaker 2: no fool.
Speaker 1: She's certainly in over the course of the show, had
Speaker 1: to deal with a lot of corrupt people and understood
Speaker 1: that people's motivations.
Speaker 2: Were not always pure.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it would Tammany Hall would not have been
Speaker 1: a good environment in which she could flourish to the
Speaker 1: best of her abilities.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, I also would not flourish. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: feel like my brain just doesn't work the right way
Speaker 2: for that. And I don't mean that in like a
Speaker 2: oh because I'm a good person. I just mean like
Speaker 2: I don't I can't track those complex webs of manipulation.
Speaker 2: And it's like it's so overwhelming to me. It's but
Speaker 2: someone like Tweet like he's really like an evil genius.
Speaker 2: He also was. He had that sort of like Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton level memory, So he did he had like an
Speaker 2: uncanny knack for people names that gives you power, And
Speaker 2: that's something I've never had.
Speaker 1: No, I've forgotten your name, like three times during during
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: Likewise, no, those people who have like an internal ledger
Speaker 1: where they know everyone's face and name and also where
Speaker 1: they live and what they owe you and what you
Speaker 1: did for them, and can recall that with instant clarity.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a real classic power grab skill that
Speaker 1: people have, all right.
Speaker 2: Well, as well as things were going for mister Tweed,
Speaker 2: he would become truly unstoppable during the Civil War. So
Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty three, the federal government has imposed a
Speaker 2: military draft and New York City exploded into riots. This
Speaker 2: was an incredibly tragic episode. Poor Irish immigrants were furious
Speaker 2: at the idea of fighting a war that they didn't
Speaker 2: feel was theirs, while rich people could buy their way
Speaker 2: out paying for substitutes. Also, black people were being unfairly
Speaker 2: scapegoaded as the cause of the war, and so they
Speaker 2: were being targeted for horrific violence. Mobs burned buildings and
Speaker 2: attacked the homes of Republican elites. It was violent, racist chaos,
Speaker 2: but of course Tweed saw opportunity.
Speaker 1: Of course, this, obviously, you might remember, was dramatized in
Speaker 1: Gangs of New York. There's the famous sequence toward the
Speaker 1: end of the movie there. Yes, of course, the violence
Speaker 1: of that movie is so hard for me. It's so
Speaker 1: visceral verities, of course, as he's like a genius of
Speaker 1: like just making it that feel visceral. A lot of
Speaker 1: historical inaccuracies in that movie, but that is this chapter
Speaker 1: is exactly how that movie culminates. Tammany started offering loans
Speaker 1: to working class men so that they too could pay
Speaker 1: for substitutes in the draft. It was on paper compassionate,
Speaker 1: but it also meant those families now owed Tweed money, gratitude,
Speaker 1: and loyalty. The riots quieted down, and Tammany's grip tightened
Speaker 1: even further. This is feeling like House of Cards on steroids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you see brilliant crisis management or just sociopathic opportunism?
Speaker 1: Sociopathic opportunism? Yeah, how do we make everyone more indebted
Speaker 1: to us than they were before?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, from here, things like Tweed just consolidated everything
Speaker 2: even more. Courts, legislature, city treasury, voting booths. Everything bent
Speaker 2: to his will. And this is also when he earned
Speaker 2: the name boss. He became boss was a term at
Speaker 2: the time for like the leader of a political machine
Speaker 2: and he was definitely the boss. And here's where the
Speaker 2: corruption it just it scaled up so epically. Probably the
Speaker 2: most famous example is the New York County Courthouse. Do
Speaker 2: you know this story? I don't think so. Now, Okay,
Speaker 2: the New York County Courthouse, which is down on Chambers
Speaker 2: Street in Manhattan. It was built at this time, and
Speaker 2: it was originally budgeted at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which is a ton of money for the time. By
Speaker 2: the time Tweed and his cronies were finished, the bill
Speaker 2: had ballooned to twelve million dollars, which is roughly two
Speaker 2: hundred million in today's money.
Speaker 1: Wow, So what what is that? Forty x the original
Speaker 1: cost or something? Yeah, forty eight x the original bid price?
Speaker 2: Great? How does this happen? How does someone pull this off? Well,
Speaker 2: it's actually pretty simple. Tweed's friends padded every single contract, carpentry, plastering, furniture,
Speaker 2: even the brooms for janitors, all built at cartoonishly astronomical rates.
Speaker 2: One carpenter supposedly got paid three hundred and sixty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for a month's work. By the way, that's that's
Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty money. It's million million dollars a plaster
Speaker 2: pulled down half a million. The courthouse became less a
Speaker 2: civic building and more of a pinata stuffed with taxpayer cash,
Speaker 2: just repeatedly whacked by Tweed's gang and just grabbing all
Speaker 2: that cash. And that's just one project. And by the way,
Speaker 2: they didn't even finish They just this. This courthouse went
Speaker 2: unfinished for for like decades later. Tweed would actually be
Speaker 2: tried in this very courthouse, which is ironic, but we'll
Speaker 2: get to that. By eighteen seventy one, Tweed and his
Speaker 2: all of his buddies had skimmed off and estimated two
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars total, which was more than four billion
Speaker 2: in today's money.
Speaker 1: Man, man, they really knew what they were doing, and
Speaker 1: didn't they they did?
Speaker 2: He? Yeah, so he became the third largest landowner in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: He owned two yachts. I guess yachting was a thing
Speaker 2: then too. At what point, Mike, sure, does corruptions stop
Speaker 2: being shocking and just become like slapstick comedy. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is like when your carpenter is making more in
Speaker 2: a month than Apple makes in a quarter. Are we
Speaker 2: still talking about corruption or is this just like Marx Brothers.
Speaker 1: Well, it gets to it gets to the cartoonish level
Speaker 1: where eventually collapse is inevitable because no one ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever says, I have enough. Now, I'm going to stop.
Speaker 1: I'm going to like take what I have and just
Speaker 1: enjoy my life. It's never enough for folks in this position,
Speaker 1: so they just push and push and push and push
Speaker 1: until they're finally caught or brought down somehow. This is
Speaker 1: the story of all of these folks, especially the New
Speaker 1: York folks who were you know, who had this massive
Speaker 1: pool of human labor and the ability to kind of
Speaker 1: consolidate power at a time when when the country was
Speaker 1: still young and cities were still young. Every movie is
Speaker 1: about this too, right, It's like the person who's like amassing, amassing, amassing,
Speaker 1: and then at some point if they just said, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm going to retire, they could live their
Speaker 1: life there, and generations of their families could live their
Speaker 1: lives in wealth and security forever. They just never do,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a psychosis that just pushes them to
Speaker 1: the point where inevitably they push too far and someone
Speaker 1: comes along and takes them down.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened to him. But the other thing
Speaker 2: to keep in mind is that this isn't just something
Speaker 2: that's kind of like making a fool out of the
Speaker 2: City of New York. It's also there are financial repercussions
Speaker 2: to this. The money is coming from somewhere, it's coming
Speaker 2: from the city's coffers, and a lot of the city's
Speaker 2: money is also, you know, been purchased by international investors
Speaker 2: who are starting to sniff around, like what is going on,
Speaker 2: Like the it's starting to have real raise a lot
Speaker 2: of like real financial issues for the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all it's all essentially Ponzi scheme, right. It
Speaker 1: all depends on this endless influx of new people and
Speaker 1: new stuff coming in so that there's more jobs, and
Speaker 1: then there's more construction and there's more schools and more buildings,
Speaker 1: and at some point it's not fundamentally different from something
Speaker 1: like Enron or whatever, where like the people at the
Speaker 1: top are they're going to get away with it as
Speaker 1: long as the like confidence in the system sustains itself
Speaker 1: and then something comes along. In Enron's case, it was
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble bursting that suddenly, like when the
Speaker 1: flow of new investors is cut off. Suddenly someone goes like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, now, where has all this money gone?
Speaker 1: And then they when people start looking into it, finally,
Speaker 1: that's when the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.
Speaker 2: Tweed was really good at kind of shoring up his
Speaker 2: support for exactly these reasons. Sure, he knew how to
Speaker 2: play the game, so a lot of the money that
Speaker 2: he was getting through corruption, he was also giving to charity,
Speaker 2: so he would so Tammany Hall would sponsor public services
Speaker 2: like hospitals and schools, and that, of course won him
Speaker 2: a lot of fans. He would remain incredibly popular within
Speaker 2: his ward in New York City well after he toppled,
Speaker 2: which we're about to get to. He just had a
Speaker 2: ton of fans, particularly in the working immigrant communities, who
Speaker 2: finally felt like someone in power had their backs right.
Speaker 2: So for a while, Boss Tweed looked untouchable. He had
Speaker 2: the votes, the jobs, the contracts, the courts, even the legislature.
Speaker 2: But if history teaches us anything, Mike, sure, it's that
Speaker 2: when Karma and Hubris square up for a fight, the
Speaker 2: smart money and Karma. Am I right loud of that one.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of that good. Yeah, you can have a
Speaker 2: nice little little line there. You can use it. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right. So Tweed's operation finally began to crumble thanks
Speaker 2: to a very surprising thing, and that is the power
Speaker 2: of satire. H yeah, wait for it. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: really interesting. So the New York Times had begun publishing
Speaker 2: a huge expose on the city's finances and all of
Speaker 2: this corruption. We're talking reams of evidence that showed the
Speaker 2: courthouse scandal and dozens of other padded contracts and what
Speaker 2: ultimately brought the details of Tweed's abuses of power to light.
Speaker 2: It would take this extra push to really spread the
Speaker 2: news of tweeds corruption throughout the city. Enter political cartoonists
Speaker 2: Thomas Nast. So you probably have an actual image of
Speaker 2: Boss Tweed in your mind, and almost certainly it is
Speaker 2: rooted in the cartoons of Thomas Nast. Nast worked for
Speaker 2: Harper's Weekly, a magazine with a huge circulation for the time.
Speaker 2: He drew Tweed as a grotesque vulture feasting on the
Speaker 2: city of New York. He drew him as a giant
Speaker 2: bag of money with legs. He drew the Tammany tiger
Speaker 2: devouring actual democracy. And these doodles as it would turn
Speaker 2: out were devastating. There we go, there we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I think of as the bulging stomach,
Speaker 1: like the vest with the buttons about to pop off
Speaker 1: because of the bulging money bag stomach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ironically a Tweed suit. M Now here's what's
Speaker 2: fascinating about these cartoons. Tweed's reaction was like he was
Speaker 2: furious about the cartoons, and he said, this is a quote,
Speaker 2: stop the damn pictures. I don't care much what the
Speaker 2: papers write about me. My constituents can't read, but they
Speaker 2: have eyes. And he was exactly right. You know, so
Speaker 2: many of the working population of New York City were
Speaker 2: just didn't have access to education and so but these pictures,
Speaker 2: they were devastating. They were on the covers of things,
Speaker 2: they were all it just was, they were everywhere, and
Speaker 2: everyone could sort of immediately understand, oh, this is boss Tweed,
Speaker 2: and he is corrupt.
Speaker 1: This is not this zain't good. And that's say that
Speaker 1: a picture was worth a thousand words in this case.
Speaker 2: Like nine hundred maybe something north of the one hundred,
Speaker 2: like a lot of words. Yeah, now it's worth noting
Speaker 2: Nast himself complicated figure. He was virulently anti irish and
Speaker 2: anti Catholic. Many of his cartoons dripped with prejudice, but
Speaker 2: when it came into tweet, he was relentless and it worked.
Speaker 2: He's Boss Tweed. So what does he do? He tries
Speaker 2: to bribe The New York Times sure to stop with
Speaker 2: all of this. One founder of the New York Times
Speaker 2: was allegedly offered five million dollars to spike the stories.
Speaker 2: Adjusted for inflation, that's well over one hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: just to keep quiet. That's wild and insane amount of money.
Speaker 2: Like how who I can't just can't even imagine bribes
Speaker 2: at that level in this. I'm sure it's happening, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just wild. I mean a Katari jet is worth
Speaker 2: what that's worth, that's like a round hundred million. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of a bribe. I don't know. But here's the
Speaker 2: amazing thing that that New York Times publisher refused the money, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: I don't think the devil will ever be higher for
Speaker 2: me than that. Wow, that's a line too. So the pressure,
Speaker 2: all of this pressure kind of a guy coming down
Speaker 2: on Tammany Hall and right onto Boss Tweed himself, it
Speaker 2: just became untenable and the machine finally cracked. The city
Speaker 2: comptroller himself, caught up in the scandal, turned state's witness.
Speaker 2: He flipped and he testified against Tweed, who was ultimately
Speaker 2: indicted on two hundred and four counts of fraud and corruption.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that was like just the stuff they
Speaker 2: could actually, yeah, that was just the stuff they could document.
Speaker 2: He was convicted, sentenced, and jailed, But old Boss Tweed,
Speaker 2: he wasn't done scheming. In eighteen seventy five, he escaped custody.
Speaker 2: But now this is kind of an interesting thing, Like
Speaker 2: custody was kind of a loose thing, like they were
Speaker 2: they were still letting him like go out to dinner
Speaker 2: with go home for dinner with his family and stuff.
Speaker 2: This was like they didn't want to be rude. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean he had been. He had given so many
Speaker 2: Christmas turkeys. That's so like they were just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: go have dinner with your family. At one point, just
Speaker 2: come back. You got to come back, though, you got
Speaker 2: to come back. Well, one night he didn't come back,
Speaker 2: and he disappeared from New York City. He made his
Speaker 2: way down to Florida and under an assumed name, and
Speaker 2: then to Cuba and then he got on a ship
Speaker 2: to Spain.
Speaker 1: It's great to know that even back then, when the
Speaker 1: criminal needs to flee somewhere, where do you go Florida?
Speaker 2: You just go to Florida.
Speaker 1: It's just been the haven for criminals and misfits for
Speaker 1: since at least the mid nineteenth century. I like knowing
Speaker 1: Florida is nothing of not consistent. There's something I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's something like I have this like.
Speaker 2: Like like Florida, you're so encorurrigible, scoundrel. Yeah, you scoundrel
Speaker 2: has this kind of like like mischievous pirate thing going
Speaker 2: that I kind of like, it's Florida. You've got it
Speaker 2: on it again. Avenue. It's like people running giant bags
Speaker 2: of cocaine and shooting each other. But then in the
Speaker 2: afternoon they just like have their moheedos, turn on the
Speaker 2: Jimmy Buffett and.
Speaker 1: Just get out a fan boat and down some tequila
Speaker 1: and hang out in Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, come on, look, listen, we're incorrigible. What do
Speaker 2: you want Florida Weather's so good? Come on now, all right.
Speaker 2: So he made it to Spain, and this is really
Speaker 2: wild because the cartoons still haunted him. According to some accounts,
Speaker 2: Spanish police recognized him because of Nast's caricatures, and which
Speaker 2: is also a testament to the scale of this news.
Speaker 2: It was breaking it what really was international news, and
Speaker 2: it was setting off alarm bells in financial markets around
Speaker 2: the world. But yeah, Spanish police likely recognized him, and
Speaker 2: they called their American guys and them were like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're sending them back. So he got sent back to
Speaker 2: the United States, imprisoned again, ultimately died behind bars in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy eight, age fifty five.
Speaker 1: I mean, for a guy of his earth in that
Speaker 1: time period, it's yeah, you know, that's not terrible.
Speaker 2: The Tammany tiger had roared its last roar, so even
Speaker 2: with Tweed gone, Tammany Hall did not vanish overnight. The
Speaker 2: machine limped along for decades, turning out mayors and deal
Speaker 2: makers well into the twentieth century. But when FDR was
Speaker 2: on his road to the presidency in the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: he campaigned as an anti Tammany New Yorker, and his
Speaker 2: win was basically the final wrecking ball for Tammany Hall.
Speaker 2: The clubhouse doors finally shut for good in the mid
Speaker 2: twentieth century. Mike sure. That is the story of Tammany
Speaker 2: Hall and Boss Tweed, the biggest, baddest, most corrupt machine
Speaker 2: New York City ever built. Do you have any sort
Speaker 2: of larger, big picture takeaways? For me? I was really
Speaker 2: struck by the role that media played in this story,
Speaker 2: and particularly the role of comedy cartoons. Right. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the cops or Congress or even rival politicians who brought
Speaker 2: down Boss Tweet. It was journalists and cartoonists.
Speaker 1: I'll say a couple of things. Number one is one
Speaker 1: of the best things about this country, this screwed up,
Speaker 1: messed up, messy complex country that we live in, is
Speaker 1: that in the First Amendment, it says very clearly the
Speaker 1: government cannot put you in jail for or prosecute you
Speaker 1: in anyway for speaking up and saying what you believe.
Speaker 1: And it also says that the media is free. And
Speaker 1: because of that, we have a system by which newspapers
Speaker 1: in history, and television shows and radio programs and other
Speaker 1: media outlets are allowed to point out and make fun
Speaker 1: of and highlight corruption in government. That has always been true.
Speaker 1: It is in theory, I would say, still true today.
Speaker 1: When I worked at Saturday Night Live, which was my
Speaker 1: first job. Jim Downey, who's probably the greatest political satirist,
Speaker 1: He's the Thomas Nast of his day, really wrote the
Speaker 1: famous debate speeches sketches between Bush and Gore in two
Speaker 1: thousand and you know, the famous the first debate sketch involved,
Speaker 1: you know, summarize your campaign in one word in Al
Speaker 1: Gore Darryl Hammond as al Gore said lock box and
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell, as George Bush said strategiery. And that line
Speaker 1: stuck to George Bush so thoroughly. He did have a
Speaker 1: lot of malaprops in his day, but there's a large
Speaker 1: number of people who believe that he really said that,
Speaker 1: that he really said strategicy. At one point, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who believe that Sarah Palin said I
Speaker 1: can see Russia from my house, she did it. Tina
Speaker 1: Fay said that as Sarah Palin on SNL, and that
Speaker 1: that tradition that is very much in the Thomas and
Speaker 1: As tradition, right is there's a difference between the way
Speaker 1: people understand the world we live in and the country
Speaker 1: we live in from dry media reports about fraud and
Speaker 1: corruption everything else and the way that we see it
Speaker 1: through comedy and comedy is often a more powerful weapon
Speaker 1: and a more direct way to make people understand something
Speaker 1: about government and corruption and fraud and whatever else is
Speaker 1: going on than actual news. And that's while I was
Speaker 1: thinking of as you were telling this story, is is
Speaker 1: thank goodness that this country allows us to do that,
Speaker 1: because I believe that is the most effective way often
Speaker 1: for people to come to understand what their political leaders
Speaker 1: are doing. And that's what Thomas Asked did to Boss Tweed,
Speaker 1: and that's what Jim Downey and other folks have done
Speaker 1: to politicians through SNL cold opens over the years.
Speaker 2: Do you think that culturally we actually kind of underestimate
Speaker 2: the power of Joe folks like can Humor still land
Speaker 2: a knockout punch? I'm thinking about south Park right now. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is really appears to be puncturing the armor of this
Speaker 2: administration in a very startling way.
Speaker 1: I mean, the media landscape in which we currently live
Speaker 1: is so much more fractured. You know, at the time,
Speaker 1: Harper's Weekly was probably the most powerful an important institution
Speaker 1: in media, and obviously there's you know, there's barely newspapers anymore,
Speaker 1: and now there's barely kind of TV. There's no monoculture
Speaker 1: in TV anymore. We're now in this TikTok Instagram snapchat
Speaker 1: world where things are very, very fractured. Everybody has their
Speaker 1: own algorithm. So the question to me isn't whether humor
Speaker 1: can be as potent a tool anymore. It's whether the
Speaker 1: delivery mechanisms that we are employing now can actually deliver
Speaker 1: a piece of satire to the world that way, or
Speaker 1: whether people are so siloed off that they'll that, you know,
Speaker 1: people a large majority of the public won't ever see
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: That's my fear. I know exactly what you mean, and
Speaker 2: I feel that sense of sort of fractured culture that
Speaker 2: you're speaking to. But I still have this feeling and
Speaker 2: it may start be transitioning into more of a hope
Speaker 2: at this point, but a feeling that truly exceptional work,
Speaker 2: whether it's a South Park episode or you know, a
Speaker 2: particularly keen clip of stand up like the cream still
Speaker 2: rises to the top, and it does, it can still
Speaker 2: like sort of permeate those I.
Speaker 1: Would hope so, because I think if the story of
Speaker 1: Boss Tweet teaches us anything, it's that, you know, that
Speaker 1: is what is needed in these moments. What's needed is
Speaker 1: a voice of satire and clarity and perspective that can
Speaker 1: cut through and present in a single picture or a
Speaker 1: single comedy sketch or a single joke. What it would
Speaker 1: take a scholar, you know, hours to properly relay a
Speaker 1: picture of a greedy person as a vulture devouring democracy.
Speaker 1: Is a lot more effective in a single blow, in
Speaker 1: a single coup than you know, a lengthy article or
Speaker 1: a six part series in the New York Times or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: That feels like a perfect place to wrap this up.
Speaker 2: Can you share what you're working on? I'm dying to
Speaker 2: know what the latest Mike Sure project is.
Speaker 1: So Amy Poehler and I are back together again. We're
Speaker 1: making a new show called Dig that will be on
Speaker 1: Peacock sometime next year, we don't know when. Very exciting.
Speaker 1: Amy and I wrote the pilot together and we're working
Speaker 1: in the writer's room now. And the extra fun thing
Speaker 1: is that my wife, jj Fhilban is co show running
Speaker 1: the show with me, so it's amazing we're ever working together,
Speaker 1: which is very exciting. And then in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks we start work on Man on the Inside Season
Speaker 1: three in the writer's room. Season two will drop in November.
Speaker 1: We're getting a head start in season three the show
Speaker 1: with Ted Danson on Netflix. So I've got a full
Speaker 1: a full dance card, as they say. But I would
Speaker 1: not for a second even think about missing the chance
Speaker 1: to talk to my old pal at Helms on this podcast,
Speaker 1: which I really love. By the way, it's a truly,
Speaker 1: truly entertaining and delightful Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Wait, can you give us any like a logline or
Speaker 2: a teaser about this show Dig with Amy which sounds
Speaker 2: just utterly delightful, So, Eddie.
Speaker 1: It's based on a book called Excavations that Amy read
Speaker 1: and really liked. It's about a group of women who
Speaker 1: work on an archaeological dig site in Greece. And it's
Speaker 1: four women ages nineteen, twenty nine, thirty nine, and forty nine,
Speaker 1: so four women from four slightly different generations, and they
Speaker 1: work on this dig site in Greece and they slowly,
Speaker 1: over the course of the show uncover a sort of
Speaker 1: like little conspiracy and they all left it.
Speaker 2: Did some die sours murder each other? Oh, you've seen it,
Speaker 2: you've read the book. I mean, what else? What are
Speaker 2: you gonna find? And a dig it's a dinosaur homicide.
Speaker 2: It just sounds like so much fun and all the
Speaker 2: people that I love. Yeah, it should be very fun.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about it. Great congrats on that, Mike Sure.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful for your time and just for the
Speaker 2: great hang today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so might Hang buddy. Thank you for having
Speaker 1: me and I truly do love this podcast. Thank you
Speaker 1: for inviting me on right on. I love you, buddy,
Speaker 1: Love you soon.
Speaker 2: Bye. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media,
Speaker 2: a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 2: Our post production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
Speaker 2: and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino,
Speaker 2: Tory Smith, and Carl Nellis. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis.
Speaker 2: Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering
Speaker 2: from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo
Speaker 2: and branding by Matt Gosson and the Collected Works. Legal
Speaker 2: review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone
Speaker 2: at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman and
Speaker 2: Nicki Etoor. While I have you, don't forget to pick
Speaker 2: up a copy of my book, Snaffoo, The Definitive Guide
Speaker 2: to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any
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Speaker 2: and see you next week.