Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to the December twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five Q and A episode of Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 1: I was always planning to do a Q and A
Speaker 1: episode this month. I think most of the shows in
Speaker 1: the Cool Zone Media family do one of these around
Speaker 1: the end of the year, but this one is coming
Speaker 1: a little early. You probably noticed that there was an
Speaker 1: unexpected rerun a few weeks ago, and that's because I
Speaker 1: was very sick. I had some sort of terrible virus
Speaker 1: and it knocked me out for like two weeks. The
Speaker 1: worst part was the laryngitis. I was on total vocal
Speaker 1: rest for more than a week, mostly because I couldn't
Speaker 1: have made a sound even if I wanted to. It
Speaker 1: was torture, not just because that's literally my livelihood, but
Speaker 1: I love talking. I mean, I have to talk for work.
Speaker 1: You can't make a podcast without talking, but I just
Speaker 1: love talking recreationally. I never stopped talking, so it was
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Anyway. I lost two weeks of my life
Speaker 1: to the blanket fort on the couch. And then there's
Speaker 1: the general messiness of the holiday season. So I'm all
Speaker 1: mixed up in backwards but trying to get back on track.
Speaker 1: We will hit the ground running in the new year
Speaker 1: with something fun and exciting, but this month is just
Speaker 1: going to be a hodgepodge of different sorts of episodes.
Speaker 1: The episode I have planned for next week is a
Speaker 1: sort of Weird Little Guy round up, just catching up
Speaker 1: with recent developments in the lives of some of the
Speaker 1: weird Little Guys I've been checking in on from time
Speaker 1: to time for years. I originally had this episode and
Speaker 1: that episode switched on my calendar, but I think waiting
Speaker 1: one more week might be enough time to get some
Speaker 1: more updates in some of those stories. So for now,
Speaker 1: let's get to your questions. I put out a call
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, and I've sorted the questions you
Speaker 1: all sent in into a few broad categories. Questions about
Speaker 1: the process of making the show, questions about particular topics
Speaker 1: you'd like to see covered, and questions about me. I
Speaker 1: won't be able to answer all of them specifically, but
Speaker 1: I am going to try to get to at least
Speaker 1: one of every flavor of questions that you guys had,
Speaker 1: And honestly, most of what you guys asked is about me.
Speaker 1: There were relatively few questions about particular weird Little guys,
Speaker 1: or the actual content of the show, the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of the questions, or about the nitty gritty details of
Speaker 1: how I make the show, about my life and my
Speaker 1: process and what I'm doing when I'm not writing the
Speaker 1: words you hear me saying softly into your headphones every week.
Speaker 1: I think part of that is just a built in
Speaker 1: selection bias, Right. The kind of listener is going to
Speaker 1: bother to send in a question to a podcast isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily representative of the overall audience, and those listeners are
Speaker 1: probably more likely to be invested in knowing what goes
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes. But as I was sifting through
Speaker 1: those questions, I did spend some time ruminating on the
Speaker 1: nature of the parasocial relationship that one sided relationship formed
Speaker 1: in the mind of someone who consumes a piece of
Speaker 1: mass media. You know, that feeling of friendship and emotional
Speaker 1: intimacy you feel for someone you've never actually met. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not calling any of
Speaker 1: you out. You're okay. It's perfectly normal to feel some
Speaker 1: level of connection to the people that you see or
Speaker 1: hear on a regular basis. I think the term has
Speaker 1: a pretty nasty connotation because usually by the time you're
Speaker 1: talking about someone's parasocial relationship, it has gotten weird. Like
Speaker 1: John Hinckley Junior shooting Ronald Reagan because he was in
Speaker 1: love with Jodie Foster levels of weird, you know. But
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone with access to the Internet
Speaker 1: who doesn't have some low level emotional connection to someone
Speaker 1: they've never met. If you've ever been sad because a
Speaker 1: dog you follow on Instagram died, buddy, I got news
Speaker 1: for you. You were in a parasocial relationship with a dog.
Speaker 1: So as long as you're not neglecting your real life
Speaker 1: relationships in favor of spending time online obsessing over some
Speaker 1: stranger who's videos you like to watch, or letting that
Speaker 1: online strain impact the way you live your life, and
Speaker 1: you're not slipping into a delusion that they love you back,
Speaker 1: you're probably fine. The term was coined in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties by a pair of sociologists who are exploring the
Speaker 1: ways audiences form these relationships with TV and radio personalities,
Speaker 1: and in the decades since the ubiquity of mass media
Speaker 1: and the rise of online influencers, many of whom are
Speaker 1: intentionally cultivating that sense of intimacy with the audience. It's
Speaker 1: only intensified the kinds of parasocial connections people are experiencing,
Speaker 1: and with a podcast, it really is kind of like
Speaker 1: having a little friend in your ear. Right. We're walking
Speaker 1: around together and I'm telling you a story. It's just
Speaker 1: someone chatting away with you while you're doing your dishes
Speaker 1: or commuting to work. I've been making my living writing
Speaker 1: for an online audience for almost a decade now, so
Speaker 1: it's an interesting phenomenon that very much plays a role
Speaker 1: in my life. So I think it's fascinating. But that's
Speaker 1: not what we're here to talk about today. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't resist reading a couple of journal articles for
Speaker 1: no reason, though, so I'll put a link in the
Speaker 1: show notes to that original nineteen fifty six article that
Speaker 1: invented the term, as well as a twenty nineteen university
Speaker 1: thesis about parasociality specifically in podcasting that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: So those will be there if you want to read
Speaker 1: more about it. But as far as what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, I don't mind if you think of me
Speaker 1: as the friend in your ear for an hour a week.
Speaker 1: It's kind of nice, but like I say at the
Speaker 1: end of every episode, just don't post anything that's going
Speaker 1: to make you one of my weird little guys. Right,
Speaker 1: And for the listener who asked if that sign off
Speaker 1: is a direct response to something someone already did, No,
Speaker 1: it's just a precaution. I've been online long enough to
Speaker 1: have been on the weird end of a parasocial bond.
Speaker 1: But the listeners of this show have been pretty normal
Speaker 1: little guys so far, and I appreciate that about you. All.
Speaker 1: All that to say, I did notice that trend in
Speaker 1: the questions, but I'm happy to answer your healthy, boundary
Speaker 1: respecting questions about the little voice in your ear. Just
Speaker 1: don't get any weird ideas. Okay, all right, rapid fire,
Speaker 1: let's knock out some of those questions about me. My docxins,
Speaker 1: Buck and Otto are doing great. They turned nine in
Speaker 1: July and they're still going strong. Otto actually just recently
Speaker 1: celebrated his fourth anniversary as the dog who Conquered Death.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty one, he suffered a ruptured disc
Speaker 1: in his spine, which is an unfortunate problem many docsins have,
Speaker 1: and he was diagnosed with stage four intervertebral disease. There
Speaker 1: was no precipitating injury. His brother doesn't have this problems.
Speaker 1: It's just bad luck. And back when it happened, we
Speaker 1: weren't sure he would survive his emergency surgery, and when
Speaker 1: he did, they told us he would never walk again.
Speaker 1: But after a few weeks of lying on a blanket
Speaker 1: wearing a diaper, he got bored of being paralyzed and
Speaker 1: he just stood up. So we celebrated the anniversary this
Speaker 1: year by taking him to the beach so he could
Speaker 1: run a million miles an hour in the sand. He's
Speaker 1: doing great. Can you see a picture of my office?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, no, no, but only because it's disgusting. I
Speaker 1: dumped every piece of clothing I own onto the floor
Speaker 1: about two years ago because I was about to start
Speaker 1: sorting through it so I could get rid of the
Speaker 1: stuff I don't wear anymore. But I never got to
Speaker 1: the second step up. So my office has had a
Speaker 1: foot deep pile of laundry that covers half the room,
Speaker 1: and I've just been stepping over it for two entire years.
Speaker 1: I am just days away from hanging those curtains I
Speaker 1: bought a year ago because I thought that would be
Speaker 1: good for sound dampening or whatever. But at this point
Speaker 1: I think the laundry pile is actually an integral part
Speaker 1: of the acoustic environment of the show. I do have
Speaker 1: a desk, but I do not sit at it because
Speaker 1: it has covered an old male. I write and record
Speaker 1: the entire show in an Ikea chair I found next
Speaker 1: to someone's trash can, and one of the bulbs in
Speaker 1: the overhead light has been burnt out since spring. I
Speaker 1: think I just closed the door to my podcasting cave.
Speaker 1: When people come over, no one is allowed to see it.
Speaker 1: I think this question might have something to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that Ed Zitron, the host of Better Offline,
Speaker 1: has posted pictures of the like incredible professional greed podcasting
Speaker 1: studio he built inside of his home. I don't have that.
Speaker 1: I don't have what Ed has. That's phenomenal for him,
Speaker 1: that's so weird. I love that for him. I have
Speaker 1: an Ikea chair that I found on the curb. What
Speaker 1: is my go to snack and drink when I'm working
Speaker 1: on the show. Hmm, another disappointing answer. I fear the
Speaker 1: windowsill next to my trash chair has at least four
Speaker 1: cans of seltzer on it at all times, the cans
Speaker 1: are at varying levels of emptiness and flatness. Right now,
Speaker 1: there are four cans. None of them are the same
Speaker 1: brand somehow, and one of them has definitely been open
Speaker 1: since early November. I am going to finish it. I'm
Speaker 1: not responsible for the food situation, thank god. My husband
Speaker 1: usually tiptoes in to deliver these beautiful little snack plates
Speaker 1: with fruit and cheese, and he's done pretty much all
Speaker 1: of the cooking around here ever since the show launched,
Speaker 1: and I became a round the clock computer gremlin in
Speaker 1: my podcasting cave, and that brings us to my husband.
Speaker 1: Several of you asked about him. He's great. If you're
Speaker 1: a longtime listener, you know that I took some time
Speaker 1: off in May to get married and go on a honeymoon.
Speaker 1: It was phenomenal. We went to Puerto Rico and I
Speaker 1: only got a little sunburned this time. I was careful
Speaker 1: because last year when we went to visit his family
Speaker 1: down there, I found out that some white people can
Speaker 1: unlock a special, secret level of sunburn that makes you
Speaker 1: very physically ill. So honestly, shout out to the Caribbean
Speaker 1: for developing a natural defense against the gringo. I have
Speaker 1: no choice but to respect that for the moment part.
Speaker 1: When you hear a voice on the show that isn't mine,
Speaker 1: it's actual archival audio. I go to a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble to make that true, so it's usually a real
Speaker 1: recording of the weird little guy we're talking about. When
Speaker 1: there is no audio of the quote that I want
Speaker 1: read in a voice that isn't mine, though, it's almost
Speaker 1: always either my husband or the show's editor, Rory. There
Speaker 1: was an episode last year early this year, early twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five that had some quotes from the President, and
Speaker 1: Rory did a phenomenal Trump impression that made some of
Speaker 1: you very mad. But what you may not have realized
Speaker 1: is that when my husband is doing a voice, it's
Speaker 1: also a carefully studied impression, right, like you recognize the
Speaker 1: Trump impression, but when he does some obscure white supremacist
Speaker 1: no one's ever heard of, you don't realize that he's
Speaker 1: actually doing an amazing impression. Weirdly good at them, and
Speaker 1: he is very excited for the day that he gets
Speaker 1: to show off his upsettingly accurate impressions of William Luther
Speaker 1: Pierce and Jared Taylor just please don't ask him to
Speaker 1: do his Alex Jones. He's really good at it and
Speaker 1: I hate it. Okay. Someone asked what is my favorite dinosaur?
Speaker 1: I don't have one, but I wanted to have a
Speaker 1: cool answer to this question, so I texted my brother
Speaker 1: to ask what a cool dinosaur would be to say,
Speaker 1: is my favorite? Because he knows a lot about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and he gave me some good answers, you know, some
Speaker 1: specific vibes that I could evoke with different choices. We're
Speaker 1: very well thought out. But I realized it would be
Speaker 1: dishonest to claim that dino knowledge as my own, so
Speaker 1: I am going to cheat and say my favorite dinosaur
Speaker 1: is that bird that Bitjyra Bolsnaro years ago. Birds are dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and that bird, in particular, the one that bit Bolsnorow
Speaker 1: really hard, is my favorite. I think it was a raya.
Speaker 1: It's like a small emu. It's not an emo. It's
Speaker 1: like a small guy that looks like an emu. I
Speaker 1: think it was a raya. Anyway, he's my favorite. Quite
Speaker 1: a few of you submitted questions related to my physical
Speaker 1: safety and my mental well being, which is really sweet
Speaker 1: of you. I'm fine. I mean to the extent that
Speaker 1: any of us are fine. Right, I live in the
Speaker 1: United States. I could die in a mass shooting at
Speaker 1: the grocery store tomorrow. As far as the possibility of
Speaker 1: physical violence goes, Yeah, I guess I've probably got a
Speaker 1: few more guys actively plotting my death specifically than the
Speaker 1: average person might. But they've it's mostly been keeping it
Speaker 1: themselves lately, and I really appreciate that. There was an
Speaker 1: incident earlier this year where a weird little guy was
Speaker 1: trying to like big dog me in a courtroom. He
Speaker 1: sort of sidled up to me and said something he
Speaker 1: probably thought about for an hour on the car ride there,
Speaker 1: and that he hoped would be really startling and intimidating
Speaker 1: to me. But at this point in my life, there's
Speaker 1: nothing scary to me about a Nazi in poorly fitted
Speaker 1: dress pants. I'm not going to pretend I'm bulletproof. I'm
Speaker 1: not so naive that I think no harm can come
Speaker 1: to me. I know what these guys are capable of
Speaker 1: the kinds of things they want to do, the kinds
Speaker 1: of things they talk about doing, the kinds of things
Speaker 1: some of them have done. And I'll still be writing
Speaker 1: about it when one of them goes and does another
Speaker 1: unspeakable thing. I know that it's foolish to say that
Speaker 1: they're all talk, but I also know a lot of
Speaker 1: them are. A lot of them are a lot smaller
Speaker 1: in person. And I don't mean physically. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about getting into a physical fight. I'm five feet tall
Speaker 1: with my shoes on. But what I'm saying is there
Speaker 1: were little guys. That's why the show's called that they're
Speaker 1: so small in person. That's the whole point. They talk
Speaker 1: big when it's online or at a rally with high energy,
Speaker 1: or when they're with their friends, but in my experience,
Speaker 1: most of them get stage fright if they actually get
Speaker 1: the chance to say that shit out loud in a
Speaker 1: quiet room. Back in twenty twenty three, I actually met
Speaker 1: a guy who'd had some big talk about me online.
Speaker 1: I may have told the story before, forgive me, but
Speaker 1: he was in town because he'd been charged with a crime,
Speaker 1: and that was something that really solidified for him that
Speaker 1: being involved in the movement was a stupid way to
Speaker 1: spend his life. He's probably still not not a white supremacist,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm not saying he's reformed now, but he
Speaker 1: was disengaging from active involvement in the movement, and that's
Speaker 1: the best you can hope for sometimes. So by the
Speaker 1: time we're standing there alone on the steps of the courthouse,
Speaker 1: it had been a couple of years since he was
Speaker 1: on a Nazi podcast talking with his Nazi friends about
Speaker 1: the ways they would be interested in murdering me if
Speaker 1: the opportunity presented itself. He look, I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 1: to you. When I heard that the first time, hunched
Speaker 1: over my computer alone late at night. Yeah, obviously it
Speaker 1: scared me a little bit, right. It was very graphic,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know exactly who those men were or
Speaker 1: where they were. I didn't know if they had the
Speaker 1: means to do the things they were talking about. So
Speaker 1: I found out and that made it easier. And when
Speaker 1: I finally met him in person, I wasn't afraid of him.
Speaker 1: He seemed maybe a little bit afraid of me. It
Speaker 1: was just a weird little guy, kind of a sad one.
Speaker 1: Another question people ask a lot, is is it mentally
Speaker 1: destructive to do this kind of research. That's a fair question,
Speaker 1: and the answer changes depending on when you ask me.
Speaker 1: I think, of course, it's horrible, right I'm a human being.
Speaker 1: Of course, it makes me sick to read about child
Speaker 1: sexual exploitation and hate crimes and mass murder, domestic violence
Speaker 1: and genocide, war crimes and all the other things the
Speaker 1: guys I write about are getting up to. It's not
Speaker 1: light reading. To spend all weeks sifting through gore forums
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who a mass shooter was chatting
Speaker 1: with online and accidentally seeing so many pictures of dead children.
Speaker 1: It's not fun to spend days on nazi forums trying
Speaker 1: to reconstruct the social media history of a man who
Speaker 1: killed his wife. I'm not going to tell you that
Speaker 1: feels good, obviously. I think you know that, and it's
Speaker 1: not something I would recommend that someone else do. I
Speaker 1: would be concerned if someone I cared about was doing that.
Speaker 1: But I'm fine. You know. I'm not bragging about some
Speaker 1: kind of superior coping mechanism. I'm not better than you
Speaker 1: or stronger than you. I don't even have any constructive
Speaker 1: advice for you if this is something you're struggling with.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to advise anyone else who's dealing
Speaker 1: with vicarious trum of this kind of research. And that's
Speaker 1: why I hate this question. I mean no offense. It
Speaker 1: makes sense that you would ask it. I just hate
Speaker 1: that I don't have a good answer for you. I
Speaker 1: don't have any advice for you. I don't know why
Speaker 1: it works, and I don't want you to think I'm
Speaker 1: a sociopath when I tell you that I actually don't
Speaker 1: struggle with this that much. I can turn it off.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say I don't feel it. I'm
Speaker 1: not a robot, I'm not a monster. I feel it,
Speaker 1: and I feel it deeply when I'm allowing myself to
Speaker 1: be in it. There are episodes where there is no
Speaker 1: clean take, and there's no way around the fact that
Speaker 1: I am audibly crying in the final edit, and that's okay,
Speaker 1: but I already know that the horrors are out there.
Speaker 1: I can't go back to not knowing about this, So
Speaker 1: for me, there's some comfort in knowing that I can
Speaker 1: piece it together. I can try to understand it and
Speaker 1: hopefully help you understand it. You know, I could sit
Speaker 1: here and be scared in the dark, or I can
Speaker 1: try to shine a light into that scary darkness. It's
Speaker 1: still scary, but at least I have something to do.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I get asked this question every time
Speaker 1: I'm in a position to be asked a question. I've
Speaker 1: been asked this question a thousand times, and I don't
Speaker 1: have a good answer for it, but I always land
Speaker 1: more or less right here. It's ugly, and it's hard,
Speaker 1: and I see things that I wish I hadn't seen,
Speaker 1: but I think it's important to do anyway, and that
Speaker 1: feeling of purpose makes it a little easier. Okay, enough
Speaker 1: of that. By far, the most common type of question
Speaker 1: was a sort of open ended one about how the
Speaker 1: sausage gets made, how do I pick a guy, how
Speaker 1: do I decide what the story is, how do I
Speaker 1: find out everything there is to know about him? And
Speaker 1: most importantly, how do I drag myself back to the
Speaker 1: point of the story when it's so much more fun
Speaker 1: to find out what's going on with this strange little
Speaker 1: side character. I found halfway down a tangent about something
Speaker 1: that's barely even connected to the story. I was trying
Speaker 1: to tell you. A lot of you asked about that
Speaker 1: part of the process in particular, and I love that.
Speaker 1: Like I said, when I was sorting these questions into categories,
Speaker 1: I was a little puzzled by the scarcity of questions
Speaker 1: that were about some specific story. You guys, didn't really
Speaker 1: ask me for more information about a story I already
Speaker 1: told you. You asked me really open ended questions about
Speaker 1: what kinds of things I haven't told you. And my
Speaker 1: initial reaction to that was, like, I said, a reflection
Speaker 1: on the nature of parasociality, right, Like why are those
Speaker 1: the things you want to know? But I think there's
Speaker 1: a more fun explanation for this. You trust the process.
Speaker 1: You believe me when I tell you that I was
Speaker 1: thorough in pursuing the interesting leads in the story I
Speaker 1: did tell, and you liked it enough that you want
Speaker 1: to know what cool stuff I couldn't cram into the episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm making that up, but if that is what's
Speaker 1: going on, I like that. I know the show can
Speaker 1: be a little tricky to follow sometimes because the side
Speaker 1: quests are longer than the main journey. So I really
Speaker 1: like knowing that at least some of you love that
Speaker 1: as much as I do. I mean, look, if you
Speaker 1: don't like it, if you just want dry facts in
Speaker 1: chronological order, I don't know what to tell you. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you're still here. I would tell you
Speaker 1: you should just read a Wikipedia article or something. But
Speaker 1: most of the stories I'm trying to tell don't really
Speaker 1: exist anywhere else in that sort of format. We're going
Speaker 1: on an adventure together. But I do want to answer
Speaker 1: one question I did get that was a factual question
Speaker 1: about a recent episode. Someone on the Reddit posted this
Speaker 1: question a few weeks ago. They wrote, with the Frank
Speaker 1: Smith mini series wrapping up, I assumed you would revisit
Speaker 1: the fact that Rockwell shouted the Holy Father after a
Speaker 1: previous attempt on his life. According to someone with him,
Speaker 1: is there anything more to investigate there? Okay, the answer
Speaker 1: is we'll never know. I threw everything I had at
Speaker 1: this and I do have my own theory. But I
Speaker 1: went digging for anything concrete to try to ulster that theory,
Speaker 1: and it was nothing but fistfuls of sand, just grabbing
Speaker 1: an innuendo and possibility and watching it slip through my fingers.
Speaker 1: To refresh your memory, that listener is asking about something
Speaker 1: that came up in the first episode about Frank Smith,
Speaker 1: the episode from October sixteenth. Frank Smith was a member
Speaker 1: of the American Nazi Party and he had extensive ties
Speaker 1: to organized crime in New England that whole arc from
Speaker 1: the episodes about John Patler, the man who assassinated George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell, through the end of the Frank Smith arc
Speaker 1: was nine full length episodes and one minisode. It was
Speaker 1: over fifty thousand scripted words, and it took two months.
Speaker 1: So I won't retell the whole story here. If you're
Speaker 1: listening to me Naval Gaze like this, you surely listen
Speaker 1: to those episodes, But just to refresh some of the details.
Speaker 1: Remember from the John Patler episodes, he murdered George Lincoln
Speaker 1: Rockwell in August of nineteen sixty seven, and he was
Speaker 1: convicted of that murder a trial a few months later.
Speaker 1: But two months before the murder, so in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, Rockwell survived another attempt on his life.
Speaker 1: Two months before he died, someone shot at him and missed.
Speaker 1: And this prior incident doesn't get a lot of ink
Speaker 1: in the biographies of Rockwell that I read, which seems
Speaker 1: kind of odd to me. In most accounts, it sort
Speaker 1: of vaguely implied that the most likely explanation is that
Speaker 1: the guy who actually shot and killed him was also
Speaker 1: the guy who tried and failed to shoot him. The
Speaker 1: first time. That makes total sense, right, And as far
Speaker 1: as the lack of investigation into that in the biographies,
Speaker 1: I guess the fact that he actually got murdered really
Speaker 1: overshadows anything else that happened to him that summer. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm never satisfied. So I found and read
Speaker 1: the trial transcript. Patler appealed his conviction several times, so
Speaker 1: the entire trial transcript was reproduced in the appellate record,
Speaker 1: and it's over a thousand pages. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: John Patler had a really solid alibi the day someone
Speaker 1: shot at George Lincoln Rockwell and missed. There's conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: about whether he actually killed Rockwell. I think he did.
Speaker 1: The evidence is pretty good that he actually did shoot
Speaker 1: him in August, but the evidence just isn't there to
Speaker 1: assert that he was the guy who tried the first time.
Speaker 1: And the college student who was in the car with
Speaker 1: Rockwell when this happened in June told the authorities that
Speaker 1: as the bullet whizzed by them, Rockwell shouted something. He
Speaker 1: said the Holy Father. That boy doesn't have any reason
Speaker 1: to lie, at least none that seemed obvious to me. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you remember those episodes. A lot of the
Speaker 1: people in this story had very obvious reasons to lie.
Speaker 1: This kid didn't, and he didn't know that what he
Speaker 1: heard Rockwell say wasn't just an exclamation. It was a name.
Speaker 1: It was the nickname that Rockwell had given Frank Smith,
Speaker 1: was a joke about the bullet holes in his chest
Speaker 1: from a botched mob hit in nineteen sixty five. So
Speaker 1: in that first episode about Frank, I sort of teased
Speaker 1: the possibility that it was Frank who tried to shoot
Speaker 1: Rockwell in June of nineteen sixty seven. But I never
Speaker 1: came back to that. I just sort of left that hanging.
Speaker 1: And that's what this listener is asking about so intriguing.
Speaker 1: But there is absolutely fucking nothing there. There's nothing. It's bizarre.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any trace anywhere of anyone ever asking
Speaker 1: this question. What could it possibly mean that when Rockwell
Speaker 1: saw someone shooting at him, he yelled Frank's nickname. No
Speaker 1: one's ever asked that. I can't find anything about it.
Speaker 1: There's no record of anyone raising the possibility that maybe
Speaker 1: Frank was there, that maybe the mafia had their own
Speaker 1: beef with Rockwell. Like I said, most material about the
Speaker 1: last few months of Rockwell's life just sort of breezes
Speaker 1: past this kind of serious question who else wanted him dead?
Speaker 1: Most of the competing theories about his actual death center
Speaker 1: around the discord within the American Nazi Party. I won't
Speaker 1: recover all of this, it's in the upp but there
Speaker 1: were factions and rivalries and disagreements about the direction of
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party and who should lead them, And most
Speaker 1: of the information we have about those internal divisions comes
Speaker 1: from the people involved in them. So the people pointing
Speaker 1: fingers at each other within the party all have their
Speaker 1: own shit to hide. In the accounts produced in biographies
Speaker 1: of Rockwell, the authors spoke to those party members, including
Speaker 1: people like Mantius Cole, the man who took over after
Speaker 1: Rockwell died, and different biographers of Rockwell deal with these
Speaker 1: accounts with varying levels of credulity and sometimes point out
Speaker 1: that perhaps they have various motivations to tell versions of
Speaker 1: the truth, but there's nothing else ever offered, and the
Speaker 1: accounts that they gave those biographers more or less match
Speaker 1: the kinds of testimony that was offered by American Nazi
Speaker 1: Party members at John Paller's trial and decades later, William
Speaker 1: Mouth their peers, gave his version of events to his
Speaker 1: own biographer. And all of these men have very particular
Speaker 1: motives for the versions of the truth that they're holding
Speaker 1: on to, and they're all dead now. So I spent
Speaker 1: probably fully one hundred hours agonizing over the blurry, heavily
Speaker 1: redacted pages of the FBI file for Raymond Patriarca, the
Speaker 1: head of the New England Mafia, and there's just enough
Speaker 1: there to convince me that there's more there that I
Speaker 1: don't have all the information about the extent to which
Speaker 1: the mafia was involved with the American Nazi Party. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: we have memos about the times Frank Smith was reporting
Speaker 1: back to Patriarcha about his relationship with Rockwell, but I
Speaker 1: think there was more, and I can't prove it. I
Speaker 1: don't like to tell you stuff I can't prove. I've
Speaker 1: worked too hard to earn your trust. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make stuff up and go tin foil hat on
Speaker 1: you now. But you did ask, and I am dying
Speaker 1: to speculate wildly. So here's my disclaimer. This does not
Speaker 1: have my usual stamp of certainty on it. I'm not
Speaker 1: stating this is fact. I can't support this with evidence.
Speaker 1: I'm going rogue. Sometimes it is fun to believe something
Speaker 1: a little crazy as a treat. So my conspiracy treat
Speaker 1: for myself in this story is that I choose to
Speaker 1: believe the mafia tried to have the head of the
Speaker 1: American Nazi Party killed, but they sent a half blind
Speaker 1: hit man to do it and he missed. Remember, Frank
Speaker 1: had one glass eye for reasons I never discovered, and
Speaker 1: he almost lost the other when the mafia tried to
Speaker 1: have him killed in nineteen sixty five, so he does
Speaker 1: not see well. And when he got into that shootout
Speaker 1: with Christopher Vidnyevitch in nineteen sixty eight, they fired at
Speaker 1: each other for half an hour and Frank never hit shit.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. George Lincoln Rockwell was a snitch famously,
Speaker 1: so he didn't even really try to hide it. He
Speaker 1: would tell you himself that he sometimes wrote letters to
Speaker 1: the FBI to make them aware of people in the
Speaker 1: movement whose activities he disapproved of. I found actual copies
Speaker 1: of letters he wrote to Jay Edgar Hoover himself, listing
Speaker 1: former members of his own party that he thought the
Speaker 1: Bureau should investigate. This is a more egregious example than
Speaker 1: I usually get. But this behavior is not actually uncommon.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of guys in the movement who
Speaker 1: are trying to inform on their rivals. I'm not even
Speaker 1: talking about paid, recruited informants. The movement's full of those two.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about guys who are just willingly freelance snitching
Speaker 1: because they think they can leverage the force of the
Speaker 1: government to try to take out a guy they don't like.
Speaker 1: There's a fair amount of that going on to this day.
Speaker 1: But Rockwell is the absolute king of writing letters to
Speaker 1: the FBI to try to maneuver around within the movement.
Speaker 1: So we know that he is doing that, and it
Speaker 1: turns out the people he was dealing with did too,
Speaker 1: because buried about four seven hundred and sixty three pages
Speaker 1: into Raymond Patriarca's seventy nine hundred page FBI file is
Speaker 1: a memo about a conversation Frank Smith had with the
Speaker 1: mafia boss in March of nineteen sixty five. He's trying
Speaker 1: to convince Patriarca that he needs to get into business
Speaker 1: with the Nazi Party. This was around the time Rockwell
Speaker 1: decided he was going to run for governor of Virginia,
Speaker 1: and he had promised the mafia control of gambling and
Speaker 1: loan sharking in the Naufolk area if he won. And
Speaker 1: Frank wanted to set up a fake Nazi church on
Speaker 1: his land in Maine so he could funnel money from
Speaker 1: the mafia into the Nazi Party in a way that
Speaker 1: would protect everyone involved. Right. That was all in the
Speaker 1: episodes about Frank and he told Patriarcha at that meeting
Speaker 1: in March that if they were going to do this,
Speaker 1: they needed to be careful. Frank Smith was recorded on
Speaker 1: an FBI wiretap saying that Rockwell had warned him that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't hesitate to call the FBI if he found
Speaker 1: out there was criminal activity going on. So Frank Smith
Speaker 1: told Raymond Patriarca that they would need to be careful
Speaker 1: not to reveal the extent of their illegal enterprise to Rockwell.
Speaker 1: Two years later, someone took a shot at Rockwell and
Speaker 1: they missed. One of the other things I do when
Speaker 1: I'm researching an episode is I make a timeline. Just
Speaker 1: anytime I have a date, I put it in a timeline.
Speaker 1: I don't know if all these things are going to
Speaker 1: be relevant, but they all go in just a bulleted
Speaker 1: list in chronological order, And wouldn't you know, looking back
Speaker 1: at that timeline, that failed hit on George Lincoln Rockwell
Speaker 1: was a couple days after the FBI arrested Raymond Patriarca.
Speaker 1: So sure, it makes good narrative sense to assume that
Speaker 1: John Patler probably tried to kill Rockwell twice, But most
Speaker 1: stories about June of nineteen sixty seven don't tell you
Speaker 1: that Rockwell had threatened to snitch on the mafia and
Speaker 1: that bullet just missed him the week a mob boss
Speaker 1: got indicted. We'll never know, right, I mean, this version
Speaker 1: of the story has just as many holes as any
Speaker 1: of the others. There's no proving it either way. And
Speaker 1: I could tell you the same story with a different inflection,
Speaker 1: and we'd all leave just as convinced that some other
Speaker 1: version of it was just as true. I do try
Speaker 1: to be responsible with the facts, though, even when it's
Speaker 1: no fun. But you have to admit it's kind of
Speaker 1: fun to think about it this way, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: will say one last word on this subject. If you
Speaker 1: are the anonymous buyer who purchased a collection of George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell's personal correspondence, specifically a series of letters he
Speaker 1: exchanged with a Massachusetts man named George Parker in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. I will pay good money just to look
Speaker 1: at a photocopy of those letters. I don't know who
Speaker 1: bought them. There were two separate listings, so there's two
Speaker 1: sets of these letters. God, I would love to see
Speaker 1: them because the listing lies that they contain information about
Speaker 1: Rockwell's relationship with the mafia, and that someone in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: potentially this George Parker character, is leaking information to him
Speaker 1: about a state investigation into that relationship. I can't find
Speaker 1: anything about this in the FBI files. I think it
Speaker 1: may have been a criminal investigation in the state of Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: but I need the letters. There's more to this story,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but I've exhausted my ability to track it down.
Speaker 1: This one's staying in my pile of things I'll come
Speaker 1: back to. I'm not done in trying to figure this out. Okay,
Speaker 1: on the subject of things I have or have not
Speaker 1: talked about on the show, let's go rapid fire through
Speaker 1: some of the things you all want to hear more about.
Speaker 1: Someone asked if I planned to cover any of the
Speaker 1: weird little guys who participated in the January sixth insurrection. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are two episodes that touch on that already. There
Speaker 1: was a February sixth, twenty twenty five episode called a
Speaker 1: Short Lived Pardon, followed by a brief update to that
Speaker 1: same story a month later on March sixth. That episode
Speaker 1: was about Matthew Huddle, the man who died after being
Speaker 1: shot by police during a traffic stop just a week
Speaker 1: after receiving his federal pardon for entering the Capitol on
Speaker 1: January sixth. And before that, there was the October seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four episode called Burning Hate. That one was
Speaker 1: about Tyler Diykes, a young man who marched here in
Speaker 1: Charlottesville at the Unite the Right rally in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and he entered the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: He did jail time for both, which is toscussed in
Speaker 1: the episode. But what is not discussed in that episode
Speaker 1: but is coming up in next week's roundup is his
Speaker 1: recent announcement that he is running for Congress. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of why I foresee more episodes in the future
Speaker 1: about January sixth, guys, because now that they're all pardoned,
Speaker 1: we are unfortunately seeing a lot of them resurface. Right
Speaker 1: They're either trying to get into media, they're trying to
Speaker 1: get into politics. Some of them seem to be trying
Speaker 1: to get back into prison. So I'm sure we will
Speaker 1: wind up back with some of those guys eventually. That
Speaker 1: same listener asked if I plan to cover any weird
Speaker 1: little guys who happen to be women, and the answer
Speaker 1: to that is also yes, but I don't know when.
Speaker 1: The South Africa episodes that ran from the end of
Speaker 1: February through the beginning of May of this year, we're
Speaker 1: all centered around the main character of a woman named
Speaker 1: Monica Huggetts Stone, and I'm sure there will be other
Speaker 1: stories in the few with a female main character. They
Speaker 1: just tend to be less frequent for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: mainly right wing extremists are almost always violent misogynists. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying women don't hold the same views as our
Speaker 1: weird little guys, or that the movement doesn't include women.
Speaker 1: They do, and it does. They just typically don't rise
Speaker 1: to positions of power in the movement, and they are
Speaker 1: less likely to carry out acts of extreme violence. The
Speaker 1: movement has plenty of women in it, you just don't
Speaker 1: hear a lot about them. Part of that is because
Speaker 1: women's stories just don't get told, not just when we're
Speaker 1: talking about white supremacists, I mean generally, right, history has
Speaker 1: just as many women as it does men. But what
Speaker 1: kinds of history stories do you hear? Monica Huggett Stone
Speaker 1: was the central figure that eight episode arc about Neo
Speaker 1: Nazi violence in the last decades of apartheid South Africa,
Speaker 1: but it was much harder than it needed to be
Speaker 1: to find actual information about this human woman at the
Speaker 1: center of the story. People just aren't interested in what
Speaker 1: women are doing. Will I cover Gary Louch? Great question. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we're going to get to Gary. But a friend of
Speaker 1: mine is writing a book that is definitely going to
Speaker 1: feature Gary pretty heavily. So I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: save myself the headache of doing the research myself and
Speaker 1: just wait to buy a copy of her book, because
Speaker 1: I know she has been deep in the archives, I
Speaker 1: mean around the world in special collections archives, and she
Speaker 1: even interviewed the farm Belt Feurer himself, So I should
Speaker 1: ask her when that's coming out, Because I'm really looking
Speaker 1: forward to it, but we will get to Gary. Someone
Speaker 1: also asked, when is the Matt Hale episode. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean there's gonna be one. There's
Speaker 1: obviously gonna be one. Sometimes I find myself avoiding these
Speaker 1: big name, weird little guys. You know, I haven't done
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce. I haven't done Matthew Hale. I haven't
Speaker 1: actually done Bob Matthews, right. I sort of mentioned him
Speaker 1: in passing and then went somewhere else Entirely, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm skipping these really big ones because I know
Speaker 1: what kind of can of worms it's gonna open, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna take me months to dig myself out. Like
Speaker 1: once I really get into the deep lore about Matt
Speaker 1: Hale and the World Church of the Creator, I know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end up with thirty new, weird little guys
Speaker 1: whose whole lives I'm gonna have to map out before
Speaker 1: I can move on. There's a lot going on there,
Speaker 1: and we will get there. Because Matt Hale is still
Speaker 1: in prison and occasionally filing weird motions with the court,
Speaker 1: I'm signed up for docor alerts for him, so I
Speaker 1: do check in on him from time to time, but
Speaker 1: I'm just not ready. Will I ever cover weird little
Speaker 1: guys abroad? Actually got a bunch of these people asking
Speaker 1: about particular British, Australian, Canadian, and European individuals and groups
Speaker 1: that they'd like to hear more about. And the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, Yes, definitely. I'm very intrigued by the fascist international.
Speaker 1: Nothing exists in a vacuum, right, there are no lone wolves,
Speaker 1: and it turns out the wolf pack is international. You know,
Speaker 1: my existing subject matter expertise is white supremacists in the
Speaker 1: United States over the last sixty years or so. But
Speaker 1: it seems like if you dig deep enough in any story,
Speaker 1: there's some kind of international connection, and that's something I'd
Speaker 1: like to explore more. Earlier this year, I spent three
Speaker 1: months writing about South African Nazis and that story ended
Speaker 1: up taking us all over the world. There were German
Speaker 1: mercenaries in Croatia, there were guns smuggled through a port
Speaker 1: in England by a British Nazi group, a South African
Speaker 1: man wanted for murder in Namibia currently hiding out in England.
Speaker 1: And American lobbyists who took money from the apartheid government.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people and groups in that
Speaker 1: story I'd like to come back to and read more about.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of last year in the
Speaker 1: beginning of this year, I did a series of episodes
Speaker 1: about Dennis Mahon and that clansman spent some time in Germany,
Speaker 1: which I did discuss on the show, but I didn't
Speaker 1: get into his deep connections to fascist groups in Canada.
Speaker 1: And I'd still planned to come back to that Australian
Speaker 1: Nazi who was deported after he tried to attack John
Speaker 1: Patler in court after Rockwell's murder. He died under rather
Speaker 1: mysterious circumstances in Rhodesia a few years later. So we'll
Speaker 1: explore some Australian Nazis soon. What I consider covering reformed
Speaker 1: weird little guys. That one's complicated. The answer isn't. No.
Speaker 1: I'm not ruling it out. I'm not saying I'll never
Speaker 1: do it, but it's something I would want to approach
Speaker 1: very carefully. Just in general, I have a pretty bad
Speaker 1: taste in my mouth about a lot of the popular
Speaker 1: narratives about formers. A lot of the guys out there
Speaker 1: who are making money taking speaking engagements talking about how
Speaker 1: they used to be a Nazi. Those aren't guys I
Speaker 1: want to talk to. Those are not guys whose opinions
Speaker 1: I think are worth talking about, not all of them. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that every guy with a publicist is
Speaker 1: a grifter and a liar who's using a redemption arc
Speaker 1: narrative to sell himself as an expert on political extremism,
Speaker 1: and the kind of extremism he keeps talking about is
Speaker 1: actually how the left is just as bad as the
Speaker 1: stuff he used to do. Right, But I'm saying there
Speaker 1: is a lot of that, and I don't think those
Speaker 1: guys are really formers. I think if every story you
Speaker 1: have to tell about your decades as a Nazi is
Speaker 1: actually about how Antifa are the real enemy, you're not
Speaker 1: a former Nazi. But that's just a hang up I
Speaker 1: have about a couple guys in particular. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: formers themselves are always acting in bad faith or that
Speaker 1: they don't really exist. They do. They absolutely do, And
Speaker 1: I've met some very decent people who are working very
Speaker 1: hard to quietly make amends and grow as people and
Speaker 1: really leave their past behind. People can get better, right,
Speaker 1: People can change and I think those stories are important,
Speaker 1: and I would like to find a way to tell
Speaker 1: them responsibly, because that change has to come from inside
Speaker 1: something that can grow out of a press release written
Speaker 1: by a publicist and approved by an attorney. So the
Speaker 1: answer to that is maybe, probably even. But it wouldn't
Speaker 1: just be a one off interview about how making a
Speaker 1: black friend cured a klansman and he's nice. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not my kind of story. That's not a story I
Speaker 1: would subject you to. I've seen a guy try to
Speaker 1: sell that shit to a judge and I didn't believe
Speaker 1: it when it was presented a sworn testimony, So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect you to believe it on a podcast. I
Speaker 1: do have a couple of formers in mind that I
Speaker 1: would like to do a little bit more research about
Speaker 1: the kind of story I would want to tell with
Speaker 1: their help. There are a couple of people that I
Speaker 1: think would be valuable to talk to about this. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just not ready to do that right now.
Speaker 1: There were kind of a surprising number of questions that
Speaker 1: were just invitations to do my favorite thing, to wander
Speaker 1: off topic. I'm still kind of self conscious about the
Speaker 1: meandering nature of these stories, even though at this point
Speaker 1: I recognize it as something that's integral to the show.
Speaker 1: So I was really charmed by how many of you
Speaker 1: just want to hear how far I can get from
Speaker 1: the plot. It sounds like some of you are trying
Speaker 1: to challenge me to dig my deepest hole yet, just
Speaker 1: so you can watch me try to get back out
Speaker 1: of it. The problem with answering those questions right now
Speaker 1: is it would take two to three hundred hours. The
Speaker 1: stuff that gets cut, the tangents that I have to
Speaker 1: cut myself off from, those all kind of end up
Speaker 1: piled up in a tab at the end of my
Speaker 1: notes for each episode. There's this terrible, little, incomprehensible mess
Speaker 1: of these half formed thoughts that I swear I'm going
Speaker 1: to come back to because there's probably a whole episode
Speaker 1: in there, or four or ten if I just let
Speaker 1: myself keep going. One example of that that comes to
Speaker 1: mind right now is a recent one. It's about Barbara
Speaker 1: von Getz. She was the secretary for the American Nazi
Speaker 1: Party who lived at the party's headquarters in the early
Speaker 1: to mid sixties. She was also George Lincoln Rockwell's mistress
Speaker 1: and the mother of his two daughters, who both died
Speaker 1: in infancy of a genetic disorder. I talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about her and about Rockwell's daughters in one of
Speaker 1: the Frank Smith episodes, but before I wrote I think
Speaker 1: like two paragraphs about Barbara, I spent a day or
Speaker 1: two learning about her. Pretty much anyone who's discussed beyond
Speaker 1: a passing mention gets this treatment. In the research process,
Speaker 1: I like to make a family tree and go through
Speaker 1: old newspapers for any mention of the person or any
Speaker 1: of their immediate relatives. I'll check court records and places
Speaker 1: where they've lived, and look at property and tax records.
Speaker 1: If I can find them, I just sort of sketch
Speaker 1: out the broad strokes of their life. Where have they been,
Speaker 1: What were they doing before they showed up in this story?
Speaker 1: Where did they go afterward? Do they have any meaningful
Speaker 1: connection to anything else we might be interested in. I'm
Speaker 1: not really looking for anything in particular. I'm just browsing,
Speaker 1: and mostly I use none of this. I have half
Speaker 1: a biography on a thousand guys I didn't even need.
Speaker 1: But Barbara was such a question mark for me throughout
Speaker 1: this story, right because I spent two months writing about
Speaker 1: the last year of Rockwell's life, and there's not a
Speaker 1: lot about her. I mean, she was the mistress and
Speaker 1: personal secretary of the commander of the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 1: She gave birth to and buried two of his children.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of all she ever is in any
Speaker 1: story about him. Women's stories just disappear, right. So I
Speaker 1: was really curious about how she ended up so close
Speaker 1: to one of the big leaders in the movement. And
Speaker 1: it turns out her whole damn family was a bunch
Speaker 1: of Nazis. Her sister and one of her brothers were
Speaker 1: close to Otto Strausser, an actual Nazi. Like Otto Strausser
Speaker 1: joined the Nazi Party in Germany in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: He is one of the two Strassers of Strasserism, and
Speaker 1: Barbara's other brother spent time in Rhodesia in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies as a mercenary. Her Nazi sister was inexplicably the
Speaker 1: secretary at a mosque in Washington, d c. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, which I only know because she was taken
Speaker 1: hostage at that mosque during the Hanafi Siege of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and her brother Karl, fresh off his stint
Speaker 1: as a race war mercenary, tried to negotiate for her release.
Speaker 1: He went on to have a whole second act as
Speaker 1: a fairly well known way. It's a premacist in Canada
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and Barbara's nephew, the son of her
Speaker 1: other brother, was arrested on Christmas Eve last year for
Speaker 1: pouring whiskey into the holy water during midnight mass at
Speaker 1: a Catholic church in Maryland. So I wasted a lot
Speaker 1: of time on this. Obviously, I know a lot about
Speaker 1: this family that I did not need or use in
Speaker 1: that episode. I left all of that out because I
Speaker 1: think I need to come back to this to sort
Speaker 1: out what the hell is going on there. So for
Speaker 1: those of you asking how far afield I tend to
Speaker 1: get while I'm writing, I always make the family tree,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's a waste of time. Usually it's a
Speaker 1: waste of time, but sometimes there's a Rhodesian mercenary and
Speaker 1: two siblings who have long complicated relationships with Otto Strausser.
Speaker 1: And that is why I will never stop wasting my
Speaker 1: time researching stuff that doesn't make it into the episode.
Speaker 1: I'll come back to it one day, But That is
Speaker 1: absolutely enough for now. Those of you who are just
Speaker 1: here for the Weird Little Guys, I'm sorry if I
Speaker 1: disappointed you this week. But for the real writer die
Speaker 1: listeners out there, the ones who like hearing about my
Speaker 1: struggle to translate a Hungarian Nazi newspaper published by a
Speaker 1: guy in Cincinnati, even though that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with what we're talking about, I hope this scratched that
Speaker 1: itch for you at least a little bit. Next week
Speaker 1: will be another episode that doesn't quite fit the usual mold.
Speaker 1: I'll be checking back in on some of the Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys whose stories aren't over yet. Some of them
Speaker 1: have come up on the show before and will be
Speaker 1: familiar to you, and some of them are guys whose
Speaker 1: episodes I'm not ready to write yet, but I can't
Speaker 1: wait that long to introduce them into the Weird Little
Speaker 1: Guys extended universe. It's something different, but I think it'll
Speaker 1: still be fun. I promise I won't make a habit
Speaker 1: of straying from the classic Weird Little Guys format you
Speaker 1: know and love, but I am going to try a
Speaker 1: few new things to get a little variety, and if
Speaker 1: I'm being totally honest, I'm trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: works in terms of redistributing the workload a little bit.
Speaker 1: I love making this show, but I have to find
Speaker 1: a way to make it a little more sustainable in
Speaker 1: the long run, because I don't think I'm ever gonna
Speaker 1: run out of Weird Little Guys. Weird Little Guys is
Speaker 1: a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written,
Speaker 1: and recorded by me while I hunger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Wordy Gaigan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Diggert, and for the listener who asked
Speaker 1: a question about that theme music, I will put a
Speaker 1: link in the show notes to Brad's SoundCloud where you
Speaker 1: can listen to the entire theme of the show. You
Speaker 1: can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. I will definitely read it, but I probably
Speaker 1: won't answer. It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little
Speaker 1: Guys severad it, but as always, don't post anything that's
Speaker 1: going to make you one of my Weird Little Guys