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Speaker 1: Hello there, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.

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Speaker 1: Have a really fun guest today and a great sort

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Speaker 1: of like history lesson about something you don't think about

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Speaker 1: very often, and a fun little sort of lost in

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Speaker 1: history episode. Did you know they played a ceremonial bowl game,

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Speaker 1: a college football all star game, right around Ground zero

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Speaker 1: just four months after they the United States dropped a

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Speaker 1: bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. This actually happened. It's called the

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Speaker 1: Atomic Bowl. Obviously, as I've come to you today, August

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Speaker 1: we are this is the eightieth anniversary of the United

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Speaker 1: States dropping not one but two bombs, one in Hiroshima,

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Speaker 1: which is the one we spend a lot of time on,

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Speaker 1: and a second one three days later on August ninth

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Speaker 1: on Nagasaki, Japan. My guest today is Greg Mitchell. He's

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Speaker 1: a long time historian, nuclear arms reporter and activists back

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Speaker 1: in the day, and he's written a book and done

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Speaker 1: a companion documentary about the Atomic Bowl. This football game

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Speaker 1: that the Occupation, the US occupation military leaders at the

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Speaker 1: time decided to do and hold. It included a Heisman

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Speaker 1: Trophy winner at this game, again on a field that

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Speaker 1: was at a middle school where hundreds died from the bombing,

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Speaker 1: never mind the potential radiation points, all those things that

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Speaker 1: you can think of. Right four months after the fact,

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Speaker 1: they hold a football game. Well, this was an event

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Speaker 1: basically lost in history, and Greg Mitchell does a great

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Speaker 1: job on earthing it. It's a terrific conversation. So I

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Speaker 1: hope you stick around for that. But in the meantime,

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Speaker 1: I want to empty what I call my political notebook

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Speaker 1: of sorts of interesting developments, mostly about the midterm elections.

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Speaker 1: But I got to start with President Trump's interview with

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Speaker 1: CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously Tuesday morning, obviously he's trying

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Speaker 1: desperately to reassure markets and reassure the business community that

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Speaker 1: he hasn't lost it. Well, I don't think this interview

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Speaker 1: did that. I mean, is it was. It would take

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Speaker 1: longer to fact check the interview than the interview itself.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if he said a single factual thing

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Speaker 1: that was correct when he just talked about whether it

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Speaker 1: was redistricting, talked about tariffs, talked about the Bureau of

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Speaker 1: Labor statistics. He there there were I'm sure there were

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Speaker 1: a couple of things we can claim we're factually correct,

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Speaker 1: but it's very difficult, and in fact, it was so

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Speaker 1: bizarre and meandering in some ways. You know, we have

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Speaker 1: the same issue with Trump that we had with Biden.

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Speaker 1: But Biden they didn't let talk to the press, right,

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Speaker 1: We never saw him, and the occasional times we did

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Speaker 1: would raise eyebrows like huh. With Trump, we hear and

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Speaker 1: see him all the time, so we're kind of numb

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Speaker 1: to the fact that he rarely speaks truth and really

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem very informed and doesn't and it's possible, and

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Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing we have to sort of

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Speaker 1: ask ourselves. In the same way that there was a

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Speaker 1: cocoon of people that were protecting Biden from the press

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Speaker 1: and protected in keeping the press away from Biden during

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Speaker 1: his term, there's clearly a group of people that feed

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Speaker 1: him false information to make him feel better. False information

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Speaker 1: about the polls, false information about the economy, like he

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Speaker 1: thinks the you know, the gas prices are lower than

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Speaker 1: they actually are, and he thinks his poll ratings are

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Speaker 1: higher than they actually are, and he thinks the economy

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Speaker 1: is in better shape than it actually is. Now you

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Speaker 1: could say, well, Donald Trump's been doing this forever and forever,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, he's the president of the United States, and

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Speaker 1: it does you know, you know, when you listen to him,

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Speaker 1: you can this is a different you know, it is

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Speaker 1: not you know, the I think it's a fair question.

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Speaker 1: Is he all there or is he not getting or

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Speaker 1: is he not being well served? Either way, it's just

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Speaker 1: as bad is what we experienced as a country with

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Speaker 1: Joe Biden and as a press corp. And we should

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Speaker 1: be equally alarmed for different ways and for different reasons.

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Speaker 1: But it's clear that he's either not getting information he

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Speaker 1: is he is being intentionally misled about the state of

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Speaker 1: the economy, intentionally misled about what's happened, you know, or

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Speaker 1: or he wants to intentionally mislead. Right, it doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: which which which it is. The outcome is the same.

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Speaker 1: And it's quite troubling, right. And the thing about the

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Speaker 1: beer of Labor statistics situation is that you know, this

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Speaker 1: is this is where it's the slippery soap, where he's

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Speaker 1: just poisoning all of government data. And maybe that's a

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Speaker 1: feature not a bug, right, Like, ultimately, uh, there are

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Speaker 1: there is, there are people in this movement. I think

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Speaker 1: there are genuine conservatives that support President Trump that also

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Speaker 1: believe in the democracy. But I think there's also people

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Speaker 1: who are exploited of that involved in this movement who

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Speaker 1: do want to destroy government and who do want to

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Speaker 1: de legitimize government data. And Donald Trump is carrying out

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Speaker 1: this mission and delegitimizing government data is how we will

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Speaker 1: get sicker children. Why measles has been spread? I mean

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Speaker 1: what obviously I said, I think the most alarming thing

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Speaker 1: that has happened is what's happening at HHS. You know,

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Speaker 1: this should be the five alarm fire that every media

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Speaker 1: organization is focused on, because data, you know, misleading Americans

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Speaker 1: on data is killing them. Heartstop. This is not this

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Speaker 1: is not a it is not a you know, it's

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Speaker 1: not a figure of figure of speech. It is a

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Speaker 1: literal thing that is happening when it comes to the

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Speaker 1: measles And this delegitimizing of economic data is is how

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Speaker 1: is how a modern Western economy can get destroyed. And

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Speaker 1: as I said previously, this is what Richard Nixon did,

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Speaker 1: and he caused basically the second worst economic downturn that

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Speaker 1: we had as a country for over a decade since,

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Speaker 1: you know, after the Great Depression. So this is this

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Speaker 1: is how danger it is but just to give you

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Speaker 1: a sense, and this is a small thing, and it

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Speaker 1: leads into like today, I'm emptying the political notebook. So

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Speaker 1: it's all things having to do with twenty twenty six.

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Speaker 1: So I'm gonna kick off with redistricting. And he was

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Speaker 1: asked about redistricting in this interview, and Trump said this.

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Speaker 1: I want to quote him exactly because it's important here.

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Speaker 1: He said, we have an opportunity in Texas to pick

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Speaker 1: up five seats, and then he goes on to claim

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Speaker 1: I got the highest vote in the history of Texas,

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Speaker 1: as you probably know, and we are entitled to five

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Speaker 1: more seats. And you're just sitting there, going, okay, Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump got fifty six percent of the vote in Texas,

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Speaker 1: and you're trying to sit there's the highest vote ever.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not even the highest vote total for

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Speaker 1: a Republican in the twenty first century. It's not the highest.

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Speaker 1: It's not the fifth highest vote total since World War Two.

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Speaker 1: It's not in the top five at all. Right, no

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Speaker 1: matter what, I guess, if you use the metric of

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Speaker 1: this century, maybe you could say he's gotten the third

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Speaker 1: most of a Republican. But he claimed, by the way

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Speaker 1: in the history of Texas, and they actually went back

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Speaker 1: and forth. Right, Kernin knew he was probably full of it,

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Speaker 1: and Trump was like insisting and he was anyway. Well,

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Speaker 1: Kernin was saying he would get grief for not getting

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Speaker 1: fact checked, and Jose an old friend, Hi, Joe, Yes,

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Speaker 1: I'm fact checking you on this, so I'm helping you

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Speaker 1: out here. So just so you know, George W. Bush

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Speaker 1: and four got sixty one percent in Texas in two thousand.

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Speaker 1: Bush got fifty nine percent in nineteen eighty four, Reagan

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Speaker 1: got sixty three percent. Nixon in seventy two got sixty

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Speaker 1: six percent in Texas. Lbj in sixty four got sixty

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Speaker 1: three percent in Texas. Harry Truman in nineteen forty eight

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Speaker 1: got sixty six percent in Texas. That's just since World

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Speaker 1: War Two. So Donald Trump fifty six percent is seventh

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Speaker 1: since World War Two. Okay. And here's my favorite kicker,

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Speaker 1: the president he has emulated in history, the non consecutive

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Speaker 1: term president of Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland did better in

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Speaker 1: Texas both times that he won the presidency. He got

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Speaker 1: fifty seven percent the first time, in sixty nine percent

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Speaker 1: the second time. So that's sort of how absurd it is.

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Speaker 1: And now what's interesting about you know Trump and his

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Speaker 1: fifty six percent? So fifty six percent is would you

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Speaker 1: know if you if you know there's been this argument,

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Speaker 1: what do you do with what? What should be the

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Speaker 1: proper way a state should create its delegation? How much

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Speaker 1: should the statewide vote matter? Now, Look, I spend a

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Speaker 1: lot of time in my substack post this week, so

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Speaker 1: go check it out. I have this entire sort of

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Speaker 1: potential various ways we could create some actual metrics, so

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Speaker 1: we could sort of take politics out of the system

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Speaker 1: and sort of force some metrics to actually guide what's fair.

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Speaker 1: Because my biggest frustration about this fight over redistricting is

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Speaker 1: nobody wants to be fair in the process. Right. Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump is actively calling for an unfair map in Texas

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Speaker 1: in order to manipulate the mid term election so he

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Speaker 1: can salvage his House majority so he's not embarrassed and

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Speaker 1: his MAGA movement isn't put into the dustbin of history

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Speaker 1: because he can't hold Congress because it's a rejection of

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Speaker 1: his movement. So he wants to try to rig the

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Speaker 1: election in his favor by forcing this jerrymander. He's calling

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Speaker 1: for unfairness. And now the Democratic Party's response is to say, well,

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Speaker 1: if you're going to be unfair there, then we're going

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Speaker 1: to be unfair in California, and we're going to be

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Speaker 1: unfair in New York. And the Republicans are saying, fine,

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Speaker 1: we'll be unfair in Ohio, and we'll be unfair in Missouri.

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Speaker 1: You're unfair in Illinois. That was his argument there, and

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Speaker 1: it's true. Illinois is a huge gerrymandered state. And by

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Speaker 1: the way, little memo to the Texas Democrats, there's plenty

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Speaker 1: of places to escape Texas if you're trying to prevent

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Speaker 1: a quorum. And I understand that tactic. I might not

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Speaker 1: have gone to the state of Illinois, home of the

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Speaker 1: words gerrymander on the democratic side of the aisle. You

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Speaker 1: might have been better off going to a place like Colorado,

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Speaker 1: or going to a place like that you know, is

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Speaker 1: a democratic state and actually did it honestly and with

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Speaker 1: fairness involved, or something like that, so or virgin whatever.

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Speaker 1: There were other places to go. But I understand that

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Speaker 1: the governor of Illinois is paying the bill, so there

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Speaker 1: is some sense of that you have to go there.

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Speaker 1: But I do think that just optically, Illinois was a

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Speaker 1: bad choice, you know, in sort of the same way

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Speaker 1: that milk was a bad choice for ron Burgundy. But

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Speaker 1: but I digress. The so the issue on that, So

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Speaker 1: this idea that everybody's calling for unfairness and you're just

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Speaker 1: sitting there going where is anybody going to stand up

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Speaker 1: and say this is this is bad for the republic

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Speaker 1: right and that you know, I mean, you know Democrats

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Speaker 1: will argue, well, for ten years they were on the

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Speaker 1: side of trying to go for nonpartisan referendums. And it

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Speaker 1: passed in Ohio, and it passed in Virginia, and it

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Speaker 1: passed in California. And by the way, one of my

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Speaker 1: notebook items that I wanted to make sure you knew about,

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Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to fight Gavin Newsom at the

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Speaker 1: ballot box if Gavin puts a remap and a redistricting

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Speaker 1: on the ballot in a special election this November. It

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Speaker 1: was Arnold Schwarzenegger's sort of crowning achievement as governor, where

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Speaker 1: these reforms he put in, he created, he got rid

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Speaker 1: of partisan primaries, he did the top two system, and

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Speaker 1: he created the citizen Commission. I would argue that these

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Speaker 1: reforms have actually been quite healthy for the California system.

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Speaker 1: It hasn't you know, Nope, it wasn't clear who was

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Speaker 1: going to benefit on a partisan nature. The assumption was

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Speaker 1: Republicans might benefit because they've been in the minority. And

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Speaker 1: guess what, it hasn't worked out that way. It has

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Speaker 1: just simply reflected the politics of the state, and the

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Speaker 1: politics of the state leans pretty heavily to the blue

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Speaker 1: side of the aisle. But it's been done with fairness,

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Speaker 1: it's been done with citizen commissions, and there's no doubt

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Speaker 1: this top two primary system is much healthier than the

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Speaker 1: partisan Shenanigan primaries that have been taking place. And we

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Speaker 1: just got to get rid of these partisan primaries. Partisan

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Speaker 1: primaries are what is breaking the republic. But I don't

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Speaker 1: want to go down that rabbit hole. So he's pledging

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Speaker 1: on fairness. Now. One of my proposals, in one of

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Speaker 1: the proposals that I think the courts could have ordered,

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Speaker 1: was creating sort of using you know, the average of

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Speaker 1: a statewide vote over a decade for the two parties

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Speaker 1: as sort of a guiding light. So if you take

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Speaker 1: Trump's fifty six percent in Texas, of the thirty If

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Speaker 1: if you said, okay, if you get fifty six percent

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Speaker 1: of the presidential vote, then you should make sure fifty

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Speaker 1: six percent of the congressional districts favor the Republicans. That

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Speaker 1: would mean twenty one they have twenty five. I would

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Speaker 1: say a twenty five thirteen split is actually within it's

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Speaker 1: a reasonable split, slight Jerrymander in favor of the Republicans,

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Speaker 1: but twenty five thirteen out of their thirty eight congressional

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Speaker 1: districts is a reasonable split. Right, it's sixty six percent

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Speaker 1: of the congressional districts lean Republican, thirty three percent with

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Speaker 1: the Democrats. Is that the worst outcome is that the

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Speaker 1: worst version of Jerry manner the usen Right. It's not Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: that's for sure. So it's fairly fair. He wants to

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Speaker 1: add five. He thinks there's five seats. Now I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: I question whether he can get five. Certainly not in

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Speaker 1: a midterm year. I think in a presidential year, when

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Speaker 1: Trump's names on the ballot, maybe there's something to it.

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Speaker 1: But if you get to five, it becomes thirty to eight, right,

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Speaker 1: and at that point you're looking at at you know,

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Speaker 1: seventy nine. I believe it would be seventy nine percent

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Speaker 1: of those congressional districts would be leaning Republican. That obviously

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Speaker 1: would be an unfair cherrymanner. Now, look, I think there's

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Speaker 1: a variety of ways to fix this, but going down

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Speaker 1: this road of actively advocating for unfairness, I don't see

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Speaker 1: how this is healthy for the democracy. Right, the rationalization, right,

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Speaker 1: the rights rationalization to do this is, hey, they do

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Speaker 1: it over here. And now the left's rationalization for responding

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Speaker 1: to the Texas redistricting orders from from Trump is to

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Speaker 1: open the open it up in California, open it up

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Speaker 1: in New York, right, the whole fight fire with fire. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: I think this leads us down a path that you know,

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Speaker 1: when you're when you're when you're when you're making the

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Speaker 1: case that to save the democracy you have to behave

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Speaker 1: in an undemocratic way. What are you saving? So you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry that there is not any more sort of

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Speaker 1: introspection on this on this front, but look, this is

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Speaker 1: I happen to think that the president's rhetoric about Latinos,

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Speaker 1: the president's rhetoric about African American voters in the inner city.

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Speaker 1: In this same interview with CNBC where he seemed to

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Speaker 1: connect it to farm workers, he really went down some

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Speaker 1: you know, fairly. Some might call it coded race beliefs.

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Speaker 1: Some may say he wasn't being very coded at all,

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Speaker 1: but it was I don't see how it was good politics.

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Speaker 1: And there's one other thing that I find fascinating about

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Speaker 1: this entire story, both on the BLS angle in this

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Speaker 1: actual elected Republicans are not defending the president on this.

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Speaker 1: You have the Texas Republicans who are saluting the magaflag

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Speaker 1: and doing this on the redistricting front, but nobody elected

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Speaker 1: Republicans who are who are not real MAGA right, who

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Speaker 1: are not the true believers. They know what is being

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Speaker 1: done with BLS, and what's being done here is bad.

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Speaker 1: They just don't have the guts to say it publicly.

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Speaker 1: But the silence, the fact that they can't say anything

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Speaker 1: in the affirmative and that they're hiding, right, Like every

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Speaker 1: Republican senator is absolutely hiding from having to respond about

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Speaker 1: the job's data situation. And I'm sure they're going to

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Speaker 1: come up with a convoluted well, the system is antiquated

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Speaker 1: and needs updating, you know, hide behind that issue, rather

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Speaker 1: than dealing with the damage that Donald Trump is going

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Speaker 1: to do to government data, which is going to be

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Speaker 1: hugely problematic. All right, let me just open up a

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Speaker 1: few things before we get to this. I'm telling you

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Speaker 1: you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Greg Mitchell

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Speaker 1: and this sort of an issue. You think you know

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the dropping the US dropping of

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Speaker 1: bombs atomic bombs on Japan, but there's so little that's

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Speaker 1: ever done on the fallout on that. So a few updates.

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Speaker 1: Steve Klubeck, the candidate for governor who some of you

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Speaker 1: may remember I interviewed a few months back. He is

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Speaker 1: now the first guy up with tv ads in California.

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Speaker 1: Now that Kamala Harris has decided not to run, I think, frankly,

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Speaker 1: I think she made the wise decision. I think maybe

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Speaker 1: she can win this race, but it would have been

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Speaker 1: a rough go and she would have been relitigating a

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Speaker 1: lot of the Biden stuff in ways that I don't

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Speaker 1: know if she was prepared to do. And I go

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Speaker 1: back to I think that, you know, there's a lesson

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Speaker 1: to be learned from Richard Nixon's decision to try to

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Speaker 1: seek the governorship after losing the presidential Literally two years

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Speaker 1: after losing the presidential California voters rejected him, and I

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Speaker 1: think part of the rejection simply was, don't treat us

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Speaker 1: like a consolation prize. And so I think that she

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Speaker 1: made the wise move politically, and she's preserved preserved the

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Speaker 1: possibility that she could run in twenty eight. Although I

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Speaker 1: will I'm still you know, look, I'm I will be

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Speaker 1: surprised if she runs. I think she only runs if

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Speaker 1: she thinks she will. She can basically walk in as

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Speaker 1: the front runner, and she can't walk in there's the

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Speaker 1: front runner if the donor community isn't ready to support

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Speaker 1: her as the front runner. So my guess is she

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Speaker 1: will make the rounds with donors over the next eighteen

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Speaker 1: months and assess that situation. And I'd be surprised if

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Speaker 1: she finds that she has the financial support network to

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Speaker 1: walk into this race as the front runner. So my

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Speaker 1: gut is she does not run in twenty eight and

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't if I were her. I'd wait, she's young

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Speaker 1: enough to run for governor in twenty thirty or president

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Speaker 1: in twenty thirty two, and you know, she'll still be

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Speaker 1: younger than Biden. And Trump in doing that. So but Cluebeck,

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Speaker 1: now that Kamala is out is out. What's interesting is

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Speaker 1: his first ad is all about Trump and Epstein. That's

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Speaker 1: the decision he made. And it goes through and it's

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Speaker 1: you don't even know it's an ad. You should take

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Speaker 1: a look at it. It's on YouTube. He bought it

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Speaker 1: in every media market in cable media market in California

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Speaker 1: plus New York City, Washington, DC, and West Palm Beach.

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Speaker 1: Meaning he was trying to get Donald Trump's attention with this.

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Speaker 1: But it's all about Trump's ties to Epstein, and it

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Speaker 1: goes through the various things, and then at the end

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Speaker 1: is you know, I'm you know, then he just announces

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Speaker 1: I'm Steve Kluebeck and I'm running for governor. So it

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Speaker 1: appears to be a way to boost his own name

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Speaker 1: ID and to put himself on the side of being

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Speaker 1: anti Trump. It's an interesting gambit. I kind of think

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Speaker 1: it's a tough bank shot to to make there. If

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Speaker 1: you're using that to be sort of your your this

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Speaker 1: is your introduction, introductory ad. Now, if you remember the

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Speaker 1: interview I had with Kluebec, he wants to be unconventional.

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Speaker 1: He sort of thinks that there are tactics of Trump

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Speaker 1: worth adopting, and that sometimes you just you know that

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Speaker 1: this and this may be how he views the Epstein situation.

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Speaker 1: I'm a skeptic, but I will tell you this, Klubec

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Speaker 1: is an unconventional Democrat in this primary, and I don't

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Speaker 1: think conventional is the way to go in the Democratic

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Speaker 1: Party in twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight. So

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and say this is

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Speaker 1: a bad call by him. I'm a little skeptical, but

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Speaker 1: follow the unconventional this year and this next year because

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Speaker 1: it may get you Senate Democrats they should feel good about.

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Speaker 1: Looks like they're going to convince Shared Brown to seek

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Speaker 1: to seek another chance at getting back to the US Senate.

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Speaker 1: He lost, of course, he lost his Senate seat in

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Speaker 1: twenty four in a presidential year. He had held it

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Speaker 1: in a midterm year in eighteen, was stood a Trump challenge,

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Speaker 1: could not withstand the Trump vote in twenty four. So

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Speaker 1: this is now here's the I'm mildly surprised Shared Brown

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Speaker 1: chose to run for Senate. You know, pears that he's

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Speaker 1: going to run, and this is a big coup for

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Speaker 1: the Look, Chuck Schumer needs to put more states in

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Speaker 1: play if he's going to get the Senate. If he

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Speaker 1: wants to find a way to find a path to

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Speaker 1: four seats in order to win the Senate, Ohio has

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Speaker 1: to be one of them. There was some talk that

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Speaker 1: Shared Brown was thinking about running for governor. I think politically,

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Speaker 1: and here's why I'm a little skeptical of Brown's chances.

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Speaker 1: It's hard for him to look like a challenger. Right,

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Speaker 1: He's served in the Senate longer than the incumbent senator.

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Speaker 1: He's going to be challenging in John Houston. Right. Houstead

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Speaker 1: is the appointed Senator to replace Jade Vance. By the way,

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Speaker 1: if Shared Brown wins, his reward is to have to

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Speaker 1: run two years later. And he's not young. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: I am, like I said, I am surprised he's choosing

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Speaker 1: to do this because winning means he's got to literally

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Speaker 1: be like a house guy, turn around and run for

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Speaker 1: reelection two years later. Because this is to fill the

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Speaker 1: remainder of the JD. Vance term. Jade Vance was elected

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Speaker 1: in twenty two, so the remainder goes twenty eight, so

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Speaker 1: this is a special in twenty six and then right

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Speaker 1: back on the bout in twenty eight. So that's why

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Speaker 1: I didn't think he was going to do it, because

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Speaker 1: agreeing to run really was signing up for potentially two

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Speaker 1: back to back one hundred million dollar campaigns. Because trust me,

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Speaker 1: if Shared Brown wins, He's going to be the number

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Speaker 1: one target for Republicans in twenty twenty eight. So I'm surprised.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a tough I think it's an uphill battle.

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Speaker 1: I know Sharon Brown's won plenty of elections. He will

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Speaker 1: benefit with Trump not being on the ballot. That should

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Speaker 1: lower the number. The history of appointed senators is not great,

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Speaker 1: so the you know, the best time to defeat an

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Speaker 1: incumbent senator who's never been elected statewide by the people,

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Speaker 1: although Houston has been elected statewide and down ballot, racis

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Speaker 1: just not as a US senator is in that first attempt.

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Speaker 1: And I also wonder how much of the tariff argument

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Speaker 1: Shared Brown can make right. It's not somebody who does

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Speaker 1: who just hates tariffs across the board, and he's, you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that has made him unique is

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Speaker 1: he's kind of you know, shared the outrage of outsourcing

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Speaker 1: and of what's happened to the manufacturing and that's sort

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Speaker 1: of why he survived longer than most Democrats did in

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Speaker 1: the industrial Midwest. So can he take advantage of what

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Speaker 1: might be the best issue to hit Trump on, which

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Speaker 1: is this terriff regime. So it's it's that said, this

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Speaker 1: is still the strongest candidate's Democrats can find, right, So

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Speaker 1: I gave you all the sort of reasons why this

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Speaker 1: is tough for him. At the same time, he's also

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Speaker 1: the best possible candidate they could have found in this seat.

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Speaker 1: So it is a big coup Forsumer to get this,

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Speaker 1: But I think it's a tough boy. You know, never

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Speaker 1: has forty seven percent been so easy to achieve for somebody,

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Speaker 1: and I think forty seven percent will be easy for

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Speaker 1: shared Brown to achieve. That last three points is going

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Speaker 1: to cost two hundred million dollars, and it may be

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Speaker 1: it still may be an impossible three points to get.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of trying to put Democrats trying to put more

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Speaker 1: Senate seat in play, they got another candidate in Iowa Senate.

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Speaker 1: We now have four announced candidates, essentially an Iowa Senate

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Speaker 1: Jackie Norris, who was one time the chief of staff

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Speaker 1: to Michelle Obama. Her husband ran for office previously. She's

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Speaker 1: been a long time Democratic operative. Trust me, any political

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Speaker 1: reporter that's been reporting for more than ten years nationally

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Speaker 1: has Jackie Norris in their contacts because she's been a

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Speaker 1: player in Iowa politics for that long. She's jumped in

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Speaker 1: the race on this There's already state Senator Zach Walls.

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Speaker 1: There's the former Knoxville Chamber of Commerce executive director Nathan Sage.

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Speaker 1: You've got the guy who ran against Steve King and

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Speaker 1: came close defeating him in Iowa. And that conservative fourth

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Speaker 1: district there, JD Schulten. He's also the minor league baseball player.

429
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: And there's another candidate that national Democrats have been trying

430
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: to get into this race, Josh Turek. He's a state

431
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:18,959
Speaker 1: representative from Council Bluffs. So it is amazing that Iowa

432
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: went from a place that they look like Democrats were

433
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:25,119
Speaker 1: abandoning and they have a major candidate for governor and

434
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:30,360
Speaker 1: they got five on paper good candidates wanting to run

435
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: for Senate. Now keep this in mind, if this field

436
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 1: stays this crowded, Iowa has this weird quirk in its

437
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: primary roles. If no candidate breaks thirty five percent in

438
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: the primary, then it goes to a convention decide who

439
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:48,640
Speaker 1: the nominee is, so it's not a runoff. But then

440
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: it becomes essentially an inside game, right who's got who

441
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:56,200
Speaker 1: knows how to how to do that? And I will

442
00:24:56,200 --> 00:25:00,680
Speaker 1: tell you this, both Jackie Norris and JD. Shulten are

443
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:04,879
Speaker 1: probably both better equipped to win that kind of knife

444
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: fight behind the scenes if nobody ends up with more

445
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: than thirty five percent of the primary vote. But yeah,

446
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:14,239
Speaker 1: it's a weird quirk that Iowa has. But if no

447
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,879
Speaker 1: primary candid gets thirty five percent in this case, it

448
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: would be a state convention basically about a month or

449
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: so later, will decide who the nominee is. But it

450
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: is Here's the thing, and I said this before, I

451
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: think Democrats are going to have a hard time clearing

452
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: primary fields this cycle. You know, in twenty eighteen, the

453
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: first midterm of Trump one point zero, Democrats had a

454
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 1: pretty good luck clearing the fields, keeping primary challenges from

455
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:46,200
Speaker 1: happening in some of these places, you know. And I

456
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 1: think at that point there was still a little bit

457
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 1: of confidence in the Democratic leadership. Now, of course, nobody

458
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: has confidence in this current Democratic leadership. I think that

459
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 1: you're going to see you're not going to be able

460
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,880
Speaker 1: to see people push people out of primary. Even two

461
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,719
Speaker 1: years ago, Alyssa Slockton basically was able to avoid a

462
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 1: tough primary in Michigan. This time, the same group of

463
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: people want Haley Stevens to be the nominee there. But

464
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: they can't push out Molly mcmorro. They can't push out

465
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,120
Speaker 1: the Bernie Sanders and Doors candidates. I eed, So all

466
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:18,360
Speaker 1: of that is I think this is just the dynamic,

467
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: right of what's going to happen. And this is the

468
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: risk for Democrats. I think there's never been more people

469
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 1: wanting to run on their side of the aisle, but

470
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:29,199
Speaker 1: they're not going to listen to what DC tells them

471
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 1: what to do, and it could create some fractious primaries

472
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: and you may end up with some people that are

473
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: bad general election candidates. But that is I don't I

474
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: think these crowded primaries are here to stay. I think

475
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: in a few places, maybe one or two get out

476
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:47,000
Speaker 1: because they can't raise money. But we shall see. Here's

477
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,080
Speaker 1: something that you may have missed. The governor of Hawaii,

478
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: Josh Green No, not my friend, who's the longtime reporter

479
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: at the Atlantic and Blueberg, who's done some great reporting

480
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: over the years and has been a guest on the

481
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: podcast a few times. Josh Green. That Josh Green. But

482
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:03,440
Speaker 1: this is the governor of a Hawaii he's thinking about

483
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: running for president. He said this among governors, he goes,

484
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:08,640
Speaker 1: this was at the governor's meeting recently, and he said

485
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: among governors. According to the Honolus Star Advertiser, I think there

486
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:14,480
Speaker 1: are probably eight to ten of us who are elevating

487
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: in the public dialogue. I haven't made up my mind

488
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: about what the future holds. I'd be honored to help

489
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 1: whomever I might even become a potential candidate, but only

490
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 1: if I've actually done a good job. Still, that's I think.

491
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: You know, I've been trying to find, you know, who's

492
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: the candidate nobody's talking about that. We ought to be

493
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: care right, whether it was, you know, the guy Howard

494
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: Dean came from out of nowhere. It was the sitting

495
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: governor of Vermont, but no one took them seriously. This

496
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: is the sitting governor of Hawaii. You'd think, on paper,

497
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: should you take that candidate seriously? I think twenty eight

498
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 1: I go back to what I just said about these

499
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 1: crowded primaries. I take any Democrat who can get a

500
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: little bit of traction seriously, So you know this point,

501
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,600
Speaker 1: I don't think the chances are zero that the state

502
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: rep Talarisco, the you know, Joe Rogan's favorite Texas Democrat.

503
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 1: I wouldn't rule that out at this point. I think

504
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: Democrats are in that kind of mood. Keep an eye

505
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: out in the state of Florida, as you know I

506
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: always do. There's a new candidate that may be jumping

507
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: into state wide races with a familiar last name. Jerry Demings,

508
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 1: who's been the longtime mayor of Orange County, is thinking

509
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: about running. The husband of Val Demings, former congresswoman, was

510
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 1: on the short list to be Vice president with along

511
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: with Kamala Harris during the during the twenty twenty election,

512
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: he's thinking about running for either governor or Senate. A

513
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: former congressman African American Congressan named al Lawson Juniors thinking

514
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: about running for governor, saying that David Jolly the current

515
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: and you do see an attempt by Florida Democrats to

516
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,160
Speaker 1: rally around the former Republican congressman turned Democrat David Jolly.

517
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: You know Gwen Graham's already endorsed him. There is an

518
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 1: effort to try to try to clear the primary for him,

519
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: because I think there's some people that wonder if a

520
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: former Republican congress and can win a Democratic primary, right

521
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: that is really contested. And Al Lawson has raised the

522
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: a little bit of a of a warning shot at Jolly,

523
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: saying he's been disappointed so far in his outreached African

524
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: American voters. So at a minimum, it sounds like what

525
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: Lawson is saying is that Jolly has a little more

526
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: work to do with African American voters. Now. The entrance

527
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: of Jerry Demmings could be an interesting interesting development there.

528
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 1: You know, his office has been nonpartisan, and he made

529
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: that clear. You know, I don't think he can. I

530
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 1: don't think he would be people would view him as

531
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: an actual independent running for governor, considering that his wife

532
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: was a pretty high profile member of the House and

533
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: ran a pretty hard charging campaign against Marco Rubio for

534
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: the US Senate. So but it is it is, it

535
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: is clear that that quite isn't done. All right, Before

536
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: we get to my interview, I've one more little development

537
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: that I wanted to share. I'm i I'm a grocery

538
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: store junkie. So I spend a lot of time at

539
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: grocery stores because I just am I enjoy I enjoy cooking.

540
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 1: I just you know. And there's certain things that I

541
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: get at one store, then another store sells this thing,

542
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: sells that thing. It's kind of, you know, I when

543
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: my kids think I'm weird, my spouse, my wife thinks

544
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: I'm weird, it's sort of. I enjoy popping in a

545
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 1: podcast and roving the aisles looking for new sauces and

546
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: new spices. All right, that's where it is. But I

547
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: also that's where I go and I buy meat. I

548
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: always get my chicken at Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is

549
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: the cheapest chicken, and it's the same you know, everybody,

550
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: all these stories get their chicken from the same as

551
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: we all know, right, you're all getting it from the

552
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: same place. And Trader Joe's just consistently. Well it's really

553
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: interesting what they're doing. And it's a sign. And I

554
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: hope you guys, I would like to hear you guys

555
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: are running into this. So I was at the Trader

556
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: Joe's yesterday and I normally buy a four pack of

557
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: chicken thighs. They don't have four packs of chicken thighs anymore.

558
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: And by the way, a four pack of chicken thighs

559
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: usually was somewhere between three point thirty and three seventy

560
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: five'spending in the way, and just you know, always packed

561
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: in a four pack. They only had three thighs in

562
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: a package, and they were selling it for three to zero,

563
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: somewhere between three dollars and three thirty. So the price

564
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: was the same for my package of chicken thighs. Well,

565
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: we had essentially right, is it inflation or is it shrinkage?

566
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: What do you call it? Right? In this case? Right?

567
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: Does product shrinkage or is this a form of inflation?

568
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: The answer is both. Right, the cost of chicken has

569
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: clearly gone up. Trader Joe's has decided they don't want

570
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: to have sticker shock, so they just are selling less

571
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: in the package. It's now three thighs to a package. Well,

572
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of annoying, right, I was family

573
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: of four, right, four? You know, so now now I'm

574
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: buying two packages instead of one, so I'm buying six

575
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: and then, you know, then it's annoying. You're freezing all

576
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: that stuff. Look, those are those are small time problems.

577
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: But the point is, I find that Trader Joe's made

578
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: the decision. They didn't want to look like they were

579
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: hiking prices, so they went ahead and shrunk the amount

580
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: of chicken thives that they're offering in a package. I'm

581
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: curious if you guys are starting to see this at

582
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 1: your own grocery stores wherever you shop. You know, if

583
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: you're starting to see you know, because every store is

584
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: going to try different things. Right, if costs go up,

585
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: maybe they don't want to provide the sticker shock, so

586
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 1: they just sell less. So it is I just thought

587
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: i'd point that out, because this is the real world economy, right,

588
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: This is why Trump's Trump can try to gaslight all

589
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: he wants, but the real experience of the economy is

590
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: what people feel, right. You know, Joe Biden kept trying

591
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: to tell people that inflation was transitory. Donald Trump's trying

592
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: to is making the same mistake here, trying to tell

593
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 1: people that, hey, this is the golden age of the economy. Well,

594
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: in this golden age, the price of chicken has gone up,

595
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: pure and simple. There's no golden age in that. And

596
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: by the way, the impact of the price of chicken

597
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: has to do both with the president's immigration policies as well,

598
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: of course as what he's doing on tariffs themselves. All Right,

599
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: So with that, we'll take a we'll sneak in a

600
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, you get to learn

601
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: about the Atomic Ball. You know, I'm a college football junkie.

602
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: Let's just say this is one college football game I'd

603
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:26,960
Speaker 1: never heard about until my friend Greg Mitchell wrote about it.

604
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: So here it.

605
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 2: Is joining me now is one of my favorite authors

606
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 2: of two of my favorite all time political books, and

607
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 2: so it is ments that anything he does, I watch it,

608
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 2: I read it.

609
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: The guest is Greg Mitchell, historian, author, sort of really

610
00:33:56,040 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: an expert on nuclear weapons and has spent a large

611
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: part of his career, who's the editor of the Nuclear Times.

612
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: At one point in fact, we're going to be talking

613
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: about a new documentary he has out called The Atomic Bowl,

614
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: about this bizarre military organized US occupation football game held

615
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: basically within a few miles of ground zero in Nagasaki,

616
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: Japan in nineteen forty six. And we're going to get

617
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: into that bizarreness in a minute. But the two books,

618
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering that I've you know, that basically

619
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,879
Speaker 1: were very formative for me in many ways. Tricky Dick

620
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: and the Pink Lady about Richard Nixon's nineteen fifty centate campaign.

621
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: I just think it's I've read it three times and

622
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 1: I always learned something more from it, Greg, and of

623
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 1: course more than I've read it, Yes, And Campaign of

624
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: the Century about Upton Sinclair's famous nineteen thirty two campaign

625
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: for California governor. I think thirty two, right, if I

626
00:34:56,200 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 1: have it? Thirty four, yeah, thirty four, excuse me. And

627
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,760
Speaker 1: so you know Greg knows how much I love those books,

628
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,879
Speaker 1: and he never and if you subscribe to a sub stack,

629
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:10,439
Speaker 1: you also know he's a great music historian as well.

630
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: He loves his sixties rock and roll. And so there's

631
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:16,879
Speaker 1: so many places we could go, Greg, but let's let's

632
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: start with before we get to the specifics of the

633
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: atomic bowl and all of that, explain your foray the

634
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: new into the nuclear weapons arena. Like, what got you

635
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: into this, because you've been you've been essentially, i'd say,

636
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: one of the core reporters and historians on this for decades.

637
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: What got you into it? Well?

638
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 3: Thank you? Well, you know I as an older person

639
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 3: who grew up in the late nineteen fifties and the

640
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 3: mid fifties in the early sixties, I could hardly avoid

641
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 3: the subject. From Duck and Cover and you know, schools

642
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 3: to the Cuban missile crisis. Doctor strangeov was my favorite

643
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 3: movie from an early early age and then down through

644
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 3: the nineteen eight early nineteen eighties when the great anti

645
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 3: nuclear movement sparked by the so called Freeze campaign through

646
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 3: I was hired as the editor of Nuclear Times, which

647
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 3: was the bible of the movement. So it's really been

648
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 3: what how many years since then now about forty yeah,

649
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 3: a year, yeah, And I was but the kind of

650
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:27,880
Speaker 3: a key turning point on the specific subject of the

651
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 3: atomic bombings. Now I've now written four books and directed

652
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 3: two films for PBS on the subject, and written hundreds

653
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 3: of articles. But it was I got a journalism grant

654
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 3: to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in nineteen eighty four

655
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 3: for a full month. Very rare for an American journalists

656
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:47,839
Speaker 3: to be able to spend that much time in those

657
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,759
Speaker 3: cities to this day. And you know, part of it

658
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 3: was a week in Nagasaki, which is hardly anyone ever does.

659
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,239
Speaker 3: And you know, I was just quite struck by how

660
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 3: little was known about Nagasaki. They called it the forgotten

661
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 3: city when I was there, the inferior, a bomb city.

662
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: They referred to it the Japanese themselves.

663
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 3: So I've gone out of my way in the last

664
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:14,280
Speaker 3: forty years in many articles and books and so forth,

665
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 3: to talk about Nagasaki in some way, one way or

666
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 3: another and bring it more to attention. But it's still

667
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 3: largely i'm gonna say, forgotten overlook today. And so I

668
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 3: was happy to do this new film, The Atomic Bowl,

669
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 3: and then the book. There's a companion book I also

670
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 3: called Atomic Bowl, finally really focusing on Nagasaki.

671
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 1: You know, it's the timing of this after Oppenheimer. It's

672
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: got to be kind of helpful to bring a little

673
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: bit more attention on. You know, the movie itself got

674
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: mainstream attention. I was skeptical of how mainstream the movie

675
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: was going to get. Right. We don't right, we don't

676
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:56,319
Speaker 1: do and you know, and you know, look, it was

677
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: just a well done movie, and it did capture the

678
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: zeitgeist at least to a degree, and I think sort

679
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 1: of it is. What's amazing is how little journalism was

680
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: done about those two cities, right, and you don't even

681
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 1: to this day. I mean, walk me through to are there.

682
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:19,879
Speaker 1: To me, there should be a regular study of health

683
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: outcomes from Hiroshima, not regular study of what's happening to

684
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: the ecosystems, right, a regular study. And it does feel

685
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:33,879
Speaker 1: as if the entire Western world, including Japan, just wants

686
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:36,319
Speaker 1: to sleep all of this under the rug. Yeah.

687
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 3: Well, right from the start, you know, in one of

688
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 3: the points of the film, which I think is pretty

689
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 3: wide ranging, is that the Atomic Bowl, which as you say,

690
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 3: was held on a killing field very near ground zero,

691
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 3: actually in on the school yard of a middle school

692
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:56,279
Speaker 3: where one hundred and seventy five students and teachers have

693
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:58,439
Speaker 3: been killed by the atomic bomb. So you know, four

694
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 3: months later they're playing in All Star, our US military

695
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 3: football game on that field, and it was much celebrated.

696
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: At the time. Was it four months later or eighteen

697
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: months later? Now?

698
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 3: For as January first, nineteen forty six and as January first,

699
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 3: forty six, okay, sorry, And as you know, back then,

700
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:18,479
Speaker 3: the bowl games in the US, the college bowl games

701
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 3: were always played in January first. All those the Sugar Bowl,

702
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 3: Rose Bowl, all those bowls existed, done and they were

703
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 3: played on January four. I was it didn't care what

704
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:28,840
Speaker 3: day of the week it was, you know. And of

705
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 3: course that's been bastardized in recent years and decades, but

706
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 3: back then, January first, so they had this all star

707
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 3: football game in Nagasaki outside the school on January first.

708
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 3: So of course the media, I'm not sure it was

709
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 3: the media or the military dubbed it the Atomic Bowl,

710
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 3: and right from the start, and it got a lot

711
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,960
Speaker 3: of publicity leading up to it, got a lot of

712
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 3: coverage and the two days after, and then it was

713
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:57,359
Speaker 3: totally forgotten, totally overlooked. The media never returned to it,

714
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 3: as if I don't know, as if shames in maybe

715
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 3: or just well that's what.

716
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: It feels like, I love you led. Wasn't it until

717
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 1: like the early eighties that a participant finally wrote about it, like,

718
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 1: you know, there's no footage of this game.

719
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 3: Correct now, no footage. The only photos that were taken

720
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,479
Speaker 3: by a few soldiers and the you know, the hero

721
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 3: of my film, who was a poet and professor and

722
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 3: writer for the New Yorker, who was an observer and

723
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 3: he was given photos by a Japanese journalist who gave

724
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 3: him the photos later, So a lot of the photos

725
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,240
Speaker 3: in the film come from him or from the National Archives.

726
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 3: But there was no media coverage. There was nothing afterwards,

727
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 3: you know, after two days went in the kind of

728
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 3: a black hole in history, and whether you know, we

729
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,279
Speaker 3: can talk about possible reasons for that. But so it's

730
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 3: not as if this subject has been covered widely in

731
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 3: the past, which I always love to do films or

732
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,200
Speaker 3: books about subjects where the person kind of says, how

733
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 3: come I don't know about this, you know, or just

734
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 3: mind boggling I have I never heard of it. So

735
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 3: that's kind of a through line for most of my

736
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,880
Speaker 3: most of my books and films, is you know, an

737
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 3: un untold story or largely untold. No.

738
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I love your Nixon book. It's

739
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: all the there's so much literature on Nixon that Senate

740
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: race was never written about it in every way that

741
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: you know, and and and yet I find it to

742
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: be the single best book to understand McCarthy, the start

743
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: of McCarthyism, you know, I mean, you captured, right, you

744
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:34,280
Speaker 1: captured a moment and frankly it it and Upton Sinclaire

745
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: same thing, right, where you know, this is one of

746
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: those you want to talk about ignorance. I read I

747
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:42,319
Speaker 1: had to read Hupton Sinclair in high school, and I

748
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: didn't realize he'd run for governor until until I came

749
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: across your book and gave the first attack. Ads. Not

750
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: not to totally like get off track here, because I

751
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: want to stick to the nuclear story. But the beauty

752
00:41:56,160 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: of both of your books is it's also a history

753
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,320
Speaker 1: political consulting, and in history of sort of the modern

754
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:06,800
Speaker 1: political campaign was born in nineteen arguably born in nineteen fifty,

755
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: right with helicopter him barnstorming the state by helicopter, a hired,

756
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: paid political consultant, something that didn't happen. And of course

757
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: my favorite aspect of your book is Ronald Reagan supported

758
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:24,279
Speaker 1: the Democrat and Joe Kennedy supported the Republicans. It was

759
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:26,439
Speaker 1: like there was you know, up is down, left is right,

760
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 1: cats and dogs living together. But so you no, I

761
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: mean this is sort of your gift, right, which is

762
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 1: sort of surfacing something that an event everybody knows, maybe

763
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 1: a person everybody knows, but boy, you didn't know this,

764
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 1: this detail and Nagasaki and then you know Oppenheim, the

765
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: movie gets into this a little bit. Kybird's book gets

766
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: into it even more, which is why was it bombed

767
00:42:56,680 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: in the first place? Yeah, well we made our point.

768
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 1: Well how is it that we didn't think we made

769
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: the point with the first bonding?

770
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well even Oppenheimer, he does. He does have Openheimer

771
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 3: mentioned Nagasaki I think twice for about ten seconds where

772
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:14,720
Speaker 3: he just had almost I thought it almost was dubbed

773
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 3: after the film was done, where suddenly.

774
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 1: Somebody mentioned, hey, you don't mention Nagasaki.

775
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 3: Talking about Hiroshima, and he says, and Nagasaki, you know

776
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,760
Speaker 3: it was dubbed. But of course that's my long stand

777
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 3: complained about this issue. But well, you know, Nagasaki to

778
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:36,280
Speaker 3: me has you know, as many lessons for us today

779
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 3: as Hiroshima, which might surprise a lot of people.

780
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 1: For one, soone, aren't they the less are they the

781
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: same lessons or do you think they're different?

782
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 3: Well, they're quite different. But I uh, I mean the

783
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 3: thing with Nagasaki was I mean one lesson is most

784
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 3: people don't know it was kind of automated in a way,

785
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 3: you know, when when Truman gave the order it basically

786
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 3: was which was a few weeks earlier was just okay.

787
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 3: Usually atomic weapons when they're ready, and after Hiroshima, the

788
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:07,239
Speaker 3: Nagasaki bomb was ready three days later. Truman did not

789
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 3: make a separate decision. General leslie Grows, who's played by

790
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 3: Matt Damon Uh the movie, a little more sympathetically than

791
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 3: I would UH took control. He basically Truman was coming

792
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:24,480
Speaker 3: back from Potsdam, uh and uh. You know the basically

793
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 3: leslie Grows wanted to use all the weapons that we

794
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 3: had from the Manhattan Project, and so he pushed, pushed,

795
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 3: pushed for the Nagasaki bomb sort of on his own.

796
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,439
Speaker 3: He said, I even said, I never I didn't need

797
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 3: to hear from Truman on it. So it was a.

798
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: Weird Let me let me can you back up a second.

799
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 1: Why were those two cities singled out? Why were they

800
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: the ones to bomb?

801
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 3: Well, they were the target list came down to uh,

802
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 3: cities that were had not been widely already bombed, which

803
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 3: didn't leave that many.

804
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:58,280
Speaker 1: Because Tokyo had been bombed like crazy.

805
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there was no you know, there was the

806
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 3: some people wanted to bomb the Emperor's palace for example

807
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 3: in Tokyo, you know, but you know, Horoshia was a

808
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 3: very large city. It had a military base, a large

809
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 3: military base, so it was largely not the military. And

810
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 3: then Kokkura was number two on the list. In Nagasaki

811
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 3: was number three. And on the day of the Nagasaki bombing,

812
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 3: of course Kokua was socked in by clouds, so they

813
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 3: went on to Nagasaki.

814
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: Nagasaki was right, bad because of good because of a

815
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:36,320
Speaker 1: weather anomaly. Nagasaki gets bombed.

816
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but so I mean Hiroshima. I mean, you know,

817
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 3: we could talk for days about this. I don't I

818
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 3: don't boil it down too much, but you know, Hiroshia.

819
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 3: But in both cases, the targets were the center of

820
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 3: the cities, not the military. You know, Kroastima had a

821
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 3: major military base, but the target was the center of

822
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 3: the city so that more people would be killed. Nagasaki

823
00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 3: the same thing. The target was the middle of the city.

824
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:02,840
Speaker 3: Now it happened in Nagasaki for various reasons, because it

825
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 3: was also sucked in by clouds, and they dropped the

826
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 3: bomb anyway, and it landed more than a mile off target,

827
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 3: directly over the Catholic community. So fifteen thousand Catholics died.

828
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,280
Speaker 3: A big community in the Far East. Because the bomb.

829
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,239
Speaker 3: You know, they had to get rid of it. I

830
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 3: kind of liken it to a drone that's kind of

831
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 3: in modern day. A drone is sent out and it's

832
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 3: sort of okay, we got to get We're going to

833
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 3: drop this. We this payload, no matter where it is.

834
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 3: So I mean that's the basic thing. Now you say,

835
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 3: why why did they drop two bombs? And you know,

836
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 3: as I said, one reason was Truman had deferred to

837
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 3: so you know, in fact, when he came back from Potsdam,

838
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 3: he was surprised that the second bomb had been had

839
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 3: been used, and he immediately put a stop to any

840
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 3: more weapons. So we had one more weapon, and we're

841
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:55,440
Speaker 3: going to have more, and he immediately put a stop

842
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 3: to the use of any more. So but as I said,

843
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 3: this was an automated kind of system, almost like AI

844
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 3: had taken over. And again I make the points in

845
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 3: the film about, you know, dangers of AI today, the

846
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 3: dangers of the US still having a first use policy

847
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 3: to use nuclear weapons. First, the dangers of having a president.

848
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:21,239
Speaker 3: And then it was Truman who was not experienced. He

849
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 3: had just become president after FDR died. Today you have Trump,

850
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 3: whatever you think of him, The stability of the current

851
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 3: president having the ability, with the aid of AI, to

852
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:37,279
Speaker 3: launch a strike at any time. So there's just a

853
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 3: lot of resonance and meaning lessons warnings from the atomic

854
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 3: bombings eighty years ago. It's not just a interesting historical case.

855
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,320
Speaker 3: It's not just something you look at every year because

856
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:58,800
Speaker 3: it's kind of incredible history, but it's also very extremely

857
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,360
Speaker 3: relevant for to or what might happen today.

858
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: Look, this podcast is going to drop, I think, on

859
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: the anniversary of Hiroshima. Right, the sixth is Hiroshima. Yep,

860
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: the ninth is Nagasaki, correct, and so it is. It's

861
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 1: an interesting It's interesting to me how little attention this

862
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: gets now. Right, there was a time I felt like

863
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:25,280
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, this anniversary was paid a little

864
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: bit more national media attention. There was a little bit

865
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 1: more educational attention that went with it. Now it's you know,

866
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 1: it's like marking a big moment in the Civil War, Right,

867
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: it just doesn't happen anymore. And you've you've always been

868
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: trying to essentially, hey, let's not forget this, and we've not.

869
00:48:45,719 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: And I guess this gets it too. We spent a

870
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: lot of time on covering the decision to launch and

871
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 1: the decision to use. We've never focused on the fallout, right,

872
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 1: is that because it's the literal fallout or the literal

873
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: I mean the literal fallout, And this, to me is

874
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 1: what you've always been trying to do, Like, shouldn't we

875
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:13,240
Speaker 1: understand the consequences of our actions and what it did? Well?

876
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 3: You know, again, a part of this film is the

877
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 3: fact that the soldiers who went in I mean, I mean,

878
00:49:24,120 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 3: the entire issue of the occupation of Japan gets far, far,

879
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 3: far less attention than Europe. The occupation of Horoshima and

880
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:34,920
Speaker 3: Nagasaki get even less. You know, there's you try to

881
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 3: think back how many books or films you've seen about

882
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 3: the occupation of Japan or specifically the atomic cities. So

883
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 3: it's that from the get go, it's and it's kind

884
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 3: of an interesting subject to me. And then of course

885
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:50,799
Speaker 3: you have, well, we sent in hundreds of thousands of

886
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 3: soldiers into Hiroshima and Nagasaki within weeks several weeks of

887
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,399
Speaker 3: the use of the bomb or a month. What happened

888
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:02,840
Speaker 3: to them they're in this Do we have a record

889
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 3: of this? What is maybe they did studies that you know,

890
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:11,799
Speaker 3: allegedly showed that the although radiation was elevated, it was

891
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:15,359
Speaker 3: not dangerous. But of course we saw that throughout the

892
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 3: forties and the fifties and sixties with atomic tests and

893
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 3: Nevada soldiers told no problem, you can march under the

894
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 3: mushroom cloud. All the atomic tests, all the atomic experiments

895
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 3: that were held. So it's in the same vein of

896
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 3: assuring people based on very quick and maybe not the

897
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 3: best studies. And in fact, you know, some of the servicemen

898
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 3: in Nagasaki were sent out with radiation badges and they

899
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,160
Speaker 3: they felt they didn't work, or they they never knew

900
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 3: what they found. So that's you know, although the film

901
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 3: focuses and then the book focuses on the football game

902
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 3: in the in the middle, there's a lot of build

903
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 3: up to the soldiers US military who were there and

904
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 3: then afterwards and a lot of them claiming health defects.

905
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:08,320
Speaker 3: There's one person I focus on who is the public

906
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 3: address announcer for the game, who was one of those

907
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 3: atomic soldiers who later filed claims and had the cancer

908
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 3: and so forth. And among the many who claimed that

909
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 3: they were affected by you know, exposure to fall out,

910
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 3: exposure to radiation.

911
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:29,799
Speaker 1: We've had quite a few votes in Congress to help

912
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:34,759
Speaker 1: compensate nine to eleven first responders. What has been the

913
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:38,400
Speaker 1: government's response? What was the government's response in the sixties

914
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 1: and seventies.

915
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 3: The Yeah, it took decades to recognize that this was

916
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 3: even a valid issue. We got into the nineteen eighties

917
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 3: and finally the so called atomic veterans, which included the

918
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 3: Hiroshima and Nagasaki veterans, filed claims and got media attention

919
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 3: about these claims along with well, we now all the

920
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 3: downwinders who lived in the path of the dozens of

921
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 3: US tests in the kind of lumped together, and so eventually,

922
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 3: as the film shows, late nineties, there finally was a

923
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:20,360
Speaker 3: bill passed where these people would potentially get the compensation

924
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,880
Speaker 3: if they could sort of prove or suggest the have

925
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 3: some evidence that their cancer may have been caused by

926
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:32,799
Speaker 3: the exposure. And of course, by then most of the

927
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 3: veterans from Rosman Agazaki were already dead. But even that

928
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 3: was one of the few what I would say real

929
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 3: positives that came out of the Oppenheimer film was it

930
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 3: drew more attention to the downwinders who were many of

931
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,439
Speaker 3: them are still alive, and in fact there was.

932
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: Bills more young kids right that lived at Los Alamos

933
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: with their parents who were working on the bomb.

934
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 3: Right, So there were there has been some action in

935
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 3: Congress for compensation. I think even in the so called

936
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:06,840
Speaker 3: Big Beautiful Bill, there's a provision.

937
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:08,239
Speaker 1: Isn't that the Josh Holliday thing.

938
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 3: Isn't that what he thought to So there'd be some

939
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:18,320
Speaker 3: money to the survivors of in the US, the downwinders

940
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 3: for what they went through from the mainly in the

941
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:26,320
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. So, but the veterans of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, they

942
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,880
Speaker 3: did not get much out of there, what happened to

943
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 3: them there.

944
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:34,319
Speaker 1: Why do you think that has the Japanese government ever

945
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:35,320
Speaker 1: asked for compensation?

946
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 3: I mean for an explorers. I think they did years ago.

947
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 3: The other you mentioned at the start, And it's certainly

948
00:53:42,600 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 3: true the Japanese, like the US, wanted to turn the

949
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 3: page on World War Two and specifically the atomic bombings.

950
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 3: Japan certainly had a lot to answer for, and it

951
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,479
Speaker 3: was certainly in their interest to look ahead and not back.

952
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 3: So Nagasaki particularly and the particularly the Catholic nature of

953
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:08,839
Speaker 3: Nagasaki led them to not be as vocal as Hiroshima

954
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 3: in the decades ahead, so Hiroshima became the place.

955
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: Because Nagasaki had a minority religious group, it wasier for

956
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: the Jabar. I understand that, but the Japanese political leadership

957
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: felt it was okay to not worry about them.

958
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 3: Well, it was they was partly the Catholic Catholic that

959
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:31,640
Speaker 3: the influential bishops in Nagasaki were. They I don't know

960
00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:33,759
Speaker 3: how much they really were sincere about it, but they

961
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 3: really they almost went, well, Nagasaki has paid for the

962
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,720
Speaker 3: sins of Japan in the war, and so it's almost

963
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 3: like we're martyrs, and so we accept that, and it's

964
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:47,879
Speaker 3: kind of I don't know if it's a Catholic thing

965
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:50,359
Speaker 3: to do, but it's it's to be okay, we were

966
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:53,399
Speaker 3: victimized by this, but we actually actually was a good

967
00:54:53,480 --> 00:54:55,319
Speaker 3: result that you know, the.

968
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:56,240
Speaker 1: War ended or whatever.

969
00:54:56,360 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 3: So, but there was a lot of that in my film.

970
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 3: The as you mentioned, the leading observer, kind of the

971
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 3: hero of the film, who was the only one who

972
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:12,360
Speaker 3: offered first hand accounts of the game, which I received

973
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 3: from one of his daughters and was given to him

974
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:20,040
Speaker 3: by the Japanese journalist who covered it for the Japanese newspapers.

975
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:26,280
Speaker 3: The Japanese reporter's story was very bland, and they wouldn't

976
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 3: use any of his photos. So there was the same

977
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 3: sense in Japan as in the US, like Okay, this happened,

978
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:38,399
Speaker 3: let's let's bury it. You know it happened, then let's

979
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 3: move on, you know, because the message And again that's

980
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:44,719
Speaker 3: a lot of people there may be from what I hear,

981
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people who may even support the

982
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,359
Speaker 3: use of the atomic bomb overt Nagasaki, But did this

983
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:53,799
Speaker 3: story really shocks and gives them kind of a very

984
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 3: sick feeling because of the game beating played there and

985
00:55:57,920 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 3: on a killing field.

986
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,200
Speaker 1: Well that's the whole thing, the game. So first of all,

987
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: when did you find out? When did you discover this

988
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:07,960
Speaker 1: game took place? Did you know this early on in

989
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: your in your in your travels, or is this something

990
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:13,320
Speaker 1: you've you came across sort of over time as you

991
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: got more interested, as you did more studies of these

992
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:17,799
Speaker 1: two bombings.

993
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 3: Well, as you said, it was hardly written about by

994
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 3: anyone for decades, and I came across I think I

995
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 3: even maybe even mentioned it in one or two books

996
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:27,880
Speaker 3: just in passing.

997
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 1: Because so little was known about it.

998
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:33,799
Speaker 3: What was What was known basically was that the two

999
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 3: stars were both I mean to show you the level

1000
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:38,800
Speaker 3: of this, were quite famous.

1001
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:40,239
Speaker 1: At one time, right, Yeah.

1002
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:43,040
Speaker 3: One captain was Angelo Bertelli, who had just won the

1003
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 3: Heisman Award, the best college player had not your Dame

1004
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,759
Speaker 3: of all places, and back then college football bigger than

1005
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:52,320
Speaker 3: pro football. You were the Heisman Trophy winner in college football,

1006
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 3: you were you were the most famous football player in America.

1007
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:57,760
Speaker 3: Notre Dame quarterback. Yeah, a later member of the College

1008
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 3: Football Hall of Fame. The other cap then the other

1009
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:04,280
Speaker 3: team was Bill Osmanski. It was a legendary great Chicago

1010
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 3: Bears running back. He'd won a rushing title, three championship

1011
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:15,080
Speaker 3: championships teams for the Bears, and he was over there

1012
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 3: actually kind of funny. He was part of the occupying

1013
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 3: force in Nagasaki as a dentist. That was his training.

1014
00:57:20,560 --> 00:57:24,400
Speaker 3: So yes, so they were the two captains, and then

1015
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:26,840
Speaker 3: they had various stars on their teams.

1016
00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:29,800
Speaker 1: So it's like a barnstorming event, like they got, hey,

1017
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: we need to do we're trying to a good will.

1018
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: Was it seen as some sort of good will gesture?

1019
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:38,640
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's an interesting point. Why did this happen. Now,

1020
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 3: they were not part of a barnstorming team. They hadn't

1021
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:45,280
Speaker 3: played elsewhere. If they'd toured the Pacific, and you'd say, well,

1022
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 3: this is their latest stop, and they got off the

1023
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:49,439
Speaker 3: boat and played this game. But this was a one off.

1024
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:54,720
Speaker 3: And so I mean there in the film and the book,

1025
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 3: I present various possible notions. One was that this was

1026
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 3: a way to first of all, to show the Japanese

1027
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 3: our way of life in a way there was there

1028
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 3: was a I have a clip in the film from

1029
00:58:11,080 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 3: what was once a very famous short film shown to

1030
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 3: every American who occupied Japan, which was actually written by

1031
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:24,360
Speaker 3: Theodore Gaisel, who later became doctor Seuss Doctor I love

1032
00:58:24,440 --> 00:58:27,680
Speaker 3: that film. So then he was he wrote this basic,

1033
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:31,560
Speaker 3: this film of indoctrinating the US soldiers to come into Japan.

1034
00:58:31,600 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 3: The one thing you need to do is show them

1035
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,880
Speaker 3: our way of life. Show them are the way we

1036
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 3: live and the way we act and so forth. So

1037
00:58:39,360 --> 00:58:43,280
Speaker 3: there was a lot of Americans, you know, playing, trying

1038
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 3: to play sports or getting the Japanese engaged in sports

1039
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 3: and show them that.

1040
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: We were trying to westernize Japan at that point.

1041
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 3: Absolutely in fact, that they have have some things in

1042
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 3: the film about about three months after the Atomic Bowl,

1043
00:58:57,200 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 3: they the military sponsored a miss Atomic Bomb beauty pageant

1044
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 3: and they had.

1045
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: This is the most more stomach if it could be

1046
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: more stomach turning, it's the fact that they had a

1047
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:10,320
Speaker 1: beauty contest called.

1048
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:14,920
Speaker 3: Miss Atomic right, I mean, wow, So and the jet

1049
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 3: for Japanese girls, and you know, and some of them

1050
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:20,120
Speaker 3: mostly I imagine most of them were widows maybe, but anyway,

1051
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:23,040
Speaker 3: they so it was a real it was a beauty

1052
00:59:23,040 --> 00:59:25,960
Speaker 3: pageant in Nagasaki. That's all you can say. But so

1053
00:59:26,040 --> 00:59:29,640
Speaker 3: there was something let's show them. Of course, baseball had

1054
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 3: the big in Japan for about twenty five years, but

1055
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:36,320
Speaker 3: they didn't know football, so this was this is football,

1056
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:40,920
Speaker 3: another very American thing. I think there was a bit

1057
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 3: someone was quoted as saying, you know, we didn't want

1058
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 3: to celebrate the use of the bomb, but we also

1059
00:59:47,160 --> 00:59:51,480
Speaker 3: remembered that so many of our fellow soldiers' friends had

1060
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 3: died and they were not able to be here, and

1061
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:57,520
Speaker 3: so the game in a way was paid as a

1062
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:01,800
Speaker 3: tribute to the fallen soldiers who didn't make it to

1063
01:00:03,040 --> 01:00:06,920
Speaker 3: make it to Japan. And I think there's also.

1064
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:08,840
Speaker 1: There was it meant for the Japanese that I got

1065
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: the impression that it was not intended for a Japanese audience.

1066
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:13,960
Speaker 1: The game is so it's hard.

1067
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 3: To say because say, I mean, very few attended. Obviously,

1068
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 3: although there was in the I've never seen photos to

1069
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 3: prove it. I mean there was. We do have photos

1070
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:27,000
Speaker 3: of a marching band. They had a marine marching band there.

1071
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,680
Speaker 3: But they had promised Japanese cheerleaders, Japanese girl cheerleaders, as

1072
01:00:31,720 --> 01:00:34,440
Speaker 3: they said, so they had planned I don't know if

1073
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 3: it actually happened, but the plans for the game included

1074
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:39,600
Speaker 3: recruiting Japanese girl.

1075
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:40,640
Speaker 1: Cheerleaders for the game.

1076
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 3: So, but in terms of a Japanese audio or fifteen

1077
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:50,520
Speaker 3: hundred or more soldiers that filled the bleachers and very

1078
01:00:50,520 --> 01:00:53,240
Speaker 3: little evidence of Japanese and attendant. So it wasn't like,

1079
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:57,080
Speaker 3: you know, asking the Japanese and maybe they were invited

1080
01:00:57,080 --> 01:00:58,040
Speaker 3: and very few attended.

1081
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:13,600
Speaker 1: Was this something that Washington knew about? You know? Was

1082
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 1: this like or was this a a sort of an

1083
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:19,760
Speaker 1: idea that was conjured up by the commander in Nagasaki.

1084
01:01:20,040 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I don't have the I couldn't get a

1085
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:24,520
Speaker 3: paper trail on that. I got a paper trail and

1086
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:27,320
Speaker 3: a lot of things. I've got the movie has footage

1087
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:30,080
Speaker 3: and dozens of photos that have never been published before.

1088
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 3: They were found by my my research team and deep

1089
01:01:33,280 --> 01:01:39,680
Speaker 3: in the archives. But but in terms of an order

1090
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 3: coming from Washington, no, it was. It came from the

1091
01:01:42,320 --> 01:01:48,760
Speaker 3: commander of the massive occupying forces in the Nagasaki region.

1092
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:51,680
Speaker 1: And so.

1093
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:55,440
Speaker 3: We don't know if the Pentagon ordered it.

1094
01:01:56,160 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 1: I doubt if Truman ordered it.

1095
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:01,800
Speaker 3: But I don't know who was the who had the

1096
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 3: brainstorm exactly to do this. Did you? Did the players

1097
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:12,400
Speaker 3: later in life reflect on it. No, that's the thing

1098
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:15,760
Speaker 3: that again, that's where the you kind of have to

1099
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 3: speculate on why this ended.

1100
01:02:17,840 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: Up in a dark hole in history.

1101
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 3: The players and I talked to the sons and daughters

1102
01:02:22,840 --> 01:02:25,960
Speaker 3: of several players. He tracked down a lot survived, Yeah,

1103
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 3: tracked down people. None of them ever heard their father.

1104
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 3: It was one of those stories that Grandpa or dad

1105
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 3: didn't talk about. I mean, as they never talked to

1106
01:02:36,280 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 3: They wouldn't have known if.

1107
01:02:39,480 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 1: You were telling them the story for the first time.

1108
01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:44,040
Speaker 3: Well not in most most cases, had they had some

1109
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:46,920
Speaker 3: they'd heard about it in some way. Okay, but you

1110
01:02:46,920 --> 01:02:51,960
Speaker 3: know one one uh one fellow I like particularly was

1111
01:02:52,040 --> 01:02:56,560
Speaker 3: the son of Angelo Bertelli, who never is a never

1112
01:02:57,040 --> 01:02:59,160
Speaker 3: heard one word from his father's father lived till he

1113
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:01,720
Speaker 3: was eighty or something like that, never heard one word

1114
01:03:01,760 --> 01:03:04,120
Speaker 3: from it, and the anyway, his son is just an

1115
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:08,760
Speaker 3: interesting sidelight, is Robert Bertelli, who has changed his name

1116
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:11,919
Speaker 3: to bob Bert and was a founding drummer of Sonic Youth,

1117
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:16,280
Speaker 3: the influential rock group of the nineteen So is bob

1118
01:03:16,360 --> 01:03:17,840
Speaker 3: Bert still in touch with him?

1119
01:03:17,880 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: By the way Sonic Youth? I mean, yeah, I'm just saying,

1120
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: you know who knows.

1121
01:03:21,560 --> 01:03:24,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, he loves the film. He thinks it's fantastic. All

1122
01:03:24,320 --> 01:03:27,120
Speaker 3: the children I've talked to love the film. I was

1123
01:03:27,160 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 3: frankly a little nervous that they might say, well, you're

1124
01:03:30,800 --> 01:03:33,240
Speaker 3: in a way, are you're criticizing the players or you know,

1125
01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 3: the players who took part, and they're not getting that

1126
01:03:35,320 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 3: at all. They are outraged by the fact that they were,

1127
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 3: you know, forced to play in this.

1128
01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:42,320
Speaker 1: Again, what kind of you they were props? Yes, exactly, exactly.

1129
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:45,640
Speaker 3: So. I actually the feedback from the children of the

1130
01:03:45,720 --> 01:03:49,560
Speaker 3: players and the others others who organized the game has been,

1131
01:03:49,640 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 3: you know, very very positive.

1132
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:53,440
Speaker 1: Any official feedback from anybody at the Pentagon.

1133
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 3: No, not not really. Like I said, this is, uh,

1134
01:03:58,720 --> 01:04:01,280
Speaker 3: you know, kind of a arc story, I think. I mean,

1135
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 3: the film I think is very lively. It's it's fifty

1136
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:04,440
Speaker 3: three minutes.

1137
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:07,320
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I look, it's as I think it's a good,

1138
01:04:07,840 --> 01:04:08,320
Speaker 1: good watch.

1139
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:11,440
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the book, you know, the book is very concise.

1140
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 3: So it's it's not it's it's not the it's not

1141
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 3: Doom and Gloom in the sense that every page is

1142
01:04:19,480 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 3: just dripping with horror.

1143
01:04:20,840 --> 01:04:21,000
Speaker 4: You know.

1144
01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 3: It's basically tells the story of you know, the US

1145
01:04:24,800 --> 01:04:27,960
Speaker 3: forces occupying and coming in, what the what they were doing,

1146
01:04:28,600 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 3: how it led to this game, what happened in the

1147
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:34,479
Speaker 3: game itself, which has never come out, what happened after

1148
01:04:34,680 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 3: the aftermath, what happened to some of the people, and

1149
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:40,240
Speaker 3: then the the the final third is about what has

1150
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:43,640
Speaker 3: happened in the US with nuclear weapons and the dangers

1151
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:47,040
Speaker 3: and threats and what it's and today and the you know,

1152
01:04:47,200 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 3: the mass the killing of civilians, and the warst today

1153
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 3: and the coming of AI and all all these things

1154
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:59,560
Speaker 3: that the arguably the Nagasaki bomb has contributed to h

1155
01:05:00,160 --> 01:05:01,280
Speaker 3: to what's happening today.

1156
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:04,480
Speaker 1: You know, There's always been this thesis that if you

1157
01:05:04,600 --> 01:05:08,439
Speaker 1: have a memory of that, if you know, the more

1158
01:05:09,080 --> 01:05:12,280
Speaker 1: visual the memory is of something like that, the less

1159
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:15,640
Speaker 1: likely you'll want to repeat it. The more you memory

1160
01:05:15,720 --> 01:05:20,200
Speaker 1: hold something, the more likely said bad event may happen again, right,

1161
01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: you know, we we you know that there's a reason

1162
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 1: why the Holocaust is something we try to put on

1163
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 1: the front burner, right because we want to make sure

1164
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:32,360
Speaker 1: that as a society, as a civilization, we know the

1165
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:34,240
Speaker 1: warning signs and we don't let like you know, we

1166
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: don't want something like that to happen again. And it

1167
01:05:37,160 --> 01:05:39,520
Speaker 1: is interesting that you just I mean, just look at

1168
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: how much effort is put into never forget, yeah, and

1169
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:45,720
Speaker 1: look at how much effort is putting into forgetting what

1170
01:05:45,880 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 1: happened in Japan.

1171
01:05:47,040 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 3: Well, you know, of course we unlike with the Holocaust,

1172
01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 3: the US was not the principal player and causing that

1173
01:05:55,960 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 3: or any player in it, right except not maybe trying

1174
01:05:59,080 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 3: to bomb the rail lines and things like that. Of course,

1175
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 3: using an atomic bomb was our decision. So it's a

1176
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:09,160
Speaker 3: it is a that's understandable in that. But you know,

1177
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:11,200
Speaker 3: you mentioned the visuals, and I think that that was

1178
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:12,760
Speaker 3: a real turning point for me, and the value of

1179
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:14,960
Speaker 3: going to Hirosia and Nagasaki was you get up there,

1180
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 3: you stand on a hill and you look down and

1181
01:06:17,320 --> 01:06:19,560
Speaker 3: you can look at the modern city and still okay,

1182
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:22,360
Speaker 3: from there to there, you see the wound you was

1183
01:06:22,480 --> 01:06:27,200
Speaker 3: wiped out with one bomb, and then you also recognize

1184
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:29,560
Speaker 3: that the hydrogen bomb was you know, a thousand times

1185
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 3: greater and today's It helps you imagine, you know, Boston

1186
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:40,480
Speaker 3: or New York City or Chicago just completely wiped out

1187
01:06:40,520 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 3: by one bomb. But when you see it in person,

1188
01:06:44,640 --> 01:06:48,000
Speaker 3: looking down at a you know, a valley or a bowl,

1189
01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:52,919
Speaker 3: knowing that it was completely wiped out deliberately with one bomb,

1190
01:06:53,160 --> 01:06:57,080
Speaker 3: it's something you do remember, you know, forty years later.

1191
01:06:57,160 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 1: In my case, is there a have younnnected with Japanese peers?

1192
01:07:03,240 --> 01:07:05,640
Speaker 1: You know that are historians that have dug into this

1193
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:06,320
Speaker 1: and and.

1194
01:07:08,360 --> 01:07:08,680
Speaker 3: It is.

1195
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: Is there a robust sort of community that continues to

1196
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: want to write about what happened there? Or is or

1197
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:22,160
Speaker 1: is that sort of under the rug? Is that is that?

1198
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:26,800
Speaker 1: Is there not a big community of Japanese authors and historians.

1199
01:07:27,640 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 3: There's always been a community. I don't think it's it's

1200
01:07:29,880 --> 01:07:34,040
Speaker 3: very robust and hasn't been. I mean, my previous book

1201
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 3: in film, which was called Atomic Cover Up, which you

1202
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:42,360
Speaker 3: could also find on PBS, was just translated last year

1203
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:46,440
Speaker 3: into Japanese. There was some need to cover this. They

1204
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:50,920
Speaker 3: have my book translated into Japanese, so that may indicate something.

1205
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:53,480
Speaker 3: But you know, as you said, I think they did.

1206
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:58,120
Speaker 3: The Japanese, at least the elites there in the media,

1207
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:00,240
Speaker 3: they also they they I mean they cover are this

1208
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 3: especially the anniversaries. You know, it's not that they don't

1209
01:08:03,920 --> 01:08:07,440
Speaker 3: cover it and haven't covered it, but you know, the

1210
01:08:07,560 --> 01:08:11,080
Speaker 3: issue was covered up by the US for so many

1211
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 3: decades film footage and other things, and the Japanese kind

1212
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:16,240
Speaker 3: of then had to catch up.

1213
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 1: Who monitors the health? Does the Japanese monitor the health

1214
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:23,040
Speaker 1: of those of those two cities to this day? Does

1215
01:08:23,120 --> 01:08:26,200
Speaker 1: it monitor radiation levels? Is it still an issue? I mean,

1216
01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:28,200
Speaker 1: you know, we've been told the half life of this

1217
01:08:28,240 --> 01:08:32,160
Speaker 1: stuff is millions and millions of years. I mean, would

1218
01:08:32,200 --> 01:08:35,280
Speaker 1: you live in Hiroshamar Nagasaki today, would you drink the

1219
01:08:35,400 --> 01:08:35,960
Speaker 1: drinking water?

1220
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:41,280
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good question, But no, they monitored it. They monitored

1221
01:08:41,320 --> 01:08:43,280
Speaker 3: it pretty closely for deca and I think they still do.

1222
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:45,920
Speaker 3: They had some sort of report just last week, a

1223
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:49,600
Speaker 3: report how many survivors there are now, how many are

1224
01:08:49,640 --> 01:08:53,400
Speaker 3: still alive from them, and they've they've tracked them, and

1225
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 3: of course they're they're children and birth defects and things

1226
01:08:57,520 --> 01:08:59,680
Speaker 3: like that, so I can say they tracked it. But

1227
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:02,400
Speaker 3: I mean, I wanted to mention. One other thing I'm

1228
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:05,120
Speaker 3: talking about things that have come out recently, was that

1229
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 3: there was a very interesting poll last week from Pew

1230
01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:15,920
Speaker 3: Pere Survey. You know, in the past, the poles have

1231
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,680
Speaker 3: always found that a majority, maybe a slim majority, but

1232
01:09:19,760 --> 01:09:23,760
Speaker 3: a majority of Americans have always supported the use of

1233
01:09:23,760 --> 01:09:26,160
Speaker 3: the bomb against the oceanwall. They never asked about Nagazaki.

1234
01:09:26,200 --> 01:09:29,760
Speaker 3: I've never seen a poll, so you've always had fifty

1235
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:33,200
Speaker 3: four percent or fifty eight percent or whatever. So peugh

1236
01:09:33,280 --> 01:09:35,479
Speaker 3: finally did a new poll last last week, or reasoned

1237
01:09:35,560 --> 01:09:37,320
Speaker 3: last week. I found that now it was down to

1238
01:09:38,040 --> 01:09:41,840
Speaker 3: pretty much an even split, around thirty five percent, thirty percent,

1239
01:09:42,479 --> 01:09:44,800
Speaker 3: you know, thirty percent saying they don't they don't have

1240
01:09:44,840 --> 01:09:47,120
Speaker 3: an opinion or they don't know. And then they broke

1241
01:09:47,200 --> 01:09:50,679
Speaker 3: it down to gender. Women much much more opposed, younger

1242
01:09:50,760 --> 01:09:53,559
Speaker 3: people much much more opposed. So I don't know if

1243
01:09:53,600 --> 01:09:59,400
Speaker 3: we're reaching this generational point where you know, the people

1244
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:01,760
Speaker 3: are taking a fresh look or or have never taken

1245
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:05,680
Speaker 3: a look at the atomic bombing, and so they you know,

1246
01:10:06,560 --> 01:10:07,639
Speaker 3: they don't really have an opin.

1247
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:09,240
Speaker 1: They don't know about it. So that Greg, I'm gonna

1248
01:10:09,280 --> 01:10:10,880
Speaker 1: make us feel young. Both you and I were born

1249
01:10:10,960 --> 01:10:13,880
Speaker 1: after those bombs were dropped. Oh absolutely, you know so,

1250
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 1: And I wonder, I wonder does it become easier to

1251
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:21,880
Speaker 1: tell our elders they were wrong after they're buried.

1252
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:28,400
Speaker 3: Well, that's I mean, the dominant narrative of Hiroshima has

1253
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:31,599
Speaker 3: always been and again you could do a whole three

1254
01:10:31,640 --> 01:10:33,439
Speaker 3: separate programs on this, but it was like, you know

1255
01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:36,760
Speaker 3: that we that the bombs actually saved a million American liveser.

1256
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:39,960
Speaker 1: That was That's been the right, It's always been definitely

1257
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:40,599
Speaker 1: going to have played.

1258
01:10:40,600 --> 01:10:42,559
Speaker 3: It was definitely going to happen, and my father would

1259
01:10:42,560 --> 01:10:46,360
Speaker 3: have died or my grandfather or whatever, and very understandable

1260
01:10:47,000 --> 01:10:49,519
Speaker 3: and and certainly a factor that has to be considered.

1261
01:10:49,560 --> 01:10:51,280
Speaker 3: On the other hand, there's a lot of reasons to

1262
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:54,640
Speaker 3: you know, to counter that. But but the fact is

1263
01:10:54,840 --> 01:10:57,080
Speaker 3: is that a great deal the narrative has been this

1264
01:10:57,240 --> 01:11:01,920
Speaker 3: personal family history almost uh. And now of course that's

1265
01:11:02,439 --> 01:11:05,840
Speaker 3: ending and I say, you have a clean slate, but

1266
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:08,920
Speaker 3: it's much more, it's much easier to look at the just.

1267
01:11:09,240 --> 01:11:12,000
Speaker 1: I would call it a dispassionate slate, not necessarily slate.

1268
01:11:12,280 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 1: But you don't have that your own because look, I

1269
01:11:14,600 --> 01:11:16,760
Speaker 1: heard this I had I had a grandfather that served

1270
01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:19,960
Speaker 1: in Europe and his brother was in was in the Pacific,

1271
01:11:20,680 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 1: and boy, they the debate about which was the worst

1272
01:11:25,439 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 1: place to be at Warren, you know, what was the

1273
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:30,519
Speaker 1: tougher assignment would be a debate that they would have

1274
01:11:30,760 --> 01:11:33,280
Speaker 1: that I vaguely remember, I'm, you know, going to sit

1275
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 1: here or not, but you know, it is. It is

1276
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:41,880
Speaker 1: interesting to me that it even in my own family,

1277
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:45,240
Speaker 1: the European theater was was the if it was if

1278
01:11:45,280 --> 01:11:48,200
Speaker 1: it was talked about about our families who served, it

1279
01:11:48,280 --> 01:11:51,840
Speaker 1: was always on the European side, like the Pacific side

1280
01:11:51,880 --> 01:11:53,400
Speaker 1: was always the oh and the Pacific.

1281
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:56,800
Speaker 3: You know, well, well, how many listeners out there have

1282
01:11:56,920 --> 01:11:59,439
Speaker 3: ever heard a story of a relative or anyone else

1283
01:11:59,479 --> 01:12:04,559
Speaker 3: who was in occupied Japan or was specifically in Hirosham

1284
01:12:04,640 --> 01:12:06,519
Speaker 3: or in Nagasaki. There are hundreds of thousands of there.

1285
01:12:06,640 --> 01:12:09,479
Speaker 3: Why haven't we heard their story. Why, I you know,

1286
01:12:10,320 --> 01:12:12,840
Speaker 3: my film is a revelation for so many Why is

1287
01:12:12,920 --> 01:12:13,799
Speaker 3: it such a revelation.

1288
01:12:14,200 --> 01:12:14,560
Speaker 1: Why is it?

1289
01:12:14,880 --> 01:12:17,560
Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah, we occupied those two cities, so I

1290
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:20,519
Speaker 3: guess I guess we had to. I didn't know that.

1291
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:23,280
Speaker 3: And why were the soldiers allowed to go into those

1292
01:12:23,320 --> 01:12:26,960
Speaker 3: cities so quickly after the bomb? And then of course

1293
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:30,120
Speaker 3: why would they have a football game, you know, on Nagasaki.

1294
01:12:30,240 --> 01:12:33,960
Speaker 3: But you know the fact that this seems like a

1295
01:12:34,120 --> 01:12:39,799
Speaker 3: really fresh, new, untold story that's kind of more shocking

1296
01:12:39,880 --> 01:12:41,920
Speaker 3: than anything after eighty years, you know.

1297
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:45,559
Speaker 1: But you just you pointed out the key factor here,

1298
01:12:45,680 --> 01:12:50,560
Speaker 1: this was, you know, when do we not when do

1299
01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:54,040
Speaker 1: we have less information about our own history when our

1300
01:12:54,080 --> 01:12:57,280
Speaker 1: own government when it's when it's a potential criticism of

1301
01:12:57,320 --> 01:13:00,840
Speaker 1: our own government's decision, right like those things. You know,

1302
01:13:01,040 --> 01:13:03,160
Speaker 1: I have a feeling we're going to continue to discover

1303
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:05,559
Speaker 1: more things about our decision making on the Vietnam War

1304
01:13:05,600 --> 01:13:08,680
Speaker 1: for another twenty years. Yeah, because so much gets suppressed

1305
01:13:08,760 --> 01:13:12,000
Speaker 1: and because we're there's an embarrassment level, right, There's all

1306
01:13:12,080 --> 01:13:16,000
Speaker 1: sorts of reasons you know for that. And so I

1307
01:13:16,080 --> 01:13:19,680
Speaker 1: think now with some distance, you certainly I think you know,

1308
01:13:20,240 --> 01:13:23,400
Speaker 1: and this is what's difficult as an historian. You don't

1309
01:13:23,600 --> 01:13:28,400
Speaker 1: know for sure all because so little there was so

1310
01:13:28,520 --> 01:13:31,439
Speaker 1: little uh first hand account. Right, we don't know why

1311
01:13:31,920 --> 01:13:34,439
Speaker 1: they buried it, but we can speculate as to why.

1312
01:13:35,120 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 3: Well, you just anything it's varied, you have to ask why,

1313
01:13:37,439 --> 01:13:38,960
Speaker 3: you know, sort of like if it was if it

1314
01:13:39,040 --> 01:13:42,400
Speaker 3: was such a clear cut decision, if it was such

1315
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:45,200
Speaker 3: if it really was the only thing that could end

1316
01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:48,640
Speaker 3: the war, et cetera, et cetera, why not then have

1317
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:52,479
Speaker 3: it wide open? But you know, so, yeah, I get

1318
01:13:52,520 --> 01:13:56,639
Speaker 3: suspicious once when anything gets buried. I get whether it's

1319
01:13:56,640 --> 01:13:58,680
Speaker 3: any any subject. You know, you said, well, why was

1320
01:13:58,720 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 3: it buried?

1321
01:13:59,240 --> 01:14:01,240
Speaker 1: Why was it hidden? It's such a if it's such

1322
01:14:01,240 --> 01:14:01,720
Speaker 1: a good thing.

1323
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:02,720
Speaker 3: Uh.

1324
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:05,800
Speaker 1: We're talking on August fifth, and that one of the

1325
01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:08,800
Speaker 1: interesting headlines of the day that caught my eye before

1326
01:14:08,840 --> 01:14:13,719
Speaker 1: I was interviewing you, was the acting administrator of NASA because,

1327
01:14:13,760 --> 01:14:15,519
Speaker 1: of course, in the Trump administration.

1328
01:14:15,600 --> 01:14:16,800
Speaker 3: Nuclear reactor on the moon.

1329
01:14:16,960 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 1: Is that nuclear reactor on the moon. What's your initial

1330
01:14:20,000 --> 01:14:22,439
Speaker 1: reaction to a reactor on the moon.

1331
01:14:23,040 --> 01:14:25,120
Speaker 3: Well, number one, I probably won't live to see it.

1332
01:14:25,760 --> 01:14:31,080
Speaker 3: That I guess that's a positive. But yeah, you know,

1333
01:14:31,160 --> 01:14:34,840
Speaker 3: there's enough debate over nuclear power plants in the US,

1334
01:14:36,200 --> 01:14:40,400
Speaker 3: dangers of nuclear power plants in the US, the nuclear

1335
01:14:40,479 --> 01:14:44,880
Speaker 3: waste that's still out there buried around the US. So

1336
01:14:45,280 --> 01:14:47,240
Speaker 3: there's plenty of those things to worry about. So I

1337
01:14:47,360 --> 01:14:49,559
Speaker 3: don't know, a nuclear reactor on the Moon. I guess

1338
01:14:49,600 --> 01:14:51,880
Speaker 3: it's a good warning and st I mean what I mean,

1339
01:14:51,920 --> 01:14:54,679
Speaker 3: what is the you know the nuclear energy debate?

1340
01:14:54,920 --> 01:14:58,120
Speaker 1: Right? It is clean, but it had but nobody wants

1341
01:14:58,160 --> 01:15:03,320
Speaker 1: the radioactive waste in their backyard, you know, are we do?

1342
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:05,920
Speaker 1: You think the science just isn't there yet, and until

1343
01:15:05,960 --> 01:15:09,400
Speaker 1: we can figure out how to do this without creating

1344
01:15:10,080 --> 01:15:13,760
Speaker 1: the excess waste, that it might be too whiskey. I mean,

1345
01:15:13,840 --> 01:15:15,360
Speaker 1: you've spent a lot of time on this issue, so

1346
01:15:15,640 --> 01:15:17,439
Speaker 1: you know, I know you're not a scientist first, but

1347
01:15:18,560 --> 01:15:21,040
Speaker 1: curious what you've what you've learned over the years from

1348
01:15:21,080 --> 01:15:21,800
Speaker 1: the experts on this.

1349
01:15:22,400 --> 01:15:26,160
Speaker 3: Well, it's just and I mean, the the probably the

1350
01:15:26,280 --> 01:15:30,960
Speaker 3: leading argument now is as you mentioned clean. Just in

1351
01:15:31,080 --> 01:15:35,320
Speaker 3: terms of how do we combat global warming, well, one

1352
01:15:35,360 --> 01:15:38,200
Speaker 3: way is to use more nuclear and less coal and other.

1353
01:15:38,439 --> 01:15:38,639
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1354
01:15:39,120 --> 01:15:41,640
Speaker 3: Okay, now, of course, if you want to say use

1355
01:15:41,680 --> 01:15:43,720
Speaker 3: more nuclear, you should also be one thousand percent in

1356
01:15:43,800 --> 01:15:47,120
Speaker 3: favor of more wind and more solar and absolutely, so

1357
01:15:47,280 --> 01:15:50,200
Speaker 3: there's no consistency. We're going to do an all out

1358
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:54,240
Speaker 3: push the US and around the world to put to

1359
01:15:54,360 --> 01:15:56,639
Speaker 3: forestall this. So we are going to get a little

1360
01:15:56,640 --> 01:15:58,200
Speaker 3: more nuclear, We're going to have wind and so.

1361
01:15:58,400 --> 01:16:01,400
Speaker 1: But of course, describing Obama, that was Obama's actual policy,

1362
01:16:01,439 --> 01:16:03,920
Speaker 1: which is why he greenlit the first nuclear power plant

1363
01:16:03,960 --> 01:16:05,479
Speaker 1: to be built in thirty years. Right.

1364
01:16:05,720 --> 01:16:08,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, But there's no coherence, there's all the hypocrisy and

1365
01:16:08,840 --> 01:16:11,599
Speaker 3: everything else. So I would say, you know, everyone loves

1366
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:14,240
Speaker 3: nuclear power until there's a Chernobyl or a three mile

1367
01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:17,280
Speaker 3: island or a near fukush or fucush. Yeah, yeah, near

1368
01:16:17,439 --> 01:16:21,640
Speaker 3: miss something. Oh we we barely miss that. And you

1369
01:16:21,720 --> 01:16:26,080
Speaker 3: know we may see that with AI now, you know,

1370
01:16:26,840 --> 01:16:32,040
Speaker 3: you know, as I mentioned, the lessons of Nagasaki include

1371
01:16:32,120 --> 01:16:35,120
Speaker 3: being more automated or having someone take over from the

1372
01:16:35,200 --> 01:16:40,760
Speaker 3: president in a way in encouraging you know, AI supposedly

1373
01:16:42,240 --> 01:16:44,840
Speaker 3: can it's not it's in all the nuclear systems now.

1374
01:16:44,880 --> 01:16:48,559
Speaker 3: But supposedly it cannot launch a strike on its own

1375
01:16:48,840 --> 01:16:52,000
Speaker 3: like a rogue AI. But it will it will filter

1376
01:16:52,200 --> 01:16:55,799
Speaker 3: all the information to a president or a national security

1377
01:16:55,880 --> 01:17:00,200
Speaker 3: team and that's that's very dangerous. And so you know,

1378
01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:03,240
Speaker 3: we'll see. But I know they say in the film

1379
01:17:03,280 --> 01:17:07,479
Speaker 3: it kind of all started with Nagasaki and uh, so

1380
01:17:07,880 --> 01:17:10,080
Speaker 3: you know, we'll see what happens with with ai As

1381
01:17:10,080 --> 01:17:10,599
Speaker 3: in the future.

1382
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:14,960
Speaker 1: Here, I actually want to unpack a moment from the

1383
01:17:15,040 --> 01:17:18,920
Speaker 1: movie Oppenheimer, which is a moment that Kai Bird's book

1384
01:17:20,160 --> 01:17:24,439
Speaker 1: doesn't have a definitive answer to and has been speculated upon.

1385
01:17:24,680 --> 01:17:26,479
Speaker 1: And I know you have an opinion on this, which

1386
01:17:26,520 --> 01:17:30,840
Speaker 1: is when when Oppenheimer went to Truman to try to

1387
01:17:31,320 --> 01:17:35,640
Speaker 1: he didn't want to used right. What what was you know,

1388
01:17:36,800 --> 01:17:40,639
Speaker 1: what do you think was said in that Oval Office meeting? Well,

1389
01:17:40,680 --> 01:17:41,000
Speaker 1: you know, of.

1390
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:44,320
Speaker 3: Course it was after the bombing. Omber was was already

1391
01:17:44,680 --> 01:17:49,479
Speaker 3: nervous about building bigger bombs. You know, Uh, the hydrogen

1392
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:51,479
Speaker 3: bomb was already discussed. I mean people, people know the

1393
01:17:51,560 --> 01:17:54,479
Speaker 3: hydrogen bomb didn't appear right away, but it was already

1394
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:57,560
Speaker 3: on the on the drawing boards, you might say. And

1395
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:02,840
Speaker 3: so you know, the the story was Truman went in

1396
01:18:02,920 --> 01:18:04,840
Speaker 3: there up and every went in and wrung his hands

1397
01:18:04,880 --> 01:18:07,519
Speaker 3: and said, I had blood on my hands there very

1398
01:18:07,680 --> 01:18:12,639
Speaker 3: Nixon supposedly says, no, I have, so either Truman said

1399
01:18:12,680 --> 01:18:15,880
Speaker 3: almost nothing, or he waved handkerchief and offered it to him.

1400
01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:17,479
Speaker 3: This is wildly different story.

1401
01:18:17,600 --> 01:18:20,200
Speaker 1: So well, that's what I mean. It's so different that

1402
01:18:20,320 --> 01:18:23,479
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, was Truman an asshole here or

1403
01:18:23,680 --> 01:18:25,040
Speaker 1: was the empathetic.

1404
01:18:24,640 --> 01:18:28,200
Speaker 3: Right, like I mean, I think I mean Oppenheimer, as

1405
01:18:28,280 --> 01:18:31,720
Speaker 3: you know from the film very well, Oppenheimer was a

1406
01:18:31,880 --> 01:18:35,439
Speaker 3: complex character, and I think he could feel different things after,

1407
01:18:35,720 --> 01:18:39,160
Speaker 3: especially after Nagasaki, which he was horrified by, which I

1408
01:18:39,240 --> 01:18:43,080
Speaker 3: also show in the film that he he could both

1409
01:18:43,160 --> 01:18:45,559
Speaker 3: feel kind of guilty and you know, what have we done?

1410
01:18:45,640 --> 01:18:47,920
Speaker 3: And also feel well, I was pretty proud of what

1411
01:18:48,040 --> 01:18:51,640
Speaker 3: we did. And he kept being put on committees to

1412
01:18:51,880 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 3: help manage the bomb after and he kind of happily

1413
01:18:56,080 --> 01:18:59,280
Speaker 3: served on them, and then he wasn't so happily serving

1414
01:18:59,360 --> 01:19:03,840
Speaker 3: on them, And so I mean, he was a complex character.

1415
01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:06,080
Speaker 3: So I think sometimes you look for a single answer

1416
01:19:06,160 --> 01:19:09,920
Speaker 3: on Oppenheimer. He was racked with guilt for the rest

1417
01:19:09,960 --> 01:19:13,519
Speaker 3: of his life, or he was mainly proud of the

1418
01:19:13,560 --> 01:19:17,000
Speaker 3: scientific achievement and was paying possible both.

1419
01:19:16,880 --> 01:19:19,200
Speaker 4: Things could be true, That's right, depending on the mood

1420
01:19:19,240 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 4: he was in. Right with him, Yeah, absolutely so, But yeah,

1421
01:19:25,760 --> 01:19:28,200
Speaker 4: I mean that's I mean again, you could say that's symbolic.

1422
01:19:28,360 --> 01:19:31,599
Speaker 4: But but you know, as the film shows Oppenheimer did

1423
01:19:32,120 --> 01:19:33,240
Speaker 4: with a lot of the scientists.

1424
01:19:33,240 --> 01:19:35,639
Speaker 3: Now I've known this for years. This wasn't a new revelation,

1425
01:19:35,800 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 3: but there were they celebrated, as you see in Oppenheimer,

1426
01:19:39,080 --> 01:19:41,720
Speaker 3: they kind of celebrated after the Irosham obombing.

1427
01:19:42,000 --> 01:19:45,280
Speaker 1: Because it worked. That's what they were celebrating, right, work,

1428
01:19:45,320 --> 01:19:46,320
Speaker 1: and you knew it killed a lot.

1429
01:19:46,240 --> 01:19:48,799
Speaker 3: Of people, but they did. Then, of course the footage

1430
01:19:48,840 --> 01:19:50,880
Speaker 3: came in taken from the air showing the whole city

1431
01:19:50,920 --> 01:19:53,599
Speaker 3: wiped out. Oh, I guess a lot of civilians must

1432
01:19:53,640 --> 01:19:58,439
Speaker 3: have died. And then Nagasaki, which they really many of

1433
01:19:58,479 --> 01:20:00,720
Speaker 3: the scientists said, oh my god, you know what.

1434
01:20:01,080 --> 01:20:04,640
Speaker 1: This What did you think of the portrayal? They that

1435
01:20:04,800 --> 01:20:08,400
Speaker 1: was the decision Nolan made right too, you know, I

1436
01:20:09,880 --> 01:20:15,080
Speaker 1: and you correct. You pointed this out first, and I

1437
01:20:15,120 --> 01:20:17,920
Speaker 1: thought it was a fair critique. And it is one

1438
01:20:17,960 --> 01:20:22,040
Speaker 1: of those like I understand, he's making a movie, Okay,

1439
01:20:22,280 --> 01:20:25,600
Speaker 1: he's centered your your you know, and and maybe you

1440
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:27,559
Speaker 1: don't want to turn audiences off, Maybe you don't want

1441
01:20:27,560 --> 01:20:29,120
Speaker 1: to make them sick to their stomach. I don't know,

1442
01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:31,960
Speaker 1: but that was a glaring missing piece.

1443
01:20:33,439 --> 01:20:38,720
Speaker 3: Well, I showed at the time, and I still do

1444
01:20:38,840 --> 01:20:43,680
Speaker 3: a daily somehow nearly daily free sub stacked newsletter.

1445
01:20:43,880 --> 01:20:47,280
Speaker 1: I'm a subscribe. By the way, you mostly lead with music,

1446
01:20:47,400 --> 01:20:50,240
Speaker 1: which I think, but uh.

1447
01:20:50,680 --> 01:20:52,400
Speaker 3: As I showed right away from there because it rang

1448
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 3: a bell to me. There was a great series in

1449
01:20:54,200 --> 01:20:58,759
Speaker 3: the early nineteen eighties on PBS called Oppenheimer. Sam Waterston

1450
01:20:58,840 --> 01:21:02,840
Speaker 3: Played Oppenheimer was a great series on PBS, and something

1451
01:21:03,040 --> 01:21:06,160
Speaker 3: I recalled from that was that in that series in PBS,

1452
01:21:06,360 --> 01:21:09,080
Speaker 3: again in a kind of a subtle way, they showed

1453
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:14,760
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer in a screening room after Roakeshaba watching the first

1454
01:21:14,800 --> 01:21:18,920
Speaker 3: footage from Roshima on the ground, showing you some victims

1455
01:21:18,960 --> 01:21:22,280
Speaker 3: and survivors. As a very quick scene, very tasteful. He's watching,

1456
01:21:22,360 --> 01:21:24,479
Speaker 3: and then they show a few seconds from what he's watching,

1457
01:21:24,840 --> 01:21:29,719
Speaker 3: and they show him getting kind of, let's say, stricken

1458
01:21:29,840 --> 01:21:32,160
Speaker 3: by what he's watching. The show a few more seconds

1459
01:21:32,200 --> 01:21:34,160
Speaker 3: from the screen and they cut back to him, and

1460
01:21:34,600 --> 01:21:36,240
Speaker 3: you know, so you kind of get at least, dude,

1461
01:21:36,240 --> 01:21:39,600
Speaker 3: it's a way to show the thirty seconds of the

1462
01:21:39,680 --> 01:21:42,760
Speaker 3: survive of the victims, the exact same scene as in

1463
01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:45,760
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer and he's in a screening room looking up at

1464
01:21:45,760 --> 01:21:50,160
Speaker 3: the screen the same angle people around him, and all

1465
01:21:50,200 --> 01:21:56,280
Speaker 3: it does is show the actor seeming to express surprise

1466
01:21:56,439 --> 01:21:58,920
Speaker 3: or shock. You never see what's on the screen at all. Now,

1467
01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:02,320
Speaker 3: some might say I was some more artistic choice made

1468
01:22:02,360 --> 01:22:05,400
Speaker 3: the point, but you know, he could have could have

1469
01:22:05,560 --> 01:22:09,040
Speaker 3: shown something there, for example, without anyone saying, oh my god,

1470
01:22:09,160 --> 01:22:15,240
Speaker 3: he's just focusing too much on the survivors. So and

1471
01:22:15,400 --> 01:22:17,040
Speaker 3: even in my film, like I said, my film Is

1472
01:22:17,120 --> 01:22:21,600
Speaker 3: Not has has footage of victims of survivors mainly, but

1473
01:22:21,720 --> 01:22:23,720
Speaker 3: it's a very very small part of the film. You

1474
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:27,880
Speaker 3: see it, it's very powerful, but most of the focus

1475
01:22:28,000 --> 01:22:29,840
Speaker 3: is on the Americans. And that's been kind of my

1476
01:22:30,040 --> 01:22:33,599
Speaker 3: from the beginning. I have focused on the American response.

1477
01:22:33,680 --> 01:22:36,320
Speaker 3: I have not focused so much on the decision right,

1478
01:22:36,520 --> 01:22:39,519
Speaker 3: not focused so much on the Japanese response or anything.

1479
01:22:39,520 --> 01:22:43,320
Speaker 3: It's really what has the American response been, because that's

1480
01:22:43,560 --> 01:22:46,040
Speaker 3: going to help dictate if we use the weapons again.

1481
01:22:46,439 --> 01:22:49,160
Speaker 3: You know, what is the lesson of Roshima Nagasaki today?

1482
01:22:49,240 --> 01:22:52,439
Speaker 3: Is there really a taboo? You know, I would argue

1483
01:22:52,479 --> 01:22:56,360
Speaker 3: there isn't a taboo because the media and many historians

1484
01:22:56,520 --> 01:23:00,200
Speaker 3: have always supported the use of the bomb, so.

1485
01:23:00,920 --> 01:23:03,880
Speaker 1: It was always under the it was always look I mean,

1486
01:23:03,920 --> 01:23:06,360
Speaker 1: I think about how I felt like I was taught it. Well,

1487
01:23:06,600 --> 01:23:11,120
Speaker 1: we did it because it would have taken We didn't

1488
01:23:11,160 --> 01:23:15,080
Speaker 1: want another D Day, like you know, list of fatalities

1489
01:23:15,160 --> 01:23:16,519
Speaker 1: going onto the shores of Japan.

1490
01:23:17,160 --> 01:23:20,040
Speaker 3: But there could be a scenario today. In fact, I

1491
01:23:20,040 --> 01:23:22,639
Speaker 3: don't know if it occurred to you, because I presume

1492
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:25,880
Speaker 3: you're probably aware that the US has had for many

1493
01:23:25,960 --> 01:23:30,439
Speaker 3: years now so called nuclear bunker busting bombs, and that's

1494
01:23:30,479 --> 01:23:32,479
Speaker 3: the big threat today in a way, is that the

1495
01:23:33,960 --> 01:23:37,439
Speaker 3: US modern it's so called modernizing our arsenal and the

1496
01:23:37,479 --> 01:23:40,800
Speaker 3: Soviets that you can make the bombs more usable, because

1497
01:23:40,840 --> 01:23:43,360
Speaker 3: it's not the idea, well, if we drop ten bombs,

1498
01:23:43,400 --> 01:23:45,680
Speaker 3: it's going to be the end of the world. Right now,

1499
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:49,080
Speaker 3: they're being made more usable to a certain precision. This

1500
01:23:49,240 --> 01:23:53,200
Speaker 3: idea that there is a precision or something the phrase

1501
01:23:53,320 --> 01:23:56,439
Speaker 3: tactical nukes, right, I don't know if it exists, but

1502
01:23:56,880 --> 01:23:58,720
Speaker 3: a lot of pretend that right now, we.

1503
01:23:58,800 --> 01:23:59,559
Speaker 1: Claim that it does.

1504
01:24:00,200 --> 01:24:02,120
Speaker 3: Right, but it certainly occurred to me, and I maybe

1505
01:24:02,240 --> 01:24:06,960
Speaker 3: just because of my obsession when Trump used the for

1506
01:24:07,120 --> 01:24:11,400
Speaker 3: the first time ever. He's thirty thousand pounds bunker busting

1507
01:24:11,680 --> 01:24:16,920
Speaker 3: conventional bombs against Iran, you know, six weeks ago now

1508
01:24:17,040 --> 01:24:21,000
Speaker 3: right always referred to as bunker busting. That if that

1509
01:24:21,120 --> 01:24:25,560
Speaker 3: hadn't worked, hadn't achieved what he wanted, would he have

1510
01:24:25,920 --> 01:24:32,559
Speaker 3: considered using nuclear bunker busters, which were more powerful? And yeah,

1511
01:24:32,600 --> 01:24:34,400
Speaker 3: I mean it's the same idea. It's bunker busting, it's

1512
01:24:34,439 --> 01:24:37,759
Speaker 3: not mushroom cloud over a city. And it certainly occurred

1513
01:24:37,760 --> 01:24:41,880
Speaker 3: to me, especially with Trump. You get frustrated Iran doesn't

1514
01:24:41,920 --> 01:24:46,400
Speaker 3: back down. Maybe Iran's buying. Yeah, I would take you

1515
01:24:47,400 --> 01:24:49,960
Speaker 3: attacks US force that was the big fear, right, ran

1516
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:52,559
Speaker 3: attack US forces in the Middle East. Okay, that doesn't

1517
01:24:52,600 --> 01:24:56,200
Speaker 3: really happen, But what if it did happen. Well, I've

1518
01:24:56,240 --> 01:25:00,120
Speaker 3: got these nuclear bunker I'll show them. So that's the

1519
01:25:00,240 --> 01:25:03,360
Speaker 3: l of I keep coming back to. Is there a

1520
01:25:03,479 --> 01:25:07,680
Speaker 3: taboo on using nuclear weapons? Well, nineteen forty five we

1521
01:25:07,840 --> 01:25:11,479
Speaker 3: used two of them and it was judged judged quite

1522
01:25:11,880 --> 01:25:14,439
Speaker 3: quite positively. And then we even had a football game

1523
01:25:14,520 --> 01:25:17,800
Speaker 3: on a killing fieve but had a football stater you know,

1524
01:25:18,880 --> 01:25:21,679
Speaker 3: Nagasaki beauty pageant. So I mean, is there a taboo

1525
01:25:21,760 --> 01:25:27,640
Speaker 3: on using nuclear weapons against the cities. You know, you know,

1526
01:25:27,880 --> 01:25:31,400
Speaker 3: a fallout, as you mentioned fallout and everything that would

1527
01:25:31,400 --> 01:25:33,599
Speaker 3: come from it, So you know, is there a taboo?

1528
01:25:34,040 --> 01:25:35,320
Speaker 3: I don't know. That's the question.

1529
01:25:35,560 --> 01:25:39,000
Speaker 1: Look, I think you made to me. You know you're

1530
01:25:39,920 --> 01:25:42,360
Speaker 1: you're a good educator, and that you're like, Okay, how

1531
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:44,680
Speaker 1: do I get more people to pay attention to an

1532
01:25:44,720 --> 01:25:47,560
Speaker 1: issue that maybe they're not paying attention to?

1533
01:25:48,400 --> 01:25:48,599
Speaker 3: Huh?

1534
01:25:49,240 --> 01:25:51,000
Speaker 1: Why don't I get people to come in on this

1535
01:25:51,320 --> 01:25:54,600
Speaker 1: weird football game decision and maybe it'll get them to

1536
01:25:54,760 --> 01:25:57,120
Speaker 1: want to learn more. I mean, this is what I

1537
01:25:57,200 --> 01:26:00,479
Speaker 1: admire about your writing, about the way you go about things.

1538
01:26:01,000 --> 01:26:03,760
Speaker 1: You don't You're not somebody that pounds your fist and

1539
01:26:03,800 --> 01:26:05,439
Speaker 1: says you need to know this. You're like, all right,

1540
01:26:05,520 --> 01:26:07,600
Speaker 1: let me come up with another way to educate you.

1541
01:26:09,120 --> 01:26:12,320
Speaker 1: It's a nice gift that you have. Well, I appreciate that,

1542
01:26:12,439 --> 01:26:17,200
Speaker 1: and I think you're probably correct, and you know, this

1543
01:26:17,360 --> 01:26:20,439
Speaker 1: is the latest example. But yeah, that's what I've kind

1544
01:26:20,479 --> 01:26:22,720
Speaker 1: of looked for. Stories that illustrate as opposed to this

1545
01:26:22,880 --> 01:26:24,240
Speaker 1: is why something's wrong, or.

1546
01:26:24,680 --> 01:26:26,640
Speaker 3: You know, get on your on.

1547
01:26:26,760 --> 01:26:28,920
Speaker 1: You lead the horse to water, you don't shove the

1548
01:26:29,000 --> 01:26:30,080
Speaker 1: water into the horse's mouth.

1549
01:26:30,160 --> 01:26:32,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope, so, I hope that's true.

1550
01:26:32,600 --> 01:26:33,880
Speaker 1: Let me get you out of here at a question

1551
01:26:33,960 --> 01:26:36,400
Speaker 1: I've always that I've been wanting to ask you. I

1552
01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:39,519
Speaker 1: could just email your direct mail a direct message you,

1553
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:42,960
Speaker 1: but let me ask you here, which is what do

1554
01:26:43,000 --> 01:26:47,760
Speaker 1: you think Upton Sinclair would be to day? What would he?

1555
01:26:48,520 --> 01:26:52,080
Speaker 1: Is there somebody in the in the political culture today

1556
01:26:52,160 --> 01:26:56,600
Speaker 1: that most resembles him? What kind of force do you

1557
01:26:56,640 --> 01:27:00,479
Speaker 1: think he would have would be politically if Upton and Claire,

1558
01:27:00,920 --> 01:27:03,120
Speaker 1: you know, we're reincarnated in twenty twenty five.

1559
01:27:03,560 --> 01:27:06,360
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a tough question because he's, you combine a

1560
01:27:06,439 --> 01:27:09,720
Speaker 3: writer and who's basically did people know about the John?

1561
01:27:09,760 --> 01:27:12,559
Speaker 3: Of course there's probably sixty percent in your audience saying, well,

1562
01:27:12,600 --> 01:27:14,519
Speaker 3: what who was? Who's Upton Sinclair?

1563
01:27:14,640 --> 01:27:16,640
Speaker 1: Wait? The junglar Is okay, yeah, No.

1564
01:27:16,720 --> 01:27:20,000
Speaker 3: No Is Sinclair. Lewis was include Lowis, he wrote The

1565
01:27:20,520 --> 01:27:25,000
Speaker 3: Morgantry And but you know Upton Sinclair to Nutschall was

1566
01:27:25,240 --> 01:27:28,560
Speaker 3: was became a very famous writer. He was a socialist,

1567
01:27:28,640 --> 01:27:32,200
Speaker 3: he was a social activist, and then he ran for

1568
01:27:32,320 --> 01:27:35,280
Speaker 3: office in this you know, as you mentioned, this incredible campaign.

1569
01:27:35,400 --> 01:27:38,040
Speaker 3: So it's hard to think of someone who combines all

1570
01:27:38,080 --> 01:27:41,559
Speaker 3: those things. Today, you know, it's like he was even

1571
01:27:41,600 --> 01:27:43,639
Speaker 3: to the left of Bernie Sanders, if you want to say,

1572
01:27:43,680 --> 01:27:46,600
Speaker 3: he's a mix of Bernie Sanders and yeah, whatever, I

1573
01:27:46,640 --> 01:27:49,679
Speaker 3: don't know who a famous novelist would be, who's pretty

1574
01:27:49,720 --> 01:27:53,960
Speaker 3: far left, who is also getting arrested in demonstrations.

1575
01:27:54,040 --> 01:27:57,240
Speaker 1: I mean, he's he was that doesn't really exist anymore, doesn't. Yeah,

1576
01:27:57,280 --> 01:27:59,439
Speaker 1: it's kind of a one off. But I guess he

1577
01:27:59,560 --> 01:28:01,880
Speaker 1: was kind of a journalists in his own right back then.

1578
01:28:01,960 --> 01:28:04,599
Speaker 1: I mean that's the way journalists. I mean, I'm interested

1579
01:28:04,640 --> 01:28:07,400
Speaker 1: in that, you know, Greg, I'm obsessed with that period

1580
01:28:07,439 --> 01:28:09,720
Speaker 1: because I think we're reliving it, right. I think the

1581
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:12,720
Speaker 1: era that Upton Sinclair his formative years are now our

1582
01:28:12,840 --> 01:28:13,479
Speaker 1: formative years.

1583
01:28:13,800 --> 01:28:13,920
Speaker 3: Right.

1584
01:28:14,080 --> 01:28:16,000
Speaker 1: You'd sort of get Gilded age. You had sort of

1585
01:28:16,040 --> 01:28:19,200
Speaker 1: a transition from the agrain economy to the industrial economy,

1586
01:28:19,240 --> 01:28:21,160
Speaker 1: and what was happening to the labor force and what

1587
01:28:21,280 --> 01:28:24,760
Speaker 1: was happening to people and and sort of and here

1588
01:28:24,800 --> 01:28:26,719
Speaker 1: we are again, and this is a different sort of moment,

1589
01:28:26,800 --> 01:28:28,599
Speaker 1: but in a similar moment. And oh, by the way,

1590
01:28:28,680 --> 01:28:32,120
Speaker 1: we also had a media that wasn't very trustworthy back then, right,

1591
01:28:32,360 --> 01:28:34,560
Speaker 1: A lot of partisan media. Well, we have a we

1592
01:28:35,120 --> 01:28:39,519
Speaker 1: have the same sort of infrastructure today. That's why I

1593
01:28:39,640 --> 01:28:41,920
Speaker 1: just think that there's a it's my way of plugging

1594
01:28:41,960 --> 01:28:45,120
Speaker 1: the book, plugging that book, and just Upton Sinclair in general,

1595
01:28:45,160 --> 01:28:49,000
Speaker 1: because I do think as you know better than most. Right,

1596
01:28:49,040 --> 01:28:51,519
Speaker 1: we know history doesn't repeat, but it off but sure runs.

1597
01:28:52,040 --> 01:28:54,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, that's right. Well let's hope we're not

1598
01:28:54,760 --> 01:28:57,280
Speaker 3: heading into another great depression and that will be even

1599
01:28:57,360 --> 01:29:00,200
Speaker 3: more although maybe we'd get a candidate like up the

1600
01:29:00,320 --> 01:29:02,439
Speaker 3: Saint Claire who would run out.

1601
01:29:02,520 --> 01:29:04,240
Speaker 1: I mean that would be my you know, well in

1602
01:29:04,360 --> 01:29:11,519
Speaker 1: many ways, right that some of the look it takes well,

1603
01:29:11,560 --> 01:29:14,120
Speaker 1: I think we know it takes sort of. Uh. I

1604
01:29:14,120 --> 01:29:16,439
Speaker 1: always say that voters eventually get it right, but sometimes

1605
01:29:16,479 --> 01:29:18,800
Speaker 1: they just need it need more time to figure it.

1606
01:29:18,800 --> 01:29:21,800
Speaker 3: Out well or get exposed to things. I think that's

1607
01:29:21,800 --> 01:29:25,360
Speaker 3: the biggest And you're you know all about this, Yeah,

1608
01:29:25,360 --> 01:29:27,479
Speaker 3: they are people do people have an open mind to

1609
01:29:27,520 --> 01:29:28,719
Speaker 3: they can even be reached.

1610
01:29:28,760 --> 01:29:30,280
Speaker 1: And that's that's my biggest fear.

1611
01:29:30,360 --> 01:29:32,280
Speaker 3: You know, you can always say there are cycles, you know,

1612
01:29:32,320 --> 01:29:34,160
Speaker 3: did anyone see Obama cover coming?

1613
01:29:34,479 --> 01:29:35,799
Speaker 1: Or even when Bill.

1614
01:29:35,640 --> 01:29:39,320
Speaker 3: Clinton got elected, it was like, wow, this is Arkansas

1615
01:29:39,400 --> 01:29:45,200
Speaker 3: Governor I menagine him getting elect right, So funny things happen.

1616
01:29:45,280 --> 01:29:48,759
Speaker 3: Of course, when Trump was elected it was not expected,

1617
01:29:49,080 --> 01:29:54,080
Speaker 3: so unexpected things can happen. But but is our landscape

1618
01:29:54,120 --> 01:29:56,479
Speaker 3: so different today that so few people are really open

1619
01:29:56,560 --> 01:29:57,640
Speaker 3: to opposing.

1620
01:29:57,880 --> 01:30:04,080
Speaker 1: Well that's the we know fact well and the algorithmic influences, right,

1621
01:30:04,240 --> 01:30:07,679
Speaker 1: is there any you know I my biggest complaint today

1622
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:11,920
Speaker 1: is it you and I don't control any distribution of information.

1623
01:30:12,080 --> 01:30:16,120
Speaker 1: It's five tech companies do. Yeah, yeah, you know are

1624
01:30:16,160 --> 01:30:17,760
Speaker 1: they going to is are they even going to know

1625
01:30:17,880 --> 01:30:19,479
Speaker 1: that you wrote this book? Are they going to know

1626
01:30:19,560 --> 01:30:22,200
Speaker 1: that you made this documentary? Right? Like? Unfortunately, you know

1627
01:30:22,840 --> 01:30:25,519
Speaker 1: that's that's an open question now and that well you

1628
01:30:25,720 --> 01:30:26,800
Speaker 1: years ago we would have said that.

1629
01:30:27,240 --> 01:30:29,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so I appreciate any talking about this.

1630
01:30:30,120 --> 01:30:31,000
Speaker 1: So I appreciate that.

1631
01:30:31,200 --> 01:30:33,600
Speaker 3: I know you do add me on and uh, you know,

1632
01:30:34,360 --> 01:30:37,560
Speaker 3: there'll be some people out there say you're interesting and

1633
01:30:37,600 --> 01:30:38,519
Speaker 3: I'm going to look into this.

1634
01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:41,200
Speaker 1: Yes, I will tell you this. You're a great follow

1635
01:30:41,240 --> 01:30:46,519
Speaker 1: on substack. You're uh and if you if if you

1636
01:30:46,600 --> 01:30:49,439
Speaker 1: want to get more of a taste of the great

1637
01:30:49,479 --> 01:30:52,080
Speaker 1: Mitchell brain, definitely subscribed to such.

1638
01:30:52,320 --> 01:30:54,519
Speaker 3: Let me just mention that the film is besides showing

1639
01:30:54,600 --> 01:30:59,840
Speaker 3: us on TBS PBS stations Yep, not every PBS station,

1640
01:31:00,040 --> 01:31:03,000
Speaker 3: but it's streaming. It's streaming on PBS and you can

1641
01:31:03,160 --> 01:31:05,200
Speaker 3: just go to PBS dot org. It's on all the

1642
01:31:05,280 --> 01:31:06,080
Speaker 3: PBS apps.

1643
01:31:06,080 --> 01:31:08,240
Speaker 5: The people who have a yeah, I have an app,

1644
01:31:08,320 --> 01:31:09,920
Speaker 5: You just go and it's there. You don't have to

1645
01:31:10,040 --> 01:31:11,760
Speaker 5: check for your local list that you can check your

1646
01:31:11,760 --> 01:31:15,280
Speaker 5: little list. You could just search Automic Bowl on the

1647
01:31:15,320 --> 01:31:17,760
Speaker 5: PBS app. You have that on your Apple TV.

1648
01:31:17,920 --> 01:31:20,000
Speaker 3: And if anyone out there can watch it today if

1649
01:31:20,040 --> 01:31:23,040
Speaker 3: they if they care, you know, buy the book or whatever.

1650
01:31:23,200 --> 01:31:26,000
Speaker 3: But it's uh, it's out for everyone. It's not a

1651
01:31:26,640 --> 01:31:29,040
Speaker 3: not something you have to look for popping up next

1652
01:31:29,160 --> 01:31:30,040
Speaker 3: week or next month.

1653
01:31:31,240 --> 01:31:35,320
Speaker 1: Well, this is the uh eightieth eightieth anniversary.

1654
01:31:35,439 --> 01:31:37,320
Speaker 5: I no, not so so.

1655
01:31:37,439 --> 01:31:40,200
Speaker 3: Here we are Greg Mitchell, congrats, great to talk with Nick.

1656
01:31:51,479 --> 01:31:54,200
Speaker 1: Look, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Greg, and

1657
01:31:54,760 --> 01:31:58,439
Speaker 1: I do recommend both of his books, but especially Tricky

1658
01:31:58,520 --> 01:32:01,200
Speaker 1: Dick and the Pink Lady. I think it is there's

1659
01:32:01,320 --> 01:32:05,080
Speaker 1: so much That book actually is a great introduction to

1660
01:32:05,240 --> 01:32:11,840
Speaker 1: the Red Scare and McCarthyism because that cycle of Senate

1661
01:32:11,920 --> 01:32:14,120
Speaker 1: races in nineteen fifty, and this is what it was.

1662
01:32:14,160 --> 01:32:17,120
Speaker 1: It was Richard Nixon's nineteen fifty Senate race is one

1663
01:32:17,200 --> 01:32:19,759
Speaker 1: of the you know, it was all across the country

1664
01:32:20,600 --> 01:32:23,840
Speaker 1: that all these red scares were happening. In my home

1665
01:32:23,920 --> 01:32:26,679
Speaker 1: state of Florida, it was Claude Pepper in a Democratic

1666
01:32:26,760 --> 01:32:30,960
Speaker 1: primary against a guy named George Smathers. Claude Pepper lost

1667
01:32:31,040 --> 01:32:36,200
Speaker 1: that Senate seat because among other attacks on him was that,

1668
01:32:36,439 --> 01:32:39,080
Speaker 1: you know, he had a sister who was a card

1669
01:32:39,160 --> 01:32:43,400
Speaker 1: carrying thespian. Yes, that misuse of words. What you heard,

1670
01:32:43,479 --> 01:32:45,320
Speaker 1: what you think you heard. He had a sister who

1671
01:32:45,400 --> 01:32:48,519
Speaker 1: was an actor, but I don't think they were using

1672
01:32:48,640 --> 01:32:52,360
Speaker 1: thespian in an attempt to try to declare an act.

1673
01:32:52,439 --> 01:32:55,519
Speaker 1: So these were it is. And that was in a

1674
01:32:55,600 --> 01:32:57,719
Speaker 1: Democratic primary back in the day. Because it was the South,

1675
01:32:57,760 --> 01:33:01,080
Speaker 1: there was really no Republican Party back then and in

1676
01:33:01,200 --> 01:33:04,439
Speaker 1: these Southern races, so the fights, the ideological fights, actually

1677
01:33:04,479 --> 01:33:08,000
Speaker 1: took place in primaries. But in California you had two

1678
01:33:08,120 --> 01:33:11,840
Speaker 1: very competitive parties back then, with the Republicans with a slight,

1679
01:33:12,000 --> 01:33:15,679
Speaker 1: slight advantage there. But it's a terrific book, an easy read,

1680
01:33:15,800 --> 01:33:18,840
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend it. But I'll tell you this.

1681
01:33:19,280 --> 01:33:22,080
Speaker 1: I hope you do. Check out the documentary itself. I mean,

1682
01:33:22,160 --> 01:33:26,200
Speaker 1: we don't we have memory hold a lot of things

1683
01:33:26,280 --> 01:33:29,680
Speaker 1: having to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and this is

1684
01:33:30,120 --> 01:33:32,600
Speaker 1: as good of a way of sort of reanimating that

1685
01:33:32,680 --> 01:33:35,760
Speaker 1: conversation that should be had. Right, There's always more to

1686
01:33:35,880 --> 01:33:40,240
Speaker 1: learn from our mistakes and our decisions. I don't want to,

1687
01:33:40,320 --> 01:33:42,760
Speaker 1: you know, some people think it was a mistakes, some don't.

1688
01:33:42,800 --> 01:33:46,560
Speaker 1: But there's always more to learn from controversial decisions we

1689
01:33:46,680 --> 01:33:49,360
Speaker 1: made in our past. All right, with that, let's do

1690
01:33:49,640 --> 01:33:56,439
Speaker 1: a few questions here, Little asked, Chuck, Ask Chuck. First

1691
01:33:56,520 --> 01:33:59,639
Speaker 1: question comes from Donovan. He says, here from PG County.

1692
01:34:00,000 --> 01:34:01,840
Speaker 1: I should probably say go Orioles, but my heart says

1693
01:34:01,920 --> 01:34:05,519
Speaker 1: go next. Of course, PG County is d C. Is

1694
01:34:05,560 --> 01:34:07,639
Speaker 1: a d C county, and it's not a Baltimore county.

1695
01:34:07,640 --> 01:34:10,760
Speaker 1: All right, but I digress. Over the past decade, red

1696
01:34:10,840 --> 01:34:13,679
Speaker 1: pill ideology, amplified by Trump and voices like Elon Musk,

1697
01:34:13,960 --> 01:34:16,519
Speaker 1: has taken hold among many young men eighteen to forty

1698
01:34:16,960 --> 01:34:19,920
Speaker 1: who feel disillusioned by shifting gender and economic dynamics. With

1699
01:34:20,000 --> 01:34:22,600
Speaker 1: women reaching new heights in education and careers, seems some

1700
01:34:22,720 --> 01:34:25,439
Speaker 1: men feel increasingly left behind and resentful. My question is

1701
01:34:25,680 --> 01:34:27,720
Speaker 1: what can Democrats do to reconnect with young men who

1702
01:34:27,760 --> 01:34:31,920
Speaker 1: feel culturally emotionally disconnected from modern progressive messaging? Donovan, this

1703
01:34:32,040 --> 01:34:35,720
Speaker 1: is I think I think that party doesn't know how

1704
01:34:35,960 --> 01:34:38,519
Speaker 1: the answer to this question yet, right, And I go back,

1705
01:34:39,160 --> 01:34:41,559
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about sort of how did the party

1706
01:34:41,640 --> 01:34:43,639
Speaker 1: get into the place it is right now with young

1707
01:34:43,720 --> 01:34:48,759
Speaker 1: men and with you know, basically with all men under fifty,

1708
01:34:48,960 --> 01:34:51,800
Speaker 1: under forty five. So it's millennial men and gen Z men,

1709
01:34:52,200 --> 01:34:53,960
Speaker 1: but in some ways it's more acute among gen Z

1710
01:34:54,120 --> 01:34:56,840
Speaker 1: men than it is millennial men right now. And I

1711
01:34:56,920 --> 01:35:00,160
Speaker 1: think you identified the issue this sort of, you know,

1712
01:35:00,200 --> 01:35:03,599
Speaker 1: I go back to an anecdote that a former producer

1713
01:35:03,680 --> 01:35:07,920
Speaker 1: of mine, I'll know, we were watching a Hillary Clinton

1714
01:35:08,000 --> 01:35:12,280
Speaker 1: rally and she was going to this is in twenty sixteen,

1715
01:35:12,320 --> 01:35:14,120
Speaker 1: and she was like, and I want the votes of

1716
01:35:14,160 --> 01:35:16,680
Speaker 1: gay Americans, and I want the votes of Black Americans,

1717
01:35:16,720 --> 01:35:18,439
Speaker 1: and I want the votes of Asian Americans, and I

1718
01:35:18,479 --> 01:35:21,559
Speaker 1: want the votes you know, went down the line. Never

1719
01:35:21,640 --> 01:35:27,040
Speaker 1: said she wanted men, just straight wide men, right, And

1720
01:35:28,479 --> 01:35:30,960
Speaker 1: he was like, well, she's not asking for my vote,

1721
01:35:31,600 --> 01:35:34,720
Speaker 1: and so that was a point he felt alienated right there.

1722
01:35:36,760 --> 01:35:40,360
Speaker 1: And I think just masculinity in general right has been

1723
01:35:41,040 --> 01:35:45,200
Speaker 1: seen as just a negative across the board, whether masculinity

1724
01:35:45,240 --> 01:35:49,560
Speaker 1: among white men, black men, as Banic men, and so

1725
01:35:49,680 --> 01:35:54,120
Speaker 1: I think with young men it's created. Look, I have

1726
01:35:54,240 --> 01:35:58,920
Speaker 1: two gen Z kids, one a daughter and a son,

1727
01:36:00,040 --> 01:36:05,000
Speaker 1: and I even see it in there where I would say,

1728
01:36:05,000 --> 01:36:06,680
Speaker 1: I don't want to say my son's been conditioned, but

1729
01:36:06,720 --> 01:36:08,320
Speaker 1: he sort of knows, well, I can't say that, or

1730
01:36:08,320 --> 01:36:11,320
Speaker 1: I can't do that, or I probably can't pursue that career.

1731
01:36:11,479 --> 01:36:13,040
Speaker 1: I won't be hired. So I'm going to pursue this.

1732
01:36:13,640 --> 01:36:15,479
Speaker 1: And it's just very he's very matter of fact about it,

1733
01:36:17,520 --> 01:36:19,080
Speaker 1: and I have no doubt that some in that same

1734
01:36:19,120 --> 01:36:22,720
Speaker 1: position would feel resentful on some of those things. So

1735
01:36:23,160 --> 01:36:27,240
Speaker 1: I do think that the Democrats somehow got so and

1736
01:36:27,360 --> 01:36:29,600
Speaker 1: I go back, it's like, did did they learn the

1737
01:36:29,720 --> 01:36:33,519
Speaker 1: wrong lesson from Barack Obama's twenty twelve success? And it

1738
01:36:33,600 --> 01:36:37,080
Speaker 1: seems as if the party decided, oh, Obama won because

1739
01:36:37,120 --> 01:36:40,120
Speaker 1: of identity politics, when actually that isn't why he won.

1740
01:36:40,680 --> 01:36:43,519
Speaker 1: But I think for a good decade they came to

1741
01:36:43,600 --> 01:36:45,800
Speaker 1: the conclusion that that's why he won, that he didn't

1742
01:36:45,800 --> 01:36:48,760
Speaker 1: win for other reasons. They didn't win because he had

1743
01:36:48,800 --> 01:36:50,599
Speaker 1: earned the trust of the country. That he didn't win

1744
01:36:50,680 --> 01:36:54,200
Speaker 1: because they thought he had, you know, sort of the

1745
01:36:54,439 --> 01:36:58,439
Speaker 1: put the put the country back on track right after

1746
01:36:58,720 --> 01:37:03,120
Speaker 1: the economic disaster that he was handed with the with

1747
01:37:03,200 --> 01:37:09,519
Speaker 1: the Great Recession. And so, you know, I wonder if

1748
01:37:09,560 --> 01:37:15,160
Speaker 1: the miss if that decision, you know, was all, well,

1749
01:37:15,240 --> 01:37:19,160
Speaker 1: let's go with the identity politics, that just what that

1750
01:37:19,320 --> 01:37:22,960
Speaker 1: did was it just sort of sidelined going after men

1751
01:37:23,280 --> 01:37:26,680
Speaker 1: generally and speaking to men generally, And in fact, they

1752
01:37:26,800 --> 01:37:29,799
Speaker 1: saw women in general as the base of the party,

1753
01:37:30,360 --> 01:37:32,720
Speaker 1: as the and in many ways they have they are

1754
01:37:32,760 --> 01:37:36,400
Speaker 1: the base of the party. And so it just sort

1755
01:37:36,439 --> 01:37:39,639
Speaker 1: of it becomes the less you campaign for their vote,

1756
01:37:39,760 --> 01:37:42,160
Speaker 1: the less you know how to message right. And then

1757
01:37:42,200 --> 01:37:45,200
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you think, well, the numbers support us,

1758
01:37:46,200 --> 01:37:48,879
Speaker 1: you know, if you just if you succeed with identity politics,

1759
01:37:48,920 --> 01:37:52,240
Speaker 1: the numbers favor the left over the right. But what

1760
01:37:52,360 --> 01:37:56,080
Speaker 1: if you don't right, what if policy Trump's identity? And

1761
01:37:56,160 --> 01:37:58,559
Speaker 1: I think by twenty twenty four, it's fair to say

1762
01:37:58,760 --> 01:38:02,880
Speaker 1: plenty of people chose the pocket you know, looking at

1763
01:38:02,920 --> 01:38:06,240
Speaker 1: the pocketbook or what their future looked like as opposed

1764
01:38:06,280 --> 01:38:10,960
Speaker 1: to voting via identity group. And so that's the thesis

1765
01:38:11,040 --> 01:38:14,439
Speaker 1: I have that this Democrats just learn the wrong lesson

1766
01:38:14,479 --> 01:38:17,240
Speaker 1: from Obama's victory in twenty twelve, and we all sort

1767
01:38:17,240 --> 01:38:19,479
Speaker 1: of echoed it that, oh, he won by a shoot.

1768
01:38:19,479 --> 01:38:23,200
Speaker 1: Even the Republicans thought, you know, well, hey, the Democrats

1769
01:38:23,200 --> 01:38:26,200
Speaker 1: have won Hispanic voters. They're going to they've you know,

1770
01:38:26,360 --> 01:38:29,000
Speaker 1: and the Republicans got to learn to figure out how

1771
01:38:29,000 --> 01:38:32,560
Speaker 1: to do this, right, So they sort of acknowledged that

1772
01:38:32,640 --> 01:38:37,800
Speaker 1: it was viewed through the prism of identity rather than

1773
01:38:38,000 --> 01:38:40,840
Speaker 1: where I think that Democrats need to focus is they

1774
01:38:40,880 --> 01:38:43,000
Speaker 1: need to view the electorate through the prism of class,

1775
01:38:43,840 --> 01:38:49,120
Speaker 1: of socioeconomics, right. And I think that that's where Republicans,

1776
01:38:49,200 --> 01:38:51,840
Speaker 1: I think succeeded in messaging better on the economy, is

1777
01:38:51,880 --> 01:38:56,360
Speaker 1: that they viewed the electorate via the electoral divides via

1778
01:38:56,479 --> 01:39:00,880
Speaker 1: class rather than the electoral divides via identity. And I

1779
01:39:01,360 --> 01:39:04,439
Speaker 1: think the irony is that the Democrats used to view

1780
01:39:04,479 --> 01:39:07,519
Speaker 1: it through class, right, which is why they were the

1781
01:39:07,600 --> 01:39:10,240
Speaker 1: quote party of the working class. You know, you think

1782
01:39:10,280 --> 01:39:12,519
Speaker 1: about you know, one of my favorite reminders of the

1783
01:39:12,560 --> 01:39:16,599
Speaker 1: March on Washington is it was actually about jobs. That's

1784
01:39:16,640 --> 01:39:18,960
Speaker 1: why it was a coalition. It wasn't. Yes, it was.

1785
01:39:19,080 --> 01:39:21,640
Speaker 1: It's known as a great civil rights event, and it was.

1786
01:39:21,920 --> 01:39:23,519
Speaker 1: It was. It was the march and civil rights, but

1787
01:39:23,560 --> 01:39:25,720
Speaker 1: it was a jobs event as well. That's why you

1788
01:39:25,840 --> 01:39:29,120
Speaker 1: had white labor union people supportive of it. Right, it was,

1789
01:39:29,600 --> 01:39:32,200
Speaker 1: it was. It was aligning on class as much it

1790
01:39:32,320 --> 01:39:37,120
Speaker 1: was it was aligning on civil rights. And so that

1791
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:40,280
Speaker 1: would be that would be my diagnosis. And I think

1792
01:39:40,320 --> 01:39:43,559
Speaker 1: if the Democratic Party starts to and I do think

1793
01:39:43,600 --> 01:39:46,960
Speaker 1: you're seeing individual candidates realize that maybe they need to

1794
01:39:47,840 --> 01:39:51,560
Speaker 1: you know that working class white, working class Black, and

1795
01:39:51,680 --> 01:39:55,120
Speaker 1: working class Hispanic actually have a lot more problems in common,

1796
01:39:55,600 --> 01:39:57,680
Speaker 1: and you can speak to them with one message rather

1797
01:39:57,800 --> 01:40:00,280
Speaker 1: than trying to talk to them based on and their

1798
01:40:00,360 --> 01:40:03,840
Speaker 1: identity group. And I think that that's what the Republicans

1799
01:40:03,880 --> 01:40:08,200
Speaker 1: did better in twenty four than the Democrats. All right,

1800
01:40:08,360 --> 01:40:14,000
Speaker 1: next question, Oh, this comes from overseas. Heinrich from Denmark. Hicheck,

1801
01:40:14,040 --> 01:40:16,400
Speaker 1: thanks for the great podcast. Really appreciate the way you

1802
01:40:16,520 --> 01:40:20,040
Speaker 1: dig into how policy and politics intersect. I'm writing from Denmark,

1803
01:40:20,560 --> 01:40:22,760
Speaker 1: where we're following developments in the US housing market, with

1804
01:40:22,840 --> 01:40:26,640
Speaker 1: affordability declining, interest rates rising, and generational inequality growing. How

1805
01:40:26,720 --> 01:40:28,679
Speaker 1: much do you think these issues will shape younger voters

1806
01:40:28,720 --> 01:40:31,080
Speaker 1: attitudes going into the twenty twenty six midterms and the

1807
01:40:31,120 --> 01:40:33,640
Speaker 1: twenty eight presidential election. Do you see any signs that

1808
01:40:33,760 --> 01:40:36,960
Speaker 1: frustrations over housing, especially from young men feeling locked out

1809
01:40:36,960 --> 01:40:39,439
Speaker 1: of the market, could start to erode Donald Trump's appeal

1810
01:40:39,720 --> 01:40:42,680
Speaker 1: despite his promises to make everything better and cheaper. Well,

1811
01:40:42,720 --> 01:40:44,800
Speaker 1: look you get let me get the answer the last

1812
01:40:44,840 --> 01:40:46,560
Speaker 1: part first, which I kind of have answered over the

1813
01:40:46,640 --> 01:40:49,280
Speaker 1: last two podcasts, which is, I think I think that

1814
01:40:50,920 --> 01:40:54,519
Speaker 1: you know, I think Donald Trump's coalition falls apart if

1815
01:40:54,600 --> 01:40:57,200
Speaker 1: this economy doesn't get better. Right, if you think of

1816
01:40:57,400 --> 01:41:00,960
Speaker 1: it as the game Jenga, Right, you know to me

1817
01:41:01,080 --> 01:41:03,400
Speaker 1: the one you know, it isn't Epstein that takes Trump down.

1818
01:41:03,680 --> 01:41:06,679
Speaker 1: It's the price of eggs and chicken at Trader Joe's

1819
01:41:06,720 --> 01:41:09,320
Speaker 1: that will take them down. Right, Like, you know, this

1820
01:41:09,560 --> 01:41:12,559
Speaker 1: is why Biden and Harris lost. Right, there's we can

1821
01:41:12,680 --> 01:41:14,799
Speaker 1: you can go through. Look, the border had an impact,

1822
01:41:15,400 --> 01:41:18,919
Speaker 1: but ultimately they lost because people didn't like the economy

1823
01:41:19,000 --> 01:41:21,280
Speaker 1: in twenty four and it was in some ways they

1824
01:41:21,520 --> 01:41:27,120
Speaker 1: were very normal, specifically in housing. I would say this,

1825
01:41:27,200 --> 01:41:29,639
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody has had a good housing policy,

1826
01:41:29,720 --> 01:41:33,120
Speaker 1: yet I haven't seen a good one on either side

1827
01:41:33,120 --> 01:41:37,599
Speaker 1: of the aisle. The problem with with housing in our

1828
01:41:38,160 --> 01:41:41,880
Speaker 1: in our country, and how why it's hard to make

1829
01:41:41,920 --> 01:41:45,800
Speaker 1: it a federal campaign issue is that, you know, zoning

1830
01:41:45,840 --> 01:41:48,280
Speaker 1: decisions are made on the local level, right, my my

1831
01:41:48,680 --> 01:41:50,840
Speaker 1: home county here in Arlington County has been having a

1832
01:41:51,000 --> 01:41:54,600
Speaker 1: huge fight over zoning and affordable housing, right and the

1833
01:41:54,680 --> 01:41:58,840
Speaker 1: wealthier communities are afraid of of No, don't put townhouses here.

1834
01:41:58,960 --> 01:42:02,040
Speaker 1: You're gonna lower or the value of our single family homes.

1835
01:42:02,080 --> 01:42:04,600
Speaker 1: Oh my god, don't put an apartment building here. This

1836
01:42:04,680 --> 01:42:07,160
Speaker 1: will lower the value of our single No duplexes and

1837
01:42:07,200 --> 01:42:10,800
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I'm somebody who thinks that that isn't

1838
01:42:10,840 --> 01:42:14,000
Speaker 1: going to be as impactful as people think. But it

1839
01:42:14,160 --> 01:42:17,679
Speaker 1: is a heated debate, and it is really animated local elections.

1840
01:42:17,960 --> 01:42:19,400
Speaker 1: The Feds have nothing to do with it, right, The

1841
01:42:19,479 --> 01:42:24,519
Speaker 1: Feds can encourage, you know, basically incentivize state and local

1842
01:42:24,600 --> 01:42:27,760
Speaker 1: governments to do to you know, maybe cut some red

1843
01:42:27,800 --> 01:42:32,120
Speaker 1: tape or to do some different zoning laws that would

1844
01:42:32,920 --> 01:42:39,120
Speaker 1: incentivize home building on that front, But it is it's

1845
01:42:39,200 --> 01:42:42,040
Speaker 1: really hard to create, you know, to create a federal

1846
01:42:42,080 --> 01:42:46,519
Speaker 1: policy and realistically sell it. That said, when I ask

1847
01:42:46,600 --> 01:42:48,600
Speaker 1: a member of Congress, what's an issue we in the

1848
01:42:48,680 --> 01:42:51,880
Speaker 1: press don't ask you about, but that you always get

1849
01:42:51,920 --> 01:42:56,200
Speaker 1: asked about by your constituents, And it's this issue housing affordability.

1850
01:42:56,680 --> 01:42:59,800
Speaker 1: So I do think it is It's just one of those.

1851
01:42:59,880 --> 01:43:03,479
Speaker 1: I think there's two issues that don't get enough attention nationally,

1852
01:43:04,040 --> 01:43:07,400
Speaker 1: but local voters are constantly concerned about it. One is

1853
01:43:08,080 --> 01:43:10,920
Speaker 1: the fact that our public school system is just a mess.

1854
01:43:11,320 --> 01:43:13,599
Speaker 1: All right. Public education in this country is a mess.

1855
01:43:14,360 --> 01:43:16,439
Speaker 1: The laws that have created school choice have actually made

1856
01:43:16,479 --> 01:43:18,559
Speaker 1: it worse in an attempt to try to make it better.

1857
01:43:19,760 --> 01:43:23,160
Speaker 1: But this is a massive undertaking, and in some ways

1858
01:43:23,200 --> 01:43:26,840
Speaker 1: it's so broken nobody wants to try to I don't

1859
01:43:26,840 --> 01:43:29,639
Speaker 1: think there's any magic wand fix on a national scale.

1860
01:43:29,640 --> 01:43:34,120
Speaker 1: But the other one is housing and housing affordability. So

1861
01:43:35,120 --> 01:43:37,920
Speaker 1: I do think that if you know, interest rates remain

1862
01:43:38,240 --> 01:43:40,720
Speaker 1: high and people feel as if home ownership is out

1863
01:43:40,800 --> 01:43:43,320
Speaker 1: of reach for them, I just think that that's just

1864
01:43:43,439 --> 01:43:49,160
Speaker 1: the add on, you know it. It creates the conditions

1865
01:43:49,280 --> 01:43:52,080
Speaker 1: for why people feel negative about the economy, why they

1866
01:43:52,120 --> 01:43:54,599
Speaker 1: feel like they can't make any progress. Sure, maybe they

1867
01:43:54,640 --> 01:43:57,400
Speaker 1: can afford to buy groceries, but they can't afford to,

1868
01:43:57,400 --> 01:43:59,680
Speaker 1: say for a home, or if they do, they've got

1869
01:43:59,720 --> 01:44:03,479
Speaker 1: a move who've you know, fifty miles outside away from

1870
01:44:03,520 --> 01:44:06,960
Speaker 1: their work in order to afford a home. I think

1871
01:44:07,040 --> 01:44:10,680
Speaker 1: this stuff does have a cumulative negative impact on the

1872
01:44:10,720 --> 01:44:12,840
Speaker 1: party in power, and right now the party and power

1873
01:44:12,880 --> 01:44:16,160
Speaker 1: of the Republicans. And they've not done anything on housing

1874
01:44:16,439 --> 01:44:19,519
Speaker 1: at all, and so that is an easy way of

1875
01:44:19,840 --> 01:44:21,880
Speaker 1: Democrats can do that. But I just you know, what's

1876
01:44:21,920 --> 01:44:26,320
Speaker 1: their plan, right and there's no obvious plan to sell

1877
01:44:27,479 --> 01:44:31,280
Speaker 1: on a national basis other than identifying the problem and

1878
01:44:31,320 --> 01:44:33,840
Speaker 1: figuring out how can we incentivize more. By the way,

1879
01:44:34,840 --> 01:44:39,559
Speaker 1: nothing nothing raises the price of home ownership even more

1880
01:44:40,520 --> 01:44:43,960
Speaker 1: than kicking out all the migrants. A lot of these

1881
01:44:44,040 --> 01:44:47,639
Speaker 1: folks help build many of these homes, and it's only

1882
01:44:47,920 --> 01:44:51,360
Speaker 1: by having fewer workers building homes you're only raising the

1883
01:44:51,439 --> 01:44:54,519
Speaker 1: price and the cost of housing even more. Next question

1884
01:44:54,880 --> 01:45:02,360
Speaker 1: comes from Dan E. Not Danny, but Dan E period.

1885
01:45:02,720 --> 01:45:04,760
Speaker 1: By the way, Chuck, I was wondering if I could

1886
01:45:04,760 --> 01:45:06,719
Speaker 1: convince you to answer my question on the Democrats' chances

1887
01:45:06,760 --> 01:45:11,280
Speaker 1: strategy for twenty thirty two. Interesting. Obviously, it's super early.

1888
01:45:11,320 --> 01:45:13,040
Speaker 1: It seems to me that the Democrats need to put

1889
01:45:13,360 --> 01:45:16,000
Speaker 1: significant effort into turning Florida or Texas purple and doing

1890
01:45:16,080 --> 01:45:19,719
Speaker 1: well in Pennsylvania. The Dems lose eleven ish electoral votes.

1891
01:45:20,000 --> 01:45:22,000
Speaker 1: The blue wall is no longer enough to be credible

1892
01:45:22,040 --> 01:45:23,680
Speaker 1: with national donors. They need to be able to sell

1893
01:45:23,720 --> 01:45:25,880
Speaker 1: a path. I see where you're going here. This means

1894
01:45:25,960 --> 01:45:28,479
Speaker 1: voter registration and winning statewide races in twenty six through

1895
01:45:28,600 --> 01:45:31,599
Speaker 1: thirty without turning Florida or Texas purple. What is the path?

1896
01:45:31,720 --> 01:45:34,640
Speaker 1: Or dem strategist worried or they just don't focus that

1897
01:45:34,760 --> 01:45:39,080
Speaker 1: far out love your podcast, look you provide I mean

1898
01:45:39,160 --> 01:45:41,640
Speaker 1: right now, when you've seen some of the reapportionment estimates, right,

1899
01:45:41,720 --> 01:45:44,640
Speaker 1: Texas and Florida, I think both gained three or four

1900
01:45:44,680 --> 01:45:48,920
Speaker 1: electoral votes each. Georgia likely gains. That's of course a

1901
01:45:48,960 --> 01:45:50,920
Speaker 1: swing state, but it means that it puts that much

1902
01:45:51,000 --> 01:45:54,400
Speaker 1: more importance on Georgia, that much more importance on Arizona,

1903
01:45:54,400 --> 01:45:56,519
Speaker 1: who I think would gain a seat. California would lose

1904
01:45:56,640 --> 01:45:58,880
Speaker 1: by the way in this round. Although you know it's

1905
01:45:58,880 --> 01:46:02,599
Speaker 1: still early, there's still four more years of population growth

1906
01:46:03,320 --> 01:46:08,320
Speaker 1: which could level things out here. And I Honestly, this deportation,

1907
01:46:09,400 --> 01:46:12,720
Speaker 1: what Trump is doing, could have all sorts of unintended

1908
01:46:12,760 --> 01:46:16,719
Speaker 1: consequences on our census, on our censes totals come twenty thirty.

1909
01:46:16,800 --> 01:46:18,880
Speaker 1: So I just want to throw all those caveats aside.

1910
01:46:21,080 --> 01:46:23,320
Speaker 1: But look, you're getting at something that I think the

1911
01:46:23,400 --> 01:46:26,599
Speaker 1: Democrats have been The Republicans have been running circles around

1912
01:46:26,640 --> 01:46:29,479
Speaker 1: the Democrats, and that is voter registration. There's never been

1913
01:46:29,560 --> 01:46:32,679
Speaker 1: a consistent and long term effort in the state of Florida.

1914
01:46:32,760 --> 01:46:35,200
Speaker 1: There's never been a consistent, long term effort in Texas.

1915
01:46:35,280 --> 01:46:37,439
Speaker 1: The irony is that one of the few places where

1916
01:46:37,520 --> 01:46:40,160
Speaker 1: there was a consistent effort to do it was in

1917
01:46:40,200 --> 01:46:43,000
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia. And it took a long time,

1918
01:46:43,080 --> 01:46:45,000
Speaker 1: but guess what it ended up paying dividends. Didn't get

1919
01:46:45,000 --> 01:46:48,200
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams elected, but her organization and all the efforts

1920
01:46:48,200 --> 01:46:51,600
Speaker 1: she put into it is what created the conditions that

1921
01:46:52,120 --> 01:46:55,519
Speaker 1: suddenly Democrats now are competitive. Yes, the growth of Atlanta matters,

1922
01:46:55,720 --> 01:46:58,200
Speaker 1: but growth only matters if you're there. You know there's

1923
01:46:58,439 --> 01:47:01,400
Speaker 1: the same voters are growing all over Florida, and they've

1924
01:47:01,880 --> 01:47:04,320
Speaker 1: the Democrats have done a terrible job reaching out to

1925
01:47:04,400 --> 01:47:08,000
Speaker 1: them and trying to add to their vote totals. Iowa

1926
01:47:08,080 --> 01:47:10,479
Speaker 1: is another place where Democrats have just given up on

1927
01:47:10,640 --> 01:47:14,160
Speaker 1: voted registration. I mean, here's what happened, Republicans. I mean,

1928
01:47:14,240 --> 01:47:15,800
Speaker 1: this is the one thing. You know, a lot of

1929
01:47:15,880 --> 01:47:18,080
Speaker 1: grief was given. You know, the Trump campaign wasn't a

1930
01:47:18,200 --> 01:47:21,000
Speaker 1: very well run campaign in twenty sixteen, all right. It

1931
01:47:21,160 --> 01:47:23,920
Speaker 1: was sort of seat of the pants, which makes the

1932
01:47:24,600 --> 01:47:26,639
Speaker 1: Clinton loss to me look even worse. Right, they weren't.

1933
01:47:27,479 --> 01:47:30,560
Speaker 1: They lost to the Keystone cops, but it's proof that

1934
01:47:30,600 --> 01:47:33,040
Speaker 1: they weren't running against Trump campaign. They were running against

1935
01:47:33,080 --> 01:47:37,599
Speaker 1: an environment that was tilted against them. But the one

1936
01:47:37,640 --> 01:47:40,200
Speaker 1: thing that Trump folks came away with was, uh oh,

1937
01:47:40,880 --> 01:47:43,640
Speaker 1: in order to stay competitive, we're going to have to

1938
01:47:44,280 --> 01:47:46,640
Speaker 1: get you know, find more voters and get more of

1939
01:47:46,640 --> 01:47:48,920
Speaker 1: these folks out and get them registered, have them become

1940
01:47:49,000 --> 01:47:51,400
Speaker 1: more regular voters. And they made real efforts over the

1941
01:47:51,520 --> 01:47:55,120
Speaker 1: last decade to increase their voter totals. And it pays.

1942
01:47:55,320 --> 01:47:57,799
Speaker 1: It's paid dividends in Nevada, it's paid dividends in Ohio.

1943
01:47:58,000 --> 01:48:01,040
Speaker 1: They basically took Iowa, Florida, and Ohio off the battleground

1944
01:48:01,080 --> 01:48:04,880
Speaker 1: map with their voter registration campaigns. They made Pennsylvania, which

1945
01:48:05,000 --> 01:48:07,120
Speaker 1: was starting to tilt more blue. Of all of the

1946
01:48:07,160 --> 01:48:09,840
Speaker 1: blue Wall states, Pennsylvania looked like it was going to

1947
01:48:09,880 --> 01:48:13,120
Speaker 1: become more likely to be semi permanent in the light

1948
01:48:13,200 --> 01:48:16,400
Speaker 1: blue column. And it did not. In many ways, this

1949
01:48:16,560 --> 01:48:19,960
Speaker 1: Republican registration effort yanked it right back into the purple category.

1950
01:48:20,240 --> 01:48:22,320
Speaker 1: Did own the state of Michigan, and of course Wisconsin

1951
01:48:22,439 --> 01:48:29,080
Speaker 1: is Wisconsin, and the Democrats' efforts on this for whatever reason,

1952
01:48:29,160 --> 01:48:31,360
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, look, there's a great sub

1953
01:48:31,439 --> 01:48:33,600
Speaker 1: stack out there of a deep dive on sort of

1954
01:48:33,800 --> 01:48:36,640
Speaker 1: I think Democrats got addicted to two things, identity politics

1955
01:48:36,800 --> 01:48:40,680
Speaker 1: and small donor fundraising, and they thought that was, you know,

1956
01:48:40,920 --> 01:48:45,400
Speaker 1: somehow was better than voter registration. But they've not done

1957
01:48:45,439 --> 01:48:49,599
Speaker 1: the blocking and tackling of party building that Barack Obama

1958
01:48:49,680 --> 01:48:52,400
Speaker 1: did in six and seven on behalf of the party

1959
01:48:52,920 --> 01:48:56,320
Speaker 1: that Obama did in twenty eleven to prepare for the

1960
01:48:56,400 --> 01:49:01,560
Speaker 1: twenty twelve reelect. It is stunning to me how this

1961
01:49:01,760 --> 01:49:03,960
Speaker 1: is atrophied on the Democratic side of the l They

1962
01:49:04,040 --> 01:49:06,680
Speaker 1: used to be the party of voter registration. They were

1963
01:49:06,720 --> 01:49:09,040
Speaker 1: the ones that were always with labor unions, would be

1964
01:49:09,120 --> 01:49:12,879
Speaker 1: at the front lines of this and for a variety

1965
01:49:12,920 --> 01:49:18,160
Speaker 1: of reasons. They just don't. This is just not part

1966
01:49:18,200 --> 01:49:20,559
Speaker 1: of it is how money is sort of divvied up

1967
01:49:20,800 --> 01:49:25,280
Speaker 1: in this dark money world somehow voter registration because it

1968
01:49:25,360 --> 01:49:29,840
Speaker 1: can be paid for by you know, dark money, there's

1969
01:49:29,960 --> 01:49:32,160
Speaker 1: less accountability. And I just think there's a lot of

1970
01:49:32,240 --> 01:49:36,799
Speaker 1: ripoff artists. You know, there's dirty politicals. They're basically grifters

1971
01:49:36,880 --> 01:49:40,160
Speaker 1: in both parties, and it's in the voter registration space

1972
01:49:40,240 --> 01:49:42,640
Speaker 1: and in the phone space where the grifters are the

1973
01:49:42,680 --> 01:49:45,439
Speaker 1: most prevalent. And I think that Democratic Party has been

1974
01:49:45,560 --> 01:49:49,000
Speaker 1: robbed right by you know, there are these dark money

1975
01:49:49,000 --> 01:49:51,760
Speaker 1: groups who are taken advantage of by consultants you've never

1976
01:49:51,840 --> 01:49:55,400
Speaker 1: heard of, who have become wealthy, essentially bullshitting their way

1977
01:49:55,680 --> 01:49:59,800
Speaker 1: and not performing the task that they've promised. You know,

1978
01:50:00,600 --> 01:50:03,479
Speaker 1: effort voter registration efforts in South Carolina and Mississippi would

1979
01:50:03,479 --> 01:50:05,599
Speaker 1: make both of those states a lot more competitive. But again,

1980
01:50:05,960 --> 01:50:08,320
Speaker 1: you can't just do it in six months. It's it's

1981
01:50:08,360 --> 01:50:10,320
Speaker 1: a it's got to be a ten year plan. So

1982
01:50:11,080 --> 01:50:13,719
Speaker 1: your talk, But what you're bringing up is this larger

1983
01:50:13,840 --> 01:50:18,479
Speaker 1: issue that the map continues with the alert. Now, electoral

1984
01:50:18,560 --> 01:50:21,639
Speaker 1: maps evolve based on how good or bad the head

1985
01:50:21,680 --> 01:50:26,479
Speaker 1: of your ticket is, right. I think the Democrats, you know,

1986
01:50:27,439 --> 01:50:29,960
Speaker 1: thought the electoral college was running against them back in

1987
01:50:30,000 --> 01:50:33,120
Speaker 1: the Clinton era, and the Republicans thought that the Democrats

1988
01:50:33,160 --> 01:50:35,320
Speaker 1: had the electoral advantage in the in the Obama era.

1989
01:50:35,840 --> 01:50:37,920
Speaker 1: So I do think, you know, that's a chicken and

1990
01:50:37,960 --> 01:50:41,720
Speaker 1: egg which comes first, right, But if you're looking, you know,

1991
01:50:41,960 --> 01:50:44,519
Speaker 1: at the general lean, I understand where you're coming from.

1992
01:50:45,120 --> 01:50:47,280
Speaker 1: I think it means they've got to keep George in play.

1993
01:50:47,360 --> 01:50:50,080
Speaker 1: They've got to put North Carolina in play, right if

1994
01:50:50,120 --> 01:50:54,960
Speaker 1: they're going to respond if if the if Michigan, Wisconsin,

1995
01:50:55,080 --> 01:50:59,960
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania aren't enough, Okay, they've got to. It makes

1996
01:51:00,439 --> 01:51:03,920
Speaker 1: it makes North Carolina more important. It's not an additive state.

1997
01:51:04,080 --> 01:51:07,519
Speaker 1: It is a must state. Maybe North Carolina becomes the

1998
01:51:07,600 --> 01:51:11,479
Speaker 1: next sort of ultimate swing state. I kind of have

1999
01:51:11,560 --> 01:51:14,160
Speaker 1: a feeling at will for what it's worth. I mean,

2000
01:51:14,200 --> 01:51:16,320
Speaker 1: I do think that North Carolina and Georgia are more

2001
01:51:16,439 --> 01:51:19,160
Speaker 1: likely to be the two most important states to decide

2002
01:51:19,200 --> 01:51:23,600
Speaker 1: presidential elections over and above Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. That

2003
01:51:24,000 --> 01:51:26,599
Speaker 1: may be where this is headed after the twenty thirty census.

2004
01:51:28,800 --> 01:51:31,040
Speaker 1: If you were to ask me, I think that they

2005
01:51:31,120 --> 01:51:34,400
Speaker 1: ought to. They need to go back and get competitive

2006
01:51:34,439 --> 01:51:37,920
Speaker 1: in Iowa. Again. I think that Kansas is a place

2007
01:51:38,080 --> 01:51:43,000
Speaker 1: that with a little bit of party building efforts over

2008
01:51:43,080 --> 01:51:45,479
Speaker 1: a six to eight year period, they could put Kansas

2009
01:51:46,200 --> 01:51:50,360
Speaker 1: in play. But I do think that look, the Democrats,

2010
01:51:50,680 --> 01:51:54,840
Speaker 1: the Republicans embrace being a fifty state party. The Democrats don't.

2011
01:51:55,800 --> 01:51:58,160
Speaker 1: And for the brief period that the Democrats embraced being

2012
01:51:58,200 --> 01:52:01,480
Speaker 1: a fifty state party, which Howard Dean did and Obama's

2013
01:52:01,520 --> 01:52:04,840
Speaker 1: campaign did, guess what they got up to fifty nine sentences.

2014
01:52:05,479 --> 01:52:09,040
Speaker 1: I mean, politics isn't difficult. You just have to have

2015
01:52:09,240 --> 01:52:14,000
Speaker 1: the will and the leadership to do it. And it's

2016
01:52:14,080 --> 01:52:17,439
Speaker 1: pretty clear this the current leadership of the Democratic Party

2017
01:52:17,560 --> 01:52:22,160
Speaker 1: got captured by identity politics, believed their own hype, wrote

2018
01:52:22,200 --> 01:52:26,439
Speaker 1: off rural Americans that they couldn't be won over. You know,

2019
01:52:26,479 --> 01:52:30,320
Speaker 1: they've drawn themselves into this corner, and I think to

2020
01:52:30,400 --> 01:52:32,160
Speaker 1: get out of it, they need, you know, they need

2021
01:52:32,240 --> 01:52:34,679
Speaker 1: some new leadership, They need a new way of thinking.

2022
01:52:35,439 --> 01:52:38,720
Speaker 1: But it isn't that hard. It's good old fashioned party

2023
01:52:38,760 --> 01:52:40,840
Speaker 1: building efforts and it starts one state at a time,

2024
01:52:40,920 --> 01:52:43,040
Speaker 1: and in those states, one county at a time. But

2025
01:52:43,200 --> 01:52:46,320
Speaker 1: it's effort and it's not something you just parachute in

2026
01:52:46,479 --> 01:52:48,680
Speaker 1: with a super pack and a couple of staffers six

2027
01:52:48,760 --> 01:52:51,640
Speaker 1: months before an election. This has got to be a

2028
01:52:51,800 --> 01:52:55,840
Speaker 1: six to ten year program. And unfortunately in politics, nobody

2029
01:52:55,880 --> 01:52:59,639
Speaker 1: thinks that long term. I keep waiting for a donor

2030
01:52:59,720 --> 01:53:02,800
Speaker 1: to think that long term. There's plenty of donors on

2031
01:53:02,840 --> 01:53:04,800
Speaker 1: the right that do think long term like this. Leonard

2032
01:53:04,880 --> 01:53:07,799
Speaker 1: Leos thinks that long term. He's sort of the godfather

2033
01:53:07,920 --> 01:53:10,160
Speaker 1: of all this, of a lot of this money, right,

2034
01:53:10,560 --> 01:53:14,120
Speaker 1: you know, and he a lot of these interest groups

2035
01:53:14,120 --> 01:53:17,320
Speaker 1: are quietly funded mostly by money that he he he

2036
01:53:17,680 --> 01:53:19,960
Speaker 1: that he controls. It's not technically his money, but it's

2037
01:53:20,040 --> 01:53:23,240
Speaker 1: money from a from a from a dead donor that

2038
01:53:23,400 --> 01:53:26,880
Speaker 1: he is that he's in control of. The Koch brothers

2039
01:53:26,920 --> 01:53:29,519
Speaker 1: in the past have been have been helpful there. They

2040
01:53:29,600 --> 01:53:31,800
Speaker 1: seem to be less interested in helping Trump these days.

2041
01:53:33,160 --> 01:53:36,559
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of long term dark money donor

2042
01:53:36,640 --> 01:53:40,799
Speaker 1: thinkers on the right, those folks outside of the Soros

2043
01:53:40,880 --> 01:53:44,520
Speaker 1: network and who's been more focused on the information ecosystem

2044
01:53:44,600 --> 01:53:48,400
Speaker 1: rather than this this issue of voter registration. I think

2045
01:53:48,439 --> 01:53:51,840
Speaker 1: it's it's aftrophyed a bit on the left. All right,

2046
01:53:52,200 --> 01:53:57,920
Speaker 1: there is UH, there's the uh I think we're I

2047
01:53:57,960 --> 01:54:01,479
Speaker 1: think that's a lot of political science y, dorky questions

2048
01:54:02,280 --> 01:54:05,520
Speaker 1: answers for me this week. Please check out the substack.

2049
01:54:06,120 --> 01:54:10,160
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's a bit of a derivative of

2050
01:54:10,240 --> 01:54:11,960
Speaker 1: something I've talked about before. But you know, if we

2051
01:54:12,040 --> 01:54:15,040
Speaker 1: really want to fix this redistricting nonsense, there are a

2052
01:54:15,080 --> 01:54:17,599
Speaker 1: couple of better ways to fix it than what we're

2053
01:54:17,640 --> 01:54:19,920
Speaker 1: doing now. So please take a look at that. Other

2054
01:54:20,000 --> 01:54:22,120
Speaker 1: than that, I will see in twenty four hours until

2055
01:54:22,120 --> 01:54:22,800
Speaker 1: I upload again.