Speaker 1: Well, it's Behind the Bastards, that's right. It certainly is.
Speaker 1: It's it certainly is. You can't argue about that. That
Speaker 1: is a fact that is as undeniable as it is
Speaker 1: undeniable that someone in the subreddit will decide to argue
Speaker 1: with us about that point, because that is what they
Speaker 1: like to do. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: where just a couple of weeks ago, I made a
Speaker 1: comment that I will not be calling mummies mummified persons
Speaker 1: because I like mummies, and somebody took offense a that
Speaker 1: on behalf of the mummies, and I'm just gonna tell
Speaker 1: you right now, Abad and Costello versus the mummified person terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible name for a movie. So we're not going back.
Speaker 1: Never anyway, Mia, welcome to the program. Thanks, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna make a non legally actionable statement,
Speaker 1: which is that, if I remember correctly, the Orientals to
Speaker 1: stole their entire everything, that's they were stolen, so for
Speaker 1: sure legally actionable. This is just what I remember off
Speaker 1: top of my head. Yeah great now it's paly things.
Speaker 1: People were like, well, you know, it's it's important to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the humanity of these mummies because a lot of
Speaker 1: them were stolen. I was like, no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: important to give them back because a lot of them
Speaker 1: were Still we can still call the mummies. The problem
Speaker 1: is not that people were calling the mummies, it's that
Speaker 1: they stole dead people. And then, yeah, which is the issue,
Speaker 1: is not that we used to the term mummy. Just
Speaker 1: let it be everybody anyway. I'm I'm very mummy pilled.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad your mummy pilled. But thank you. So
Speaker 1: we introduce our guest, a Mia Wong. How are you
Speaker 1: doing today on the podcast that it is right now?
Speaker 1: Normally you're on another podcast, but today you're on this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have I have hijacked this podcast in order to chess.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh god, we're talking about chess again. Yes,
Speaker 1: which I I really, I really, I'm realizing it said
Speaker 1: it wasn't a hack and a fraud. I would have
Speaker 1: actually asked you before we did this, do you if
Speaker 1: you actually play chess at all? Well, again, there's no
Speaker 1: works in chess, so no know. When I was a child,
Speaker 1: I played a few games of chess, and then I
Speaker 1: was introduced to the true game of skill. Warhammer third Edition,
Speaker 1: um and and and so that's that's the only strategy
Speaker 1: game I ever needed. You know, can can consider considering
Speaker 1: the minds of every single person in this story who
Speaker 1: plays chess. I think this is actually a wise decision.
Speaker 1: It it does, It does something to your brain. That
Speaker 1: that's what That's what I've learned after many, many hours
Speaker 1: of reading about chess players, is something something fundamentally breaks
Speaker 1: in your brain when you play chess for this long.
Speaker 1: That does not surprise me. It seems like the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that people get extremely into, um and then
Speaker 1: uh make it the entire core of their identity, much
Speaker 1: like Warhammer forty, but again without orcs. Yes, but similar
Speaker 1: numbers of fascists were as we're going to. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that that is. That also does not surprise me to hear.
Speaker 1: Oh god, okay, so speaking of Nazis and fascists, Um,
Speaker 1: what one of the sort of elements of this story
Speaker 1: that is kind of important is getting some kind of
Speaker 1: understanding of how good these people are at chess, because
Speaker 1: none of the story makes any sense unless you know
Speaker 1: the people doing this are genuinely previously good. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna start this with a brief tangent about
Speaker 1: a man named Miguel Najdorf. So, Miguel Nasdorf is not
Speaker 1: a bastard. He's very cool and his life story is
Speaker 1: very sad. Um. He he was born to a Jewish
Speaker 1: family in Poland nineteen ten, which is that's not going
Speaker 1: to go well. So yeah, yeah, boy, so one of
Speaker 1: the one of the bottom times to be born to
Speaker 1: a Jewish family. Ninetton. That's that's right, because you're going
Speaker 1: to be old enough to be fully aware of how
Speaker 1: bad things are going. Yep. So no magical realism for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the story is always going to get very
Speaker 1: bleak very quickly. Sonsdorf. You know as a kid, it's
Speaker 1: very clearly he's very very good at chess. UM. He
Speaker 1: very rapidly becomes a grand master, which is the highest
Speaker 1: official rating in chess. UM. So there's this organization called
Speaker 1: FETE or the International Chess Federation UM, and they they
Speaker 1: basically run chess after like a certain period of time. Okay,
Speaker 1: you could do like seventeen episodes just about fee a politics.
Speaker 1: It's nonsense. I don't understand how this chess organization has
Speaker 1: so much political drama. But it does. But so in
Speaker 1: neteen fifty feet creates the rank of international grand Master
Speaker 1: and they choose twenty seven people to be the first
Speaker 1: grand Masters. Nasdorf is one of them. Um, these days
Speaker 1: he's famous. Yeah, he's a he's a he's a mighty player.
Speaker 1: You would have to have a pretty good strategic mind
Speaker 1: to make it out of Poland. And yeah, well he
Speaker 1: so he gets out of he's he gets out of polls,
Speaker 1: he's out of Poland when everything goes to ship because
Speaker 1: he's playing a tournament in Argentina. Oh oh boy, wow,
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, there's like there's a comment to
Speaker 1: make their given the history of Argentina and the people
Speaker 1: who are Poland, to be a problem, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is right now, so we should probably
Speaker 1: just move on. Yeah, I mean, the other thing I
Speaker 1: will say about it is that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Jews who fled to Argentina before this was happening.
Speaker 1: So do do not automatically assume so with the European
Speaker 1: lest name in Argentinas a Nazi, because there's actually a
Speaker 1: good chance that they're like someone who is fleeing the Nazis. Well,
Speaker 1: that's awkward, Um, but it makes sense. Yeah, so not Nashdorf. Today,
Speaker 1: I think it's probably most famous is like that there's
Speaker 1: there's an opening in chess called the Nashdorf or technically speaking,
Speaker 1: in its full name is the Sicilian defense, the Nasdor variation.
Speaker 1: So I go, okay, we're gonna do a little bit
Speaker 1: of We're gonna do like one thing of chess terminology,
Speaker 1: which is that chess is this thing called openings, and
Speaker 1: they're they're like standard sets of moves that people play
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the game. Yeah. And and now
Speaker 1: you know if if if you have a if you
Speaker 1: have an opening named after you, it is because you're
Speaker 1: an important player in the history of chess. Okay, and
Speaker 1: I mean that yeah, yeah, and Nash's opening, Like I
Speaker 1: this might not be true, but I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 1: like the most it's like the most studied opening in
Speaker 1: the history of chess. People games store. Back when I
Speaker 1: played Warhammer, Uh, there was a move that everybody called
Speaker 1: a Robert and it was when somebody did something so
Speaker 1: stupid with their army that it led to a victory
Speaker 1: because the other person simply didn't conceive of somebody doing
Speaker 1: something that dumb. Look, I I won't beat an eight
Speaker 1: tournament like an eight hundred is like a pretty seriously
Speaker 1: good chess player. I was like a not very good
Speaker 1: chess player, but I once beat him Because I did that,
Speaker 1: I played so badly that he stopped paying attention. He
Speaker 1: put his queen down, and I took it. There's nothing
Speaker 1: more dangerous than an idiot with a trick up his sleeve.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the most dangerous thing in the world,
Speaker 1: at least in war gaming anyway. Yes, so, okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about Warhammer a lot during this. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: you're ready the conclusion that I had about Bobby Fishers.
Speaker 1: There there's two ways, right up, Bobby Fisher, right, Bobby
Speaker 1: Fisher is the eventually going to be the subject of
Speaker 1: the show. Uh, there's one way where you talk about
Speaker 1: chess a lot, and then there's another way. You talked
Speaker 1: about genocide a lot, and everyone everyone has already done
Speaker 1: the one where you talked about chess a lot. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the one you talked about genocide a
Speaker 1: lot instead of that. Sure, so speaking of genocide. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: how how good is Nasdorf at the game of chess. Um.
Speaker 1: Here's the Guardian talking about how many games Nasdorff could
Speaker 1: play at one time while blindfolded. For decades, Miguel Nasdorf's
Speaker 1: forty five games at Salpolo in ninety seven stood as
Speaker 1: the record. Yeah forty five, um, nash Doorf had stated
Speaker 1: in Buenos Aires when the war broke out during the
Speaker 1: nineteen Olympiad and took up blindfold displays in the hopes
Speaker 1: that the news of his achievements would reach his relatives
Speaker 1: in Poland who would actually perish in concentration camps. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Yeah, that's that's a lot. There's a lot there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: playing forty five. The desperation that is behind playing forty
Speaker 1: five games of chess at once so your relatives cost
Speaker 1: will know that you achieved something is well. It's it's
Speaker 1: both deeply impressive and like heartbreaking in a really specific
Speaker 1: way that I don't think I've encountered before, but I
Speaker 1: get it. It's I don't know that this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that the political backdrop of chess is
Speaker 1: just really bleak. Like. One of the things is going
Speaker 1: on this period is Nashdorf keeps trying to play. Um,
Speaker 1: this guy named al Kin who was the world champion,
Speaker 1: and Alekin is a Nazi and he like just is
Speaker 1: not able to play Alkin because bullshit just keeps happening.
Speaker 1: But yeah, chess. Chess is a game that very very
Speaker 1: quickly gets enfolded in this kind of stuff. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: that said, we can, we can, you know, we can
Speaker 1: look back at what sort of nash door if like
Speaker 1: did hear it or to like have a chance to
Speaker 1: see his family again. And you know, okay, so well
Speaker 1: what was he actually doing the answers? He is playing
Speaker 1: forty five people at the same time in his mind, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: purely just kind of keeping track of the movements in
Speaker 1: his head. Yeah, and you know, I can't find his
Speaker 1: actual win rate like for these but you know most
Speaker 1: of the times when people do almost like this, they
Speaker 1: win almost all of these games. And I mean this
Speaker 1: is yah, yeah, and like this is the kind of
Speaker 1: person that is like like Bobby Fisher is better than
Speaker 1: nash Worf And this is the kind of thing nash
Speaker 1: Worth can do. So this is the level of chess
Speaker 1: that everyone in this story can do, right, is they
Speaker 1: can do things like playing forty five games of chess
Speaker 1: in their mind at the same time. Yep, I mean
Speaker 1: ye okay, yeah, And and this is this is sort
Speaker 1: of the justification for everything that we're going to see
Speaker 1: in this story, right, like, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: a justification for like literally people people like like physically
Speaker 1: turning their backs on like actual genocides. Go one is
Speaker 1: the mean, people don't need chess as an excuse to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, but I would to say the normal
Speaker 1: reaction to a genocide is to turn your back on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, okay, they're they're going to excuse a
Speaker 1: just incredible mile so specifically because one man was really
Speaker 1: really good at chess and he was also from the
Speaker 1: United States, and and that that man is Bobby Fisher.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. Now, most of my knowledge of Bobby Fisher
Speaker 1: comes from a Hilltop Hoods song called Cosby Sweater, So
Speaker 1: I know very little about him other than that he
Speaker 1: was good at chess. Yeah, that's okay, So there there, there,
Speaker 1: there are. There are two important things about Bebbie Fisher.
Speaker 1: One he said he's very good at chess. The second
Speaker 1: one is that he's a Nazi. We will be establishing
Speaker 1: both and these over the course of this episode. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: Chess Nazi. Al Right, well there's our title, so that's good.
Speaker 1: So if they mark that, mark that off the to
Speaker 1: do list. Chess Nazi Bobby Fisher, solid title that'll keep
Speaker 1: everybody happy. Yeah, the words Bobby Fisher, Chess Nazi. This
Speaker 1: is the closest I've ever come to divine inspiration. They
Speaker 1: just appeared in my head one day and I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to do this episode. Now. That's good. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, why do we I feel like, if a
Speaker 1: Nazi is good at chess, that's an easy case for
Speaker 1: just just push that, push that fellow in a river,
Speaker 1: put some heavy rocks in their pockets, right right in
Speaker 1: a river. We don't need we don't. We don't need
Speaker 1: a Nazi to be good at strategy and just kind
Speaker 1: of hanging around society. That's not gonna help anybody, you
Speaker 1: would think. But it's chess. And what the thing. The
Speaker 1: thing that happens when a Nazi is good at chess
Speaker 1: is everyone like gives him a bunch of money. Well
Speaker 1: I don't like that either, although yep, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: like that either, but I guess it does show that
Speaker 1: chess isn't really good for anything, not really no, so okay,
Speaker 1: but but Bobby Fisher was not born rich. He's born
Speaker 1: on March nine at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And I need to put in and make an important
Speaker 1: note at the beginning here. We do not claim this
Speaker 1: man funk this guy, this guy's not in Chicago. When
Speaker 1: he leaves very quickly, U I mean, you can tell
Speaker 1: it's bad because his hospital was named after the current
Speaker 1: Sheriff of Maltena mccunty in Portland, Mike Reece, who sucks. Anyway, amazingly,
Speaker 1: this that that is not the only person in this story.
Speaker 1: He was going to have the same name as a
Speaker 1: guy from Portland who sucks. Oh wow, that's okay, I'm
Speaker 1: excited for this. Yeah. Well we have a lot of
Speaker 1: guys though, so the odds are always pretty good. So alright.
Speaker 1: Regina Fisher is who's Bobby Fisher's mother is. She is
Speaker 1: a wild character. She is a a long time, very
Speaker 1: committed communist. She does I mean, she she's she's doing activism.
Speaker 1: That might say started as communists, that's that's yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean Fisher Fisher is never really a commonist, like
Speaker 1: his mom is, like like she she's so dedicated to
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah, they're the complicated part of the stories,
Speaker 1: at least his um. And there's questions over who Bobby
Speaker 1: Fisher's dad is. I don't think of that interesting, but
Speaker 1: at least half of his family is Jewish, and Bobby
Speaker 1: Fisher Silter is out like this um his mom like
Speaker 1: she's so the reason she's in the U s is
Speaker 1: that she she had been like making a living, like
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, and then anti Semitism got so
Speaker 1: bed at her stable and that she had to flee.
Speaker 1: And so you know, she's she's she's not, she's not
Speaker 1: in the US. And when when she gets birth to Bobby,
Speaker 1: she's like completely broke. She is a homeless single mother.
Speaker 1: And so after about a week the kick her out
Speaker 1: of the hospital and they're like, okay, well where do
Speaker 1: we send this person? And she gets sent to this
Speaker 1: hospice for single mothers. Great country. I bet this was
Speaker 1: a nice place, well funded, had a lot of respect
Speaker 1: for single mothers. Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If she had been allowed to stay there, it probably
Speaker 1: would have been kind of okay. The problem is that
Speaker 1: the way the hospice worked was that I it's only
Speaker 1: supposed to take care of parents and newborns. So Regina
Speaker 1: has another daughter or has a daughter who's like very young,
Speaker 1: and she tries to bring the daughter to this hospice
Speaker 1: thing and they they are immediately like you need to leave,
Speaker 1: and she's like no, I have literally a week old
Speaker 1: baby and another child and I have no home. So
Speaker 1: she tries to stay there and they call the cops.
Speaker 1: Cool and not and this isn't just like a like
Speaker 1: they you know, the CPD arrest her and this isn't
Speaker 1: even just like an arrest, you know it's it's not
Speaker 1: even just like they take her in and like whatever,
Speaker 1: they prosecute her for this. Christ Yeah, and I love
Speaker 1: I love the idea of like the I got a
Speaker 1: job working at a hospice for single mothers because I
Speaker 1: want to take care of the next generation. What she
Speaker 1: has a child that's slightly too old, send her to present,
Speaker 1: Like my god, it's so bad. Like the judge looks
Speaker 1: at this and it's like, what are you guys doing here?
Speaker 1: Like she's like, okay, give her a psyche vail and
Speaker 1: let her go, which like this is a Chicago judge
Speaker 1: in nineteen that is a terrifying individual that that guy
Speaker 1: probably sentenced eight guys to death like that boarding for
Speaker 1: being slightly too queer. And even he's like, what what
Speaker 1: You're trying to put a single mother in prison for
Speaker 1: trying to stay in a hospice for single mothers. This
Speaker 1: is this is this is this is this is definitely
Speaker 1: like the two parts of me are a warring here
Speaker 1: because on one hand, this is an almost unthinkable nightmare.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I'm very pro child prison,
Speaker 1: so this is really tough for me. You know, well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The children too young to do labor.
Speaker 1: So what's the point of child prison? Like, you can't,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't. You can't put a one never
Speaker 1: too young to do labor than can I've seen one
Speaker 1: week olds. They could pick up blocks. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of blocks in this country that need to be
Speaker 1: picked up. Look an aggregate. They can do a lot
Speaker 1: of work. That's all I'm saying. You've watched too many
Speaker 1: Andrew tapes. Hustler, you know you gotta you gotta get
Speaker 1: those kids working. Look, if they're not paying rent, they're
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't suck it up. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to continue this, but all of the different lines that
Speaker 1: come to me are literal pieces of Nazi propaganda, so
Speaker 1: it's probably best just to move off. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: all right, the first few years of Bobby's life, they
Speaker 1: are moving constantly. Regina holds like half a dozen jobs
Speaker 1: in like nine states, and she's, you know, she's like,
Speaker 1: this is the middle of a war two, so it's
Speaker 1: slightly easier to find a job than it would be
Speaker 1: like like in in you know and like say night
Speaker 1: or something. But you know, she's she's she's trying to
Speaker 1: like work enough to keep her family together and keep
Speaker 1: her kids fed. And you know that this one's a
Speaker 1: Bobby's childhood is kind of a mess. Um, it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound good now, Yeah, but one thing that emerges very
Speaker 1: early is that Bobby loves games. Um. His he's biographer
Speaker 1: Frank Brady, who who writes a really good book about
Speaker 1: probably the best like biography of Bobby Fisher called Endgame
Speaker 1: Bobby Fisher's Remarkable Rise and Fall. So there is a fall, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's definitely you know, Okay, I'll give a minor spoiler
Speaker 1: here is Bobby Fisher is the first person to be
Speaker 1: canceled for making fun of nine eleven and maybe the
Speaker 1: only person who deserves to be canceled for it, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't. It does eventually go badly for him, but
Speaker 1: that is it is currently nineteen forty, like what nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: so that's gonna take a while. Um. Yeah, But Frank
Speaker 1: Brady tells the story about how Bobby like he starts
Speaker 1: playing per Cheesy and he really likes the strategy of
Speaker 1: par Cheesy, but every time a random thing happens, he
Speaker 1: just loses his mind and so okay, so so he
Speaker 1: seems to have he has a brain that's very good
Speaker 1: at solving puzzles, and at age six, he buys a
Speaker 1: chest out so he doesn't he doesn't what he means.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like the fact that, like part Cheesy is
Speaker 1: based in part on like rolling of dice. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: he hates that there's an element of chance. Again, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have the raw human courage necessary to play Warhammer
Speaker 1: and that's like he he could never have cut it
Speaker 1: as a Harstone player, which maintain better at that game
Speaker 1: than he ever would have been. Yeah, but okay, So
Speaker 1: unfortunately he discovers chess and he okay, yeah, like six
Speaker 1: years old, he buys a chess set for one dollar.
Speaker 1: He starts playing it with his family, and his family
Speaker 1: is like, I don't want to play chess with you,
Speaker 1: but Bobby just like wants to play chess constantly. So
Speaker 1: he starts doing something very strange, which is he just
Speaker 1: starts playing games against himself. Okay, that made sense, Like
Speaker 1: I have done this before when I was really really bored,
Speaker 1: back like before smartphones existed. And yeah, when the Louis
Speaker 1: body dementia was taking my grandmother, she would just play
Speaker 1: Solitaire over and over and over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over. Yeah, and so that seems that makes sense
Speaker 1: to me. But but the thing, the thing with playing
Speaker 1: chess against yourself is that you know what the other
Speaker 1: person is doing because you're both people. And so that's exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean I play a lot of Like so you
Speaker 1: can play Heroes of Might and Magic three on your
Speaker 1: phone and you can you can do a hot seed mode.
Speaker 1: I've played both sides of that. That can be fun.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I love him on this is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I kind of good, Like he does this like literally
Speaker 1: all the time, Like this is like what he spends
Speaker 1: his day's doing. Yeah, it's more of a way to
Speaker 1: pass time on a flight. But yeah, so Bobby likes
Speaker 1: this a lot, and you know this, this does not
Speaker 1: make him a normal kid. He's really bad at making friends.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, the other part of the part
Speaker 1: of his life is sort of genuinely sad is that
Speaker 1: he's alone, Like after school ends, he's alone basically constantly
Speaker 1: because his school gets out before his sisters does. And
Speaker 1: then his mom is almost never home because she has
Speaker 1: to work like night shifts and day shifts to sort
Speaker 1: of like keep the whole family there, so she doesn't
Speaker 1: get home until super late. And okay, so Bob, Bobby
Speaker 1: has to find something to do. And the thing that
Speaker 1: he does, and he's doing this as like a like
Speaker 1: a pretty small child, like he's like seven or eight.
Speaker 1: When he starts doing this is he starts just reading
Speaker 1: chess books and like playing through the games on his board.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, you know, Okay, So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: he doesn't bobbly fishally like he doesn't really have anyone
Speaker 1: to play against. But on the other hand, if you
Speaker 1: want to train, like you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: train like a six year old to be really good
Speaker 1: at chess, like eventually this is what you do right
Speaker 1: if if you want to get good at chess, you
Speaker 1: sit down with a bunch of books and you study them.
Speaker 1: And he's going to keep doing this literally his entire life.
Speaker 1: It gets to a point where like he just this
Speaker 1: is the only thing he does with his time is
Speaker 1: just sit there and read chess books and articles. Again,
Speaker 1: I have, I've I've made similar choices with warham Or
Speaker 1: in my past. Yeah, although I mean the except Bobby
Speaker 1: is doing this. He is reading so many chess books
Speaker 1: that even like the Soviet chess grandmasters who are literally
Speaker 1: paid by the state specifically to study chess, or like,
Speaker 1: how are you reading this much stuff? And he's just like,
Speaker 1: I just it's the only thing in my life. My
Speaker 1: entire world is empty if anything but chess. And our
Speaker 1: entire world, Mia and mine. Our entire world is empty
Speaker 1: of everything except for the products and services that support
Speaker 1: this podcast. We live in a dank void, surrounded by
Speaker 1: the results of unchecked capital exploitation. Lots and lots of gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: buy some gold. Uh, I do get like ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen messages a day about the gold ads. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and love that that lets you feel like you're not alone.
Speaker 1: I know, guys, I see you. Look. I am a
Speaker 1: big fan of people reaching out to us and letting
Speaker 1: us know that there are random ads from a shady
Speaker 1: gold company going into our thing. Please continue to do that.
Speaker 1: Every day, Sophie messages me and says, my life has
Speaker 1: been improved by the fact that people are complaining about
Speaker 1: these random gold ads. Don't just skip ahead by like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds or a minute using the button on your
Speaker 1: phone message Sophie. She loves it and it makes her
Speaker 1: feel wanted and like she has a wide and and
Speaker 1: broad base of of friends out on the internet just
Speaker 1: checking out to her letting her know there's gold ads
Speaker 1: on the show. So please keep doing it, everybody. One
Speaker 1: of the upsides of podcast is that no, no, even
Speaker 1: none of you ever will I see upsides. None of
Speaker 1: you ever get to see the face of Sophie Big
Speaker 1: stream this which which makes my life better and makes
Speaker 1: your life worse, and that this this makes me happy.
Speaker 1: Just know that my face said I hate you, Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: but you know I don't. Oh, all right there, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's rock on. Yes, let let us return to
Speaker 1: the world of Bobby Fisher as a very small child,
Speaker 1: so all right, but Bobby Fisher's mom is very concerned
Speaker 1: about the fact that he's just sitting around playing chefs
Speaker 1: all the time. But it doesn't have anyone to play
Speaker 1: chess with. So she she emails a chess guy at
Speaker 1: like the local newspaper and it's like, hey, can you
Speaker 1: find someone for my like seven year old child to
Speaker 1: play with? And for for for reasons I do not understand,
Speaker 1: this guy is like, yeah, here go go go play
Speaker 1: at this simultaneous exhibition that this like chess master is
Speaker 1: going to be holding. So yeah, chess masters do these
Speaker 1: things where they're called simul's where you know, like we
Speaker 1: talked about natural during one of these, right, normally they're
Speaker 1: not blindfolded. But it's a guy shows up and like
Speaker 1: you show up in like thirty of you just get
Speaker 1: destroyed by this guy. So the news spreditor is like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: send send, send Bobby Fisher to play against like this
Speaker 1: incredibly strong American player. And the result of this is
Speaker 1: that seven year Oldobby Fisher just gets absolutely annihilated and
Speaker 1: then starts crying because he's a seven year old and
Speaker 1: he's just like gotten destroyed in public and this is
Speaker 1: this is an interesting sort of event of Bobby's life
Speaker 1: because people make a lot out of this, like when
Speaker 1: when you like, this is a critical moment, and like
Speaker 1: it probably kind of is, but also like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's a seven year old. It turns out when when
Speaker 1: when when this happens to a seven year old, they
Speaker 1: cry because there's seven. I mean, it's still toughen up
Speaker 1: a little bit. Come on, he's I don't people expect
Speaker 1: really weird, Like people keep asking, like people like throughout
Speaker 1: the entire lif people would ask Bobby Fisher about the
Speaker 1: games that he played when he was seven, and they're like,
Speaker 1: do you remember these games? It's like this man is seven,
Speaker 1: Like come on, why why? Why? What? Why do you
Speaker 1: the chess writer expect this guy to remember for a
Speaker 1: game that he played at age seven. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm I've just been sort of continuously baffled
Speaker 1: by chess writers as I've been. I mean, chess writer
Speaker 1: does kind of presuppose a few things about a person.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not surprised that someone who would pick
Speaker 1: that as a living would want, like question somebody in
Speaker 1: depth about a series of games they played when they
Speaker 1: were too young to be fully conscious of the world.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me. If someone were to interview
Speaker 1: me about being seven, I would I could probably I
Speaker 1: have moderately strong memories of hurting a bunch of cows
Speaker 1: with a broomstick um in my fucking back forty but
Speaker 1: but that's about it. Um. I remember the time my
Speaker 1: dog got skunked and then ran into the house and
Speaker 1: skunked the entire house. And I remember getting not the
Speaker 1: big lego pirate ship, but I had a good report card,
Speaker 1: and my mom got me the small lego pirate ship,
Speaker 1: and that was the best day of my childhood. You know.
Speaker 1: It was fucking dopes pirate ship. Everybody, I look so
Speaker 1: so someone should have got Bobby Fisher this thing, so
Speaker 1: he didn't turn into Bobby Fisher and said had a
Speaker 1: cool pirate ship. One lego pirate ship could have solved
Speaker 1: a lot of problems instead. Unfortunately, what happens is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so there there's a there's a guy who is the
Speaker 1: president of the Brooklyn Chess Club who like sees the
Speaker 1: seven year old playing this game and he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: the seven year old is actually pretty good. He's and
Speaker 1: and he invites him to join the Brooklyn Chess Club,
Speaker 1: which is very weird because the Brooklyn Chess Club is
Speaker 1: like it's a very xenious organization. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: we're like doctors and lawyers and stuff go to play
Speaker 1: chess and they don't allow children in. But the president
Speaker 1: is like, now i I'm making an exception for this
Speaker 1: like seven year old. And so Bobby shows up and
Speaker 1: nobody wants to play him because and this, this is this,
Speaker 1: this is a sort of a thing that's I think
Speaker 1: kind of special about over the board chess that you
Speaker 1: don't get with very many other things, which is that
Speaker 1: over the board chess is one of the few games
Speaker 1: you can play when you sit down and there's a
Speaker 1: seven year old across of you, and the seven year
Speaker 1: old just destroys you. Yeah, I mean, war ammer actually
Speaker 1: would be one of the others. But yeah, but they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're kind of rare. Now, But that the
Speaker 1: problem is okay, So Bobby Fish, I mean, nobody wants
Speaker 1: it would be cool, it would be it would be
Speaker 1: cool if football worked that way, Like full contact football
Speaker 1: throws some seven year olds on the field. Now, let's
Speaker 1: see if they're prodigies. Put them up against these three
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds steroid monsters. See how it goes? Alright, kid,
Speaker 1: after the snap, there's no more rules, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I wus. So they throw Bobby Fisher into this pool
Speaker 1: and it goes about as well as you would expect.
Speaker 1: The baby fighting like a guy in full football ship,
Speaker 1: which he gets run over and destroyed, like con genuously awesome.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's good for kids. Yeah, But unfortunately he
Speaker 1: like just keeps doing this and so he like even
Speaker 1: even he's progressively more and more of his time is
Speaker 1: consumed by chess. It gets to the point where like
Speaker 1: he has this like little chess set, and his chess
Speaker 1: set is just like covered in crumbs and like stains
Speaker 1: of all the food that he's eating while he's playing chess.
Speaker 1: And this gets to a point that's like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read this thing from Endgame, which that Fisher biography. He
Speaker 1: even maintained his involvement with the game while bathing. The
Speaker 1: Fishers didn't have a working shower, just a bathtub, and Bobby,
Speaker 1: like many young children, needed to be urged to take
Speaker 1: at least a weekly bath. Regina established a Sunday night
Speaker 1: ritual of running a bath for him, practically carrying him
Speaker 1: up to the tub, and once he was settled in
Speaker 1: the water, she'd lay a door from a discarded cabinet
Speaker 1: across the tub is a sort of tray, and then
Speaker 1: bringing Bobby's chest set a container of milk and whatever
Speaker 1: book he was studying at the time help him get
Speaker 1: into position position on the board. Bobby soaked, sometimes for
Speaker 1: hours as he became engrossed in the games of the Greats,
Speaker 1: only emerging from the water prune like when Regina insisted
Speaker 1: the milk of it all. Really, I don't like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not my favorite thing that I've heard. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: to to the too, Regina's actually, this is why we Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm I'm I'm on shower gang.
Speaker 1: Now I'm I'm fully shower pilled, I'm a shower cell.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. I used to think a bath
Speaker 1: was a lovely thing, and now it's been milk defied
Speaker 1: and sounds that sounds horrifying. It sounds like it sounds
Speaker 1: like a scene from the one of the one of
Speaker 1: the later alien movies where one of those androids has
Speaker 1: been wounded and they've got that like white milky blood
Speaker 1: gooping out everywhere. Gross. Thanks for that, Mia, yep, m hm.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as you can see this is this is
Speaker 1: a very normal child. Yeah, it sounds like a great childhood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately he's just taking his milk baths. He's getting his
Speaker 1: ass beaten by adults reading lots of weird chess books.
Speaker 1: Sounds healthy. Yeah, so I can't see how this guy
Speaker 1: turns out to be fast. Oh oh, don't worry. We're
Speaker 1: we're we are literally right about to get to that.
Speaker 1: So okay, the problem is that he just keeps getting
Speaker 1: better at chess. But by the time he's twelve, he's
Speaker 1: like actually really good at the game, Like he's playing
Speaker 1: real tournaments. He's beating people who are actually good at chess.
Speaker 1: And at this point Bobby becomes involved with the extremely
Speaker 1: wealthy chess patron e Floory Locks, who arranges for him
Speaker 1: to go on this like chess trip around the U
Speaker 1: s and then go to Cuba to play chess against
Speaker 1: Cuban chess players. Okay, what do we know about this guy?
Speaker 1: Because that's that's yeah, that's oh boy. Okay, from that
Speaker 1: does sound a little bit. That does sound a little
Speaker 1: bit sketchy. Oh yeah. Locks frequently wore a small black
Speaker 1: enameled the pel pin bearing a gold Nazi swastika. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: it never seemed to attract much attention. He didn't wear
Speaker 1: it all the time, but often enough did you wear
Speaker 1: that once? The people should be like, man, that's it's
Speaker 1: And it didn't seem to inhibit him when he was
Speaker 1: in a Jewish delicatesster and to get his favorite sandwich
Speaker 1: of pastrami on rye, or when he was talking to
Speaker 1: Jewish chess players. One player will I didn't affect him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is like right after the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: I honestly, it shouldn't have mattered if it was before
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, Like you shouldn't be able to you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to go anyway. I think cool, he's getting worse,
Speaker 1: so at won't point. There was a player who gets
Speaker 1: embarrassed when he walks it and you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: he walks in this restaurant. Nobody says anything about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the worst off, just about who this this guy is.
Speaker 1: In addition to the pen, Locks off in wore weather
Speaker 1: permitting a small brimmed alpine fedora with a feather in
Speaker 1: the band adorned with emblom. Some countries he traveled to
Speaker 1: absolutely not okay. She she ostentatiously dressed in later hosing
Speaker 1: at times, and for a few years even sported to
Speaker 1: hit Larry and mustache. When he entered tournaments dressed in
Speaker 1: cocky shirt and fans and dirt tie and displaying that mustache,
Speaker 1: it was as if the Dopper game You're of Dear
Speaker 1: Feury had been incardinated in his home, hung Nazi flags
Speaker 1: and prominent locations and displays of airplanes, models of Mishmitz
Speaker 1: and junkers, as well as semis and yeah, sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm not a world. Look, the German
Speaker 1: language is a cursed Yeah. He also has just like
Speaker 1: a bunch of he's like a giant oil painting of
Speaker 1: of Adolf Hitler in his house and like a bunch
Speaker 1: of third red memor bilios. So this guy is great.
Speaker 1: He sounds dope. Yeah. The next line from this book
Speaker 1: was Lax was inarguably one of the most eccentric people
Speaker 1: in the New York chess community, which, like I guess,
Speaker 1: eccentric is a way that you could describe this guy
Speaker 1: walking around in the Nazi pin with the Hitler mustache
Speaker 1: and later hosen that is that is certainly eccentric, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, so later on in his life, right, but
Speaker 1: by the time he's about sixty, he's on this tour
Speaker 1: when he's like, I think, like thirteen, When he's like
Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen, Bobby is gonna be like a very
Speaker 1: series anti semi and you know, people are always like, well,
Speaker 1: how did this happen? It's like, well, it might have
Speaker 1: been the fact that he was hey, yeah, with this
Speaker 1: Nazi guy, it's impact. And also on the trip to
Speaker 1: Cuba is this guy named Norman T. Whittaker who quote
Speaker 1: had also been in prison for car steff and for
Speaker 1: raping a twelve year old when he was in his sixties,
Speaker 1: he proposed marriage to a fourteen year old. So this
Speaker 1: is a great crowd of chess players, real real luminaries
Speaker 1: in the field. Best to the best. Yeah. Frank pretty
Speaker 1: also notes quote Bobby sat up in front between the
Speaker 1: fascist and the con man, which is this is this
Speaker 1: is called foreshadowing. Sounds like Dad's doing a great job.
Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, well no, no, this is where
Speaker 1: your kid's gotta be Yeah, came there. Well he's dead.
Speaker 1: He's like fucked off somewhere. Yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's good. No, this sounds fine. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear how well the rest of
Speaker 1: this story goes. Well. The problem is he just keeps
Speaker 1: winning a chess So at age thirteen, he wins the
Speaker 1: U S Junior Chess Championship, which is like nuts And okay,
Speaker 1: unfortunately I do have to talk about one game of
Speaker 1: chess because there Bobby Fisher plays, I mean, he plays
Speaker 1: a lot of famous games chess. He plays one very
Speaker 1: famous one at age thirteen. Where okay, so this game
Speaker 1: gets dubbed the game of the century. People talk about
Speaker 1: it literally all the fucking time. I'm sick of it.
Speaker 1: I'm very angry. This game is fine. He plays like
Speaker 1: and he's playing like a very strong international master. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know he he does. He plays a pretty
Speaker 1: cool game where like he likes sacrifice. He famous like
Speaker 1: sacrifices his queen and then uses his sack queen sacrifice
Speaker 1: to like get this attack and does all this stuff
Speaker 1: with his knights in his rooks and everyone is like
Speaker 1: loses exactly unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, okay, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, like this is a pretty good game of chess.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I can open YouTube right now
Speaker 1: and find like a thousand games of chess that are
Speaker 1: way cooler than this that aren't the product of like
Speaker 1: domestic operation paper clip. So, uh, this is this is
Speaker 1: this is this is Okay, this is the extent of
Speaker 1: which I'm going to talk about the game of the
Speaker 1: century because I'm sick of people talking about it. Okay, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but unfortunately I do you have to mention the
Speaker 1: chess people will like attempt to murder me in my sleep.
Speaker 1: So yeah, chess people, you hope you're not I hope
Speaker 1: you're now satisfied. I have briefly covered this one game. See,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about that at all. I feel like
Speaker 1: I could beat the ship out of chess people in
Speaker 1: a fight. Maybe chess books they have, I don't know,
Speaker 1: they have suspiciously high level state contacts, which is not
Speaker 1: I don't know, you you wouldn't think that was true,
Speaker 1: But these guys know a lot of intelligence agencies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's fair. So at age fourteen, Bobby Fisher becomes
Speaker 1: the American chess Champion, and Robert up asking how did
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old win the US Open and become
Speaker 1: the American chess champion? And part of it is just
Speaker 1: that the Americans stuck at chess. Yeah that sounds right.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that's going on here is that
Speaker 1: Bobby Fisher, you know, Okay, so like he he realizes
Speaker 1: that Americans aren't for good at chess, and so he
Speaker 1: learns Russian in order to read Russian chess books. And
Speaker 1: she just keeps doing this his entire life. He just
Speaker 1: keeps learning languages, like specifically to read chess books that
Speaker 1: are in other languages. And so, you know, he he
Speaker 1: starts he starts reading like he's just like reading these things.
Speaker 1: And you know what, while while all of this is happening,
Speaker 1: Bobby Fisher starts getting investigated by the FBI. Okay, which okay,
Speaker 1: so you don't want to get investigated by the FBI. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he is being investigated by the FBI for
Speaker 1: like a third of his life, but somehow it's the
Speaker 1: third of his life where he doesn't think that he's
Speaker 1: being investigated by the FBI, which is a very very
Speaker 1: straight So the reason is this is happening is that
Speaker 1: the FBI thinks that his mom was working for the Soviets.
Speaker 1: And okay, it turns out that not only was she
Speaker 1: not working for the Soviets actually gotten kicked out of
Speaker 1: the Communist partie. But you know, it's the FBI that
Speaker 1: they're not going to let something as petty as you know,
Speaker 1: reality getting way of their sort of domestic like Espiona operations.
Speaker 1: And this gets like so serious that like they are
Speaker 1: the FBI is infiltrating TV shows like the Cruise of
Speaker 1: TV shows that Bobby is going on to like see
Speaker 1: if he's a Soviet spy. Um, his mom starts drilling
Speaker 1: him about what to say if the FBI shows up
Speaker 1: at your door, which is apparently, I have nothing to
Speaker 1: say to you. Yeah, that is no, I mean, that
Speaker 1: is the thing that you say if the FBI shows
Speaker 1: up at your door, come back with the warrant. I'm
Speaker 1: not speaking to you without a lawyer, nothing the funk else.
Speaker 1: Uh No, I mean actually, honestly, this is the first
Speaker 1: time mom has given him good advice. Yeah. Well, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel really bad for her because it's
Speaker 1: like she she well she she also She's also the
Speaker 1: only person about your fish's life who ever attempts to
Speaker 1: stop him from playing chess. But she does just by
Speaker 1: going to like chess psychiatrists and being like, is he
Speaker 1: addicted to chess? But they're all chess psychiatrists and like, no,
Speaker 1: you're going to get good information from a chess psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: So okay. Later on in life, the bally Fisher is
Speaker 1: gonna get absolutely obsessed with the idea that he's being
Speaker 1: spied on and people like coming to kill him. And
Speaker 1: on the one hand, this is just like his own
Speaker 1: sort of like the sent to the conspiracy conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, like it's hard to argue
Speaker 1: about the fact of the U. S Government was in
Speaker 1: fact spying on him for a bunch of his life,
Speaker 1: like did not play a role in this, I mean,
Speaker 1: given the period of time that this is. If you
Speaker 1: are someone who is even moderately prominent in the thing
Speaker 1: that might put you in contact with people outside of
Speaker 1: the United States, you're being spied on by the US government. Okay.
Speaker 1: So on one of the big things happens is uh
Speaker 1: bbbly Fisher is trying to go to the USSR to
Speaker 1: play against the Russian chess players, and you know, so
Speaker 1: the Americans hate this, but okay, so what the larger
Speaker 1: backstory here is because Bally Fisher is now the US
Speaker 1: chess champion. He got in fightedto this like tournament in Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: and if you place high enough in this tournament, you
Speaker 1: get a chance to be in another turn him and
Speaker 1: that and if you and if you win that tournament,
Speaker 1: you can become the world You can play the guy,
Speaker 1: you can play the world taken and become the world champions.
Speaker 1: So he goes to this thing, right, and while he's
Speaker 1: in yugoslav he has to go to US all way.
Speaker 1: But he's like, okay, I'm gonna go to the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union because it's like close. And the Soviets are like, sure, fifteen,
Speaker 1: you have Bobby Fisher, like you you can come be
Speaker 1: a guest in our country because you're good at chess.
Speaker 1: So Fisher shows up to the USSR and like he
Speaker 1: like steps off the plane and just immediately starts demanding
Speaker 1: that the Soviets like bring out their best chess players
Speaker 1: to play him. The Soviets are like, really, dude, like
Speaker 1: we brought you here as a guest and you are
Speaker 1: yelling at us to bring out your best chess players.
Speaker 1: So eventually they bring out a guy named Petrosyan, who
Speaker 1: is like, this guy is four years out from becoming
Speaker 1: the world champion, Like he's a good he's like good
Speaker 1: at chess, but Fisher's piste off because he's not the
Speaker 1: current world champion. And then immediately Fisher starts asking how
Speaker 1: much he's gonna get paid for playing petrosy In, and
Speaker 1: patrosy is like, what the funk are you talking? What
Speaker 1: what do you mean? You came like money? Oh day,
Speaker 1: they have money. It's it becomes clear very quickly in
Speaker 1: this story. They do in fact e body. But he's like,
Speaker 1: He's like what what what do you mean? Like you
Speaker 1: came to stay as a guest here, and now you
Speaker 1: were demanding to get paid money for playing us, Like
Speaker 1: what's happening here? And you know, And Fisher just gets
Speaker 1: progressively more and more mad as this goes on, because
Speaker 1: he wants to play like like like actual like tournament
Speaker 1: games and they're just playing like speed chess, and he
Speaker 1: just gets like progressively angrier and Okay, So there is
Speaker 1: a very important event in the life of all the
Speaker 1: Fisher that happens next, and there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: disputes over what exactly happens. Um. The claim at the
Speaker 1: time was that Fisher like standing right next to his
Speaker 1: like English, like his English translator starts yelling about like,
Speaker 1: quote these Russian pigs. Um. This is the way that
Speaker 1: I've seen it reported in a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of books and articles about him. Um, this is what
Speaker 1: gets reported to the Russian press. Frank Brady, who who's
Speaker 1: Fisher's biographer, claims that Fisher actually said pork and was
Speaker 1: complaining about his food, but the translator got the confused
Speaker 1: the word for pork and pig. But whatever happens, like
Speaker 1: this turns into sort of like a firestorm, right because
Speaker 1: you know, this American kid came here and then starts
Speaker 1: screaming about Russian pigs, and the Soviets are like, okay,
Speaker 1: you like can't stay here now and okay. So so
Speaker 1: that this means a Bobby, Bobby still has time before
Speaker 1: this tournament. He's like, okay, where am I gonna go?
Speaker 1: And then from left field, by god, is that Tito's music?
Speaker 1: Oh shit, oh ship is he coming in with a
Speaker 1: steel chair? He is? He is about to beat the
Speaker 1: ship out of who was who was empowered with the
Speaker 1: Union at this point, I probably Krushchev. He's about he's
Speaker 1: about hit trush chair from the high wire with a
Speaker 1: steale chair. God man, I just every time Tito comes
Speaker 1: into a story, you know things that are about to
Speaker 1: get fun. But you know what else makes things fun?
Speaker 1: Is it the services that support this podcast? And that's
Speaker 1: your goddamn right. There's nothing besides buying products and services
Speaker 1: that makes anyone happy. Um. And that's the truth. That's science,
Speaker 1: that's mathematics, and we're back, all right, Please continue, Maya.
Speaker 1: So Bobby is about is getting kicked out, so you
Speaker 1: diot Yugoslavia, who is like the great socialist enemy of
Speaker 1: the USSR, swoops in. It's like, hey Bobby Fisher, Yeah,
Speaker 1: come here play our grand masters. It will be great.
Speaker 1: And you know Fisher Fisher is like incredibly happy about this.
Speaker 1: And I just gotta say this man, Tito, old buddy,
Speaker 1: this man is going to do things to your country that,
Speaker 1: if you found them out, would cause all of your
Speaker 1: organs to explode simultaneously. Like you should have left him
Speaker 1: to the Soviets. But unfortunately, Tito, Tito, Tito offers hospitality
Speaker 1: to this this terrifying American man. And you know that
Speaker 1: the product of this is that Fisher like goes to
Speaker 1: Ugos of you and loves it there and for like
Speaker 1: the rest of his life he's going to well, okay
Speaker 1: and this and this is where we need to be
Speaker 1: sort of careful. He's going to like, he's going to
Speaker 1: like Belgrade a lot specifically. Yeah, this has becoming to
Speaker 1: become important later. Y Belgrades dope city. Love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you want to get a pile of perfectly cooked,
Speaker 1: processed meat walked to you by a waiter who was
Speaker 1: actively smoking a cigarette over the plate and enjoy the
Speaker 1: entire experience, Belgrade is the city for you. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean that ironically great town. Love it. Yeah, Fisure, I
Speaker 1: don't know, he he he and he just enjoys that
Speaker 1: a lot and other stuff that he's doing their question work.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that a little bit. Um. Okay. So
Speaker 1: he's playing this tournament, right and everyone expects him to
Speaker 1: just sort of bomb out because he's like fifteen. But
Speaker 1: instead what he does he draws like a bunch of
Speaker 1: the best players in the world, and you know, he
Speaker 1: beats He beat some people. He draws like three of
Speaker 1: the best Soviet players and somehow, you know, this like
Speaker 1: fifteen year old kid from the from like the just
Speaker 1: just the absolute provincial backwater United States, uh like, qualifies
Speaker 1: for the champions Sernament and simultaneously becomes the youngest grand
Speaker 1: master in history. And at this point that everyone starts
Speaker 1: to lose their minds for Bobby Fisher. Like all over
Speaker 1: the American chess scene, everyone suddenly talking about, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, there's this kid who could beat the Soviets
Speaker 1: at chess. Like he gets he gets a full editorial
Speaker 1: in the New York Times. Um, suddenly there's just like
Speaker 1: there's like the great White hope against the Soviet chess machine.
Speaker 1: And you know, every like from this point on, like
Speaker 1: everything that he does just becomes like in layered and
Speaker 1: like levels and layers and layers and layers and layers
Speaker 1: of propaganda because the US had finally done the thing
Speaker 1: that it always does when it used to fight communism.
Speaker 1: They had found their own Nazi. So it's even at
Speaker 1: like this age, Bobby is very very anti Semitic. Um,
Speaker 1: he's better at hiding it than he's going to be
Speaker 1: later on, but he is doing stuff like, for example,
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Judica, I like put him in on their
Speaker 1: list of like famous Jewish people because his parents are Jewish.
Speaker 1: And he writes them a letter saying he is not
Speaker 1: Jewish and they need to take him off his list,
Speaker 1: and then he starts doing something he's gonna do for
Speaker 1: the entire rest of his life, which is threatened to
Speaker 1: whip out his dick to show that he's not circumcised
Speaker 1: and thus not Jewish, which is like, I can't argue
Speaker 1: with that. Perfect there, I don't know, I I have
Speaker 1: nothing on this. It is a very, very weird kind
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism, and I need everyone like, Okay, when
Speaker 1: whenever you think of body Fisher, you need to understand
Speaker 1: that he is, at old times two steps away from
Speaker 1: just whipping out of his dick to prove how not
Speaker 1: Jewish he is. Like he he's gonna like, there's gonna
Speaker 1: being racism into the proud tradition of whipping out your
Speaker 1: dick at a at a chess tournament. That's that's heartbreaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's I don't know, it's it's it's he's he
Speaker 1: is a wildly weird anti semetic person. That there's there's
Speaker 1: another story of a sort of early an early anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty two he's doing this interview. He's
Speaker 1: I think, how does he like eighteen or nineteen at
Speaker 1: this point? Uh. There there's Harper's Magazine interview where I
Speaker 1: he says, quote, yeah, there are too many Jews in chess.
Speaker 1: They have taken away the class of the game. They
Speaker 1: don't dress too nicely. That's what I don't like. And
Speaker 1: I want to remind everyone here, like, Okay, Bobby Fisher
Speaker 1: is about to become like the like literally the symbol
Speaker 1: of American chess, right, and you know, like a genuine
Speaker 1: sort of geopolitical and moral hero of the US. And
Speaker 1: this was just in Harper's magazine. Like he just said
Speaker 1: that he's and that and that's and this isn't like
Speaker 1: it's not like he's saying this to like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a tiny village paper in like rural Idaho or
Speaker 1: something like, like the journalists actually read this, right, But
Speaker 1: you know, there is something that's gonna happen time and
Speaker 1: time beginning the stories. It like the press. It's just
Speaker 1: like they'll they'll see him say something like like this,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna see some pretty good chess, and
Speaker 1: they're just instantly gonna forget about it, and everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: go back to comparing him to like Mozart and like
Speaker 1: Picasso and immediately forget what he thinks about the Holocaust. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a literal Nazi, but he's good at chess, so
Speaker 1: who can say if it's bad? Yeah? Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: but back in being good at chess for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Um Fisher qualifies for the Candidates Tournament, which is is
Speaker 1: a tournament where like, if you win it, you get
Speaker 1: the Red Challenge, the World Championship, and like almost immediately
Speaker 1: after he gets there, he makes history of becoming the
Speaker 1: first grand master ever to get into a fist fight
Speaker 1: with another grand master at a chess tournament. Okay, now
Speaker 1: that's dope. That's that. That's good. That's like, that's like
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler and fucking happy Gilmore. Yeah so alright, so
Speaker 1: I I respect that. Look, he's a Nazi, but that's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Yeah, and then he does he does another
Speaker 1: there's another very famous Bobby Fishing thing that happens here.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read this a endgame. Henry Stockhold, the
Speaker 1: chess player who was covering the match for the Associated Press,
Speaker 1: brought Bobby to a broth of one night and waited
Speaker 1: for him. When Bobby exited an hour later, Stockholm asked
Speaker 1: him how he enjoyed it, and Bobby's comment, which he
Speaker 1: repeated other times, has been quoted, chess is better. Huh.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is a a incredibly weird,
Speaker 1: weird dude. Um. Unfortunately for Bobby, he just gets like
Speaker 1: destroyed in this tournament, and this leads to basically what
Speaker 1: what becomes the Bobby Fisher Chess Special. Uh. He immediately
Speaker 1: starts dreaming about how the entire tournament was rigged, and
Speaker 1: this is like enough that he gets an entire like
Speaker 1: giant I think it was like a front cover piece
Speaker 1: in Sports Illustrated called the Russians have fixed World Chess.
Speaker 1: And okay, so this is kind of true. Um, what
Speaker 1: was happening at these tournaments that the Soviets would play
Speaker 1: these like fast draws against each other so that they
Speaker 1: could like preserve their energy from they had to play
Speaker 1: non Soviet players. But also there there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: there's like there's endless analysis of this that's done and
Speaker 1: by like people then and people now and basically what
Speaker 1: they concluded was like, Okay, so the Soviets win every tournament,
Speaker 1: but the Soviets win every tournament because they have more
Speaker 1: good chess players than anyone else. Does I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that makes sense. Yeah, but Bobby, Bobby is convinced
Speaker 1: it because they're just like cheaters and he this, he
Speaker 1: this just like he gets really really angry at this,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's already embissing this grudge from the
Speaker 1: Soviets like kicked him out, and so at this point
Speaker 1: he basically just like swears a turnover revenge on the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union to the point where he refuses to play
Speaker 1: any tournaments that the International Chess Federation puts on because
Speaker 1: he's like the International Chess Federation is like a tool
Speaker 1: of the Soviets. And I mean, here, man, yeah, well okay,
Speaker 1: so this this is you know, as much as I've
Speaker 1: been saying, this is where he starts to get really weird. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's just like she's like, I guess it's like
Speaker 1: that's like a little fucky what they were doing, but
Speaker 1: that's not really it's not really right, Like if you're
Speaker 1: playing them, you're still just playing a game of chess.
Speaker 1: Like they haven't taken chess steroids. They're not They're not
Speaker 1: hiding an extra queen up their sleeves. They're just like
Speaker 1: kind of coming in a little fresher than you because
Speaker 1: they sucked around slightly. But I don't know, cheating seems
Speaker 1: like a weird way to phrase that. Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: just gets he gets just utterly like he like on
Speaker 1: his like deathbed, he is going to be yelling about
Speaker 1: how the Soviets cheated him and like stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and you know, okay, And partially she just gets like
Speaker 1: like yeah, he she turns into a kind of guy
Speaker 1: that is partly very recognizable and partly not so. He's
Speaker 1: two favorite books in this period are ninety four and
Speaker 1: Animal Form. This is a you know, these are going great. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess he didn't read a lot of other
Speaker 1: or well, no, it's amazingly that those are like the
Speaker 1: two most normal things he's going to read from Hugh
Speaker 1: right out. He also like he starts listening to my My,
Speaker 1: My ancient enemy, the evangelical preacher Billy Graham. Oh no,
Speaker 1: and then he discovers a man named Herbert w Armstrong's
Speaker 1: radio Church of God. Oh no. No, not Armstrong. Oh
Speaker 1: we should talk about Armstrong a little bit. Armstrong is
Speaker 1: he's cut from the same cloth. We've mentioned him once
Speaker 1: or twice on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's like
Speaker 1: he's like, I mean he said that, he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's I think he's technically Christian, but he's definitely technically Christian.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Here's that he's not a Trinitarian. And
Speaker 1: at that point I I started I started looking at
Speaker 1: you real closely. When you deny the Trinity as to
Speaker 1: whether or not you are actually a Christian. This is
Speaker 1: this is the line that I he was someone who
Speaker 1: was not Christian and imposed on Christianity. See see how
Speaker 1: they like imperialism this once he's have no opinion on that.
Speaker 1: But Armstrong is like a weird, real weirdo. He's like
Speaker 1: a he's a British Israelite, which is just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's yeah, he's he's These are the folks
Speaker 1: who believe that like British people are the real Jews,
Speaker 1: and Jews aren't real, like the actual Jewish people are
Speaker 1: not actual Jewish people, which you know, there's there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of weird like it. This kind of feeds into
Speaker 1: the creativity movement and oh good, yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so what what there There's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: he like it gets involved with um Fisher. Fisher like, well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't quite joined the church because there are some
Speaker 1: like prescriptions on stuff that the church has rules about,
Speaker 1: like you're not supposed to date and inside the church,
Speaker 1: and Fishers like this is stupid, So he doesn't technically
Speaker 1: joined the church, but he's like classifying, yeah, but also
Speaker 1: picks up something that like he picks up Basically, these
Speaker 1: guys are also sort of like I don't know if
Speaker 1: proto is rusher, but they're basically like like Christian science people,
Speaker 1: so they like don't believe in doctors and they don't
Speaker 1: believe vaccinations, and Fisher like picks this up. He like
Speaker 1: is really hardcore on this don't go to doctor's thing.
Speaker 1: And he also starts tiping the church ten percent of
Speaker 1: his income. And the other thing he starts doing around
Speaker 1: this period is he starts carrying around this blue cardboard
Speaker 1: box everywhere that he goes, and he would just refuse
Speaker 1: to open everyone when I like he's he's just walking
Speaker 1: about carrying his blue carbrot box. Everyone's like, okay, Fisher
Speaker 1: like what what what is this blue carbet box? And
Speaker 1: he just gets really mad when anyone asked him. And
Speaker 1: one time he finally like relented to the pressure and
Speaker 1: opened it, and inside of the box was the Bible, which,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like this is something that like a
Speaker 1: youth pastor with the story like a youth pastor would tell.
Speaker 1: That's like one of those like this child's bab there, buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he gets very weird. Um uh so okay, So
Speaker 1: this goes on for like a couple He has a
Speaker 1: couple of years of being wrapped in his like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna play for feed a, I'm not gonna He
Speaker 1: plays like very little chess. But eventually Fee is able
Speaker 1: to sort of like entice him back to like play
Speaker 1: chess again by like changing the format of the World's
Speaker 1: tournament so like people couldn't the candidates tournaments, people can't collude.
Speaker 1: And so WII Fisher like goes into this tournament and
Speaker 1: he just trivially easily destroys like three Soviet grandmasters, and
Speaker 1: he you know, he's very very quickly and incredibly decisively.
Speaker 1: He just annihilates them. And this means that he has
Speaker 1: the right the challenge the world champion for Spassky, who
Speaker 1: at this point Spasky is like one of the few
Speaker 1: people on earth that Fisher has never beaten. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is a sensation in the US suddenly, like you
Speaker 1: know what, back back back back when you like qualified
Speaker 1: for the candidate term like chest, like there was some
Speaker 1: carbage of it and like chess people talking now like
Speaker 1: everyone knows who Bobby Fisher is, like any entire country
Speaker 1: that this is this is like everyone and something everyone's
Speaker 1: in the chest too, Like it's on the front page
Speaker 1: in New York Times every when people briefly cared about
Speaker 1: hockey because because of that team fought the Soviets. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and like this this is this is this is basically
Speaker 1: the seventies version of like the Hans the Magnus Carlson
Speaker 1: Hans Neilman like cheating butt plug thing, and it sparks
Speaker 1: like until basically literally this month probably like the greatest
Speaker 1: chess boom America has ever seen. And you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so this this is like nobody really cares about chess.
Speaker 1: What was actually happening here? This is you know, this
Speaker 1: is like this is basically American nationalisment sort of anti communism,
Speaker 1: and Fisher is seen by everyone, like including himself, as
Speaker 1: as a Cold warrior, a term that people took like
Speaker 1: incredibly seriously at this time, and now it sounds like
Speaker 1: the tag off for like a rip off Mortal Kombat character. Yep,
Speaker 1: And you know, okay, Like the stated reason for this
Speaker 1: is that, like chess is like a big deal to
Speaker 1: the Soviets, is ideologically important, like Lenin like played chess
Speaker 1: and wanted everyone to play chess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 1: This is the thing you have to understand about the
Speaker 1: Club Bar is every single person on the face of
Speaker 1: the earth is completely insane during this entire period, right,
Speaker 1: this match has literally no effect on the Cold War nothing.
Speaker 1: It does nothing, and there was never a chance it
Speaker 1: could even conceivably have done anything. And I want to
Speaker 1: want to keep this in mind as we tell as
Speaker 1: I tell the story of this World Championship, because by
Speaker 1: the end of the story, the President of the United
Speaker 1: States is going to be personally involved in getting Bouny
Speaker 1: Fisher to play this game like this is this is
Speaker 1: a game of chess. They're just playing chess. This is
Speaker 1: everyone is completely deranged. So okay, on on not nothing,
Speaker 1: although we've prefaced this with the fact that like, nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody involved with this is even remotely saying um. Bubby
Speaker 1: Fisher is like, okay, he's headed into his like World
Speaker 1: championship match with Boris Spatsky. They're gonna play a bunch
Speaker 1: of games. One of them is gonna win. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a huge fight about the location that frankly doesn't matter
Speaker 1: that they settle on Iceland and this tournament, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be a huge deal. It has
Speaker 1: the largest prize pool of all time for a chess match,
Speaker 1: and Bobby Fisher takes a look at the most money
Speaker 1: a chess player has ever received for playing chess and
Speaker 1: is like, no, I want a bigger cut of the
Speaker 1: ticket sales. And they're like, Bobby, like if if you,
Speaker 1: if you take money from the ticket sales, like we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose money on this, and he's like, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I literally will not play unless you give me money
Speaker 1: from the ticket sales. And they think he's bluffing, but
Speaker 1: he's not bluffing. He cancels his flight from New York
Speaker 1: to Icelands because they won't like pay him more, and
Speaker 1: This is also very funny because the head of Days
Speaker 1: at Chess Federation, who's like the guy who's been organizing
Speaker 1: this whole thing is a very hard core anti communist, right,
Speaker 1: and he's you're trying to use this whole matches anti
Speaker 1: commist propaganda. But you know, you get what you pay for, buddy, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to do anti caap and anti communist propaganda,
Speaker 1: have fun dealing with like this absolute capitalist asshole who
Speaker 1: just keeps extorting you literally every five seconds. And okay,
Speaker 1: so this this, this, this, this, this sort of saga
Speaker 1: a Fisher Fisher like refusing to show up to Iceland
Speaker 1: continues until a chess journalist calls this British investment banker
Speaker 1: named Derek Slayter who puts like nine hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money into the price pool in order to
Speaker 1: get Fisher to play. And Fisher is still liking Yeah,
Speaker 1: And at this point, Henry fucking Kissinger makes a personal
Speaker 1: call to Bubby Fisher and says, you have to play
Speaker 1: this game for America. The United States of America requires
Speaker 1: you you played this chess game. And this finally infences
Speaker 1: Bobby Bobby to play. Now, the other thing that's that's
Speaker 1: very weird about this is okay, So this is like
Speaker 1: this is like you know, high Cold war drama, right.
Speaker 1: So you would expect that Fisher's opponent, who has Boris
Speaker 1: Spassky like that, the darling of the Soviet chess machine.
Speaker 1: You would expect him to be a communist. But no,
Speaker 1: he's a czarist. Oh no, here's a quote from Spasky.
Speaker 1: As for my views, I'm a Russian nationalist and there's
Speaker 1: nothing scary about that. Don't be afraid. Some say that
Speaker 1: Russian nationalist is a nasty thing, most definitely an anti
Speaker 1: semit to racist and national Boshelvik. No, for a nationalist
Speaker 1: God exists and that and nations that respect each other.
Speaker 1: I'm a convinced monarchist. I remained a monarchistory in the
Speaker 1: Soviet years and never tried to hide that. I believe
Speaker 1: the greatness of Russia's connected to the activity of the
Speaker 1: national leaders represented by our czars. Uh. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I talked about this a bit earlier, but like this
Speaker 1: was the moment where I I finally just became convinced
Speaker 1: that I spent like a bunch of time trying to
Speaker 1: find like a super grand master who has like normal
Speaker 1: ish politics. And the thing that I realized, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: something about just spending all your time playing trust to
Speaker 1: drives you completely bad. Like all of these people have
Speaker 1: the most nonsense politics I've ever seen. Like it's like
Speaker 1: looking through a poll board and you just find you
Speaker 1: find ideologies are like how are you as czarist in
Speaker 1: like two thousand and three? What? What what is happening here?
Speaker 1: I mean there are still czarists today, Like there's there's
Speaker 1: many many monarchists on Twitter at least that you can find.
Speaker 1: And if you if you go to YouTube and you
Speaker 1: look up like Russian imperial anthems and stuff from the area,
Speaker 1: you will find people being like for the days of
Speaker 1: Nikolaia the Second um. So, I don't know, I'm not so.
Speaker 1: I'm also not surprised that a chess guy in specific
Speaker 1: would be a monarchist. It is low key a monarchist,
Speaker 1: is true. But but the thing that's word about this, right,
Speaker 1: it's like all of the sort of like all of
Speaker 1: the like every every single like major communists. I don't
Speaker 1: know if actually talent did, but like every like major
Speaker 1: communist person like Cheeto plays chess, Lenin plays chess. Che
Speaker 1: Guevara at one point, like helps Fisher play a tournament
Speaker 1: in Cuba, Like everyone plays chess, and then all of
Speaker 1: their chess players are like weird fascists and none of
Speaker 1: them are communists. It's it's, oh God, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'll never understand chess, so I I but but clearly,
Speaker 1: if you like chess a lot, you're problematic. So I
Speaker 1: think we can say that for certain. It's true. This,
Speaker 1: this is this is how I get canceled. So all right,
Speaker 1: this I'm just gonna read a quote about end notes
Speaker 1: about what from Endgame, about what Bobby Fisher does when
Speaker 1: he like finally shows up in Iceland after getting personally
Speaker 1: called by Henry Kissinger several hours later. Coming home from
Speaker 1: bowling in the early hours in the morning, before returning
Speaker 1: to the hotel, Bobby sneaked into the playing hall to
Speaker 1: check out the conditions. After an a minute expection, he
Speaker 1: had a number of complaints. He thought the lighting should
Speaker 1: be brighter, the pieces of the chess set were too
Speaker 1: small for the squares of the custom built board. The
Speaker 1: board itself was not quite right. It was made of stone,
Speaker 1: and he thought wood would be preferable. Finally, he thought
Speaker 1: that the two cameras hidden inside burlap covered towers might
Speaker 1: be distracting when he began to play, and the towers
Speaker 1: themselves looming over the stage like medieval battering rounds were disconcerting.
Speaker 1: So he's showing up at like four in the morning
Speaker 1: and he walks into the hall and he just starts
Speaker 1: bitching about all like the chess pieces are the wrong size,
Speaker 1: and so okay, the Torenament organizers are like, whatever, we
Speaker 1: need this game to happen, and they're they're during they're
Speaker 1: just destrove his match to happen, and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: So chess starts to be played. But in the words
Speaker 1: of John Boys, who cares about that, midway through game one,
Speaker 1: Bubby Fisher starts complaining that one of the cameras in
Speaker 1: the back is distracting, so that the game like adjourns
Speaker 1: for the day. There's a there's a thing that created
Speaker 1: were like you played four He moves and then everyone
Speaker 1: leaves and goes home, and you come back and finish
Speaker 1: the game the next day. So Fisher comes in, he
Speaker 1: plays one move and then he stands up on live TV,
Speaker 1: walks to the backstage, and spends thirty five minutes of
Speaker 1: his own game time with his clock taking down, screaming
Speaker 1: at the organizers to take down the camera and okay.
Speaker 1: They eventually give in. But the next day, the game
Speaker 1: is supposed to start and Fisher is nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: Fish Fisher's team shows up his you know, his team
Speaker 1: is sort of like lawyers and like advised. They show
Speaker 1: up and they tell them that Bobby Fisher will not
Speaker 1: play unless all cameras are removed from the venue. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Bobby, Jesus, what a fucking frame, Madonna, it
Speaker 1: gets it. This is this is, this is we we are.
Speaker 1: We are like baby in the early mid game of
Speaker 1: Bobby of Bobby doing this ship in this tournament. Um, okay.
Speaker 1: So he then refuses to even show up to the
Speaker 1: hall to see if the accommodations organizers were like, okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll move cameras, and he like he won't even
Speaker 1: show up to like check if they're fine. So, you know,
Speaker 1: he just he's not there. So that the game starts,
Speaker 1: right especially is like okay, I'm going to start the
Speaker 1: game clock and Fisher is just still in his bed,
Speaker 1: like in his underwear in his hotel. And eventually the
Speaker 1: organizers are like, okay, fine, for one game, we will
Speaker 1: remove all the cameras, and Fisher goes, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: show up unless you give me back all of the
Speaker 1: time on my chest clock that I spent yelling, like
Speaker 1: arguing with you about removing these cameras. And the organizers
Speaker 1: finally are like, come on, man, like that that there
Speaker 1: has to be a line, like you can't just not
Speaker 1: show up to your match and then demand we give
Speaker 1: you all of your time back because you were arguing
Speaker 1: with us. So and they everyone at every point in
Speaker 1: the story like expects Fisher is gonna compromise. He just doesn't.
Speaker 1: He just does not show up for this game. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so we're we're not We're not on day four, right,
Speaker 1: and the organizers are like Fish. Fisher is like, no,
Speaker 1: we I we need to wipe this game from the record.
Speaker 1: I didn't lose this game. You have to like forget
Speaker 1: that I didn't show up. And they're like, come on, like,
Speaker 1: you didn't show up to this game, And so Fisher
Speaker 1: books a flight home to the US. So it is
Speaker 1: now day four of the World Chess Championship. Fisher is
Speaker 1: still refusing to play the New York Times on its
Speaker 1: front page publishes an article begging him to play, like
Speaker 1: that's sad. Yeah, she gets a second call New York Times.
Speaker 1: Don't fucking simp for a fascist impossible challenge. Every Kisses
Speaker 1: calls him again Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon personally invites him
Speaker 1: to the White House. And that is the least the
Speaker 1: least surprising part of this story. Also the fact that
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger would negotiate back. Yeah, it's and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: we we we could reasonably ask yourselves at this point,
Speaker 1: why is the Secretary of States and the President of
Speaker 1: the United States getting involved to make sure some like
Speaker 1: random massi Antis plays chess game? And the answer is that, like,
Speaker 1: insofar as this game is is important anyway, it's because
Speaker 1: you know, it's about like symbols and sort of myths
Speaker 1: and spat Sky is like the representative of like the
Speaker 1: bureaucratic like Terra rapp Artus of the Soviet Union because
Speaker 1: being challenged, but like this like lone individual man manic
Speaker 1: genius of the free world. But like, okay, if you
Speaker 1: think you can take about two seconds to think about
Speaker 1: what the US is doing while this is going on, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: Like what what what is Kissinger doing? And the answer
Speaker 1: is using one of the like literally one of history's largest,
Speaker 1: most most like bureaucratic organizations to delivery munitions from Tennessee
Speaker 1: to Tokyo in order to burn children alive in Vietnam
Speaker 1: and Cambodia to you know, prop up an incredibly corrupt
Speaker 1: and tyrannical narco dictatorship. So you know, in some sense, right,
Speaker 1: Fisher is is like he's something. He is kind of
Speaker 1: someone the Americans need, right, He's he's someone that, like
Speaker 1: someone like Kissinger or someone like Nixon, deeds to be
Speaker 1: the sort of like individualist hero to match the Soviets
Speaker 1: collective hero, because otherwise everyone's gonna start questions about start
Speaker 1: like asking questions about the fact that like we also
Speaker 1: have our own terror bureaucracy. It's like murdering everyone in
Speaker 1: the street. But like, no, hey, look it's Bobby Fisher.
Speaker 1: We're gonna like wave this like like shiny trinket in
Speaker 1: front of you and be like he is all of us.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile, like okay, like the great American collective
Speaker 1: hero is sitting in his underwear refusing to play, like
Speaker 1: refusing to play chess because there's cameras in the room,
Speaker 1: and and even after all of this, Fisher is still
Speaker 1: refusing to play. And what eventually convinces him is that,
Speaker 1: like Boris Spatsky, who by all rights at this point
Speaker 1: could simply have gone, I beat him, he refused to
Speaker 1: play me again, I'm going home just like fine, I
Speaker 1: will look like I will go talk to him, will
Speaker 1: play a game like backstage where there's no cameras, and Fisher,
Speaker 1: like finally having gotten literally everything that he wants out
Speaker 1: of this temper trans ram like wait until ninety minutes
Speaker 1: before the match is going to start, and finally angreased
Speaker 1: to play. So the mass starts again, Fisher makes one move,
Speaker 1: jumps out of his seat and starts screaming at the
Speaker 1: organizers that there's a camera again. And at this point, Spassky,
Speaker 1: who is like he has been putting up with Fisher's
Speaker 1: bullshit for like months now, just like just snaps and
Speaker 1: just like walks out of the room, and this one
Speaker 1: referee has to convince both Spassky and Fisher that they
Speaker 1: should actually play this game. And eventually, this guy who
Speaker 1: like absolutely should have had Kissinger's job because he's apparently
Speaker 1: just a miracle worker like manages to convince bothon to
Speaker 1: play the game, and at this point, like the game
Speaker 1: after like a litany of bullshit, two calls from the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, uh like, cash infusions from British bankers,
Speaker 1: that the thing like finally gets going. And meanwhile in
Speaker 1: the US, like this is such a big deal. It's
Speaker 1: a good thing. There's no other problems happening in the
Speaker 1: world at this these people focusing on like this was
Speaker 1: the number one thing happening at the time. Yeah, well, okay, here,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get something about that. So so PBS puts
Speaker 1: together a special program specifically just to broadcast these games.
Speaker 1: This is watched by over a million people. Um, here's
Speaker 1: from endgame. So popular was to show that it crowded
Speaker 1: out the baseball and tennis coverage normally seen in sports
Speaker 1: bars in New York, and when the channel was covering
Speaker 1: the Democratic National Convention in Washington, the stations were flooded
Speaker 1: with thousands of calls to have them put the chess
Speaker 1: match back on. Station officials gave into the viewers demands,
Speaker 1: dropped the convention and went back to broadcasting the match.
Speaker 1: Oh god, so okay, people love chess Badia. But like
Speaker 1: back in the match, like nothing interesting happens, is not
Speaker 1: a very good match. Both of them are playing kind
Speaker 1: of badly. Fisher wins, and then he shows up to
Speaker 1: his metal ceremony and then in order to complain that
Speaker 1: there's not his name isn't engraved on the metal, and
Speaker 1: that it is that that is that is Fisher winning
Speaker 1: the Chess World Championship. You know he at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, Fish Fisher is an American hero, right, like
Speaker 1: all the stuff. He has a profoundly American figure, and
Speaker 1: he comes back that is undeniable. He sounds extremely American.
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing. So okay. So he comes back to
Speaker 1: the US and he gets like he has a just
Speaker 1: infinite number of sponsorship deals and like branding stuff, and
Speaker 1: everyone wants talked to him, and she just turns them
Speaker 1: all down. Um, here's here, here's here's one last thing
Speaker 1: for mend game. The most fabulous offer came to Fisher
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, right after the Muhammad Ali George
Speaker 1: Foreman fight known as the Rumble and the Jungle in Zaire.
Speaker 1: The Ziari Government's offered Fisher five million dollars. I think
Speaker 1: it's like, that's like forty million dollars or something in
Speaker 1: modern money to play Anatoly Karpov in their country and
Speaker 1: what would have been a month long championship chess match
Speaker 1: too short, said Bobby. How dare they offered me five
Speaker 1: million dollars for a month long match? This is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is thirty million dollars in today's money. Alive received
Speaker 1: twice much for one night. He didn't Mohammed Ali not
Speaker 1: a ten million dollars, but also Mohammed Ali's the sport
Speaker 1: that he played involved him destroying his brain by getting
Speaker 1: his skull smash. So yeah, I understand why he might
Speaker 1: get more money. Yeah, get get Get this fucking next line.
Speaker 1: It was after that match that Ali became began calling
Speaker 1: himself the greatest, and Bobby took issue with that too.
Speaker 1: Alie stole it from me, said Bobby. I used the
Speaker 1: greatest for myself on television before he ever used it. Okay, okay, Bobby,
Speaker 1: you don't get to copyright the term the greatest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you don't get complained that Mohammed Ali. No, no,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think we should do a hybrid
Speaker 1: chess boxing match between Ali murdered him. It would have
Speaker 1: been a missing he would have that man would have
Speaker 1: died in the ring. It would have been would have
Speaker 1: been very funny. Unfortunately, chess boxing will not become a
Speaker 1: popular thing until two months ago. So rest yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is this is where we're gonna leave Fisher
Speaker 1: here for today, at the absolute peak of his fame
Speaker 1: and yell yelling at Muhammad a leave for calling himself
Speaker 1: the greatest because he did it first. I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree chess was a mistake. Yeah, yeah, um miya,
Speaker 1: you wanna plug your plug doublets before we we write out. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I I do a show called it Could Happen here
Speaker 1: that Robert is also on sometimes and other people are
Speaker 1: also on and it's good and you should listen to it.
Speaker 1: And I'm also at it me hr three on Twitter
Speaker 1: if you'd want to be there for some reason. Uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a book called After the Revolution. You can
Speaker 1: buy it by typing it into any place that sells books,
Speaker 1: Amazon or the shop dot org or whatever that places,
Speaker 1: or just go to the a K Press website. You
Speaker 1: can buy After the Revolution everywhere. Um alright, folks, until
Speaker 1: next week, go go go play Warhammer. You know, engage
Speaker 1: with the true sport of strategic masters, the one that
Speaker 1: has a lot of chainsaws in it. Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.