Speaker 1: Also media. Happy New Year, everybody. Welcome to Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: I'll be leading this episode. I am your executive producer,
Speaker 1: Sophie Lickterman. I'm gonna ask Robert some of your questions. Robert,
Speaker 1: how you doing, buddy.
Speaker 2: I'm doing. You know. It's that fun time of the
Speaker 2: year where the holidays are over. We still don't quite
Speaker 2: have to work. But also I can feel it coming
Speaker 2: the real world, having to get back into the real world,
Speaker 2: you know, So that part's not great, the like looming
Speaker 2: knowledge that the stuff that you were like, ah, the
Speaker 2: world's over, news is over. I don't have to pay
Speaker 2: attention to anything for the next period of time. Well,
Speaker 2: that period of time has come to an end and
Speaker 2: it's time to re engage with reality. I'm at that
Speaker 2: part of the year, so, you know, mixed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was a highlight for you over your semi
Speaker 1: time off.
Speaker 2: I don't know, not really any particular highlight. I just
Speaker 2: didn't do much.
Speaker 1: Excuse me. We had a party, thank you, and your
Speaker 1: highlight was it starting fire with the lightsaber torch I
Speaker 1: got you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got me a lightsaber torch that I started
Speaker 2: a fire with. That was fun.
Speaker 1: It looked really good.
Speaker 2: Got me some nice liquor that was fun.
Speaker 1: I did you did? You looked very cool that night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert got me. Every year Robert gets me some kind
Speaker 1: of really cool weapon. At the beginning of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: he got me a bowie knife after I had surgery.
Speaker 1: Everybody else set flowers, not my business partner. Robert got
Speaker 1: me a really cool axe.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 1: You're shetty what you called Sophie. This is your perse knife,
Speaker 1: which was one of my favorite things you've ever said
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: And this year everyone needs a perse knife.
Speaker 1: You got me this thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a it's a Moroccan like a ceremonial dagger,
Speaker 2: so you know you're supposed to it's like a it's
Speaker 2: a I think it's like one hundred years old, post
Speaker 2: to beaut and weddings and kind of fancy events like that.
Speaker 2: I can do. I could stand and do some rehab
Speaker 2: on the blade for you, because it's kind of dull
Speaker 2: at the moment, but yeah, you could. You could cut.
Speaker 2: You could cut like a I got like a goat's
Speaker 2: throat with that if you had to, if you're being
Speaker 2: attacked by a goat and had to defend yourself with
Speaker 2: a knife. You know it would work for that. It's
Speaker 2: pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You also one year for my birthday, got me this
Speaker 1: uh like horseshoe knife that's like for like that looks
Speaker 1: like a horseshoe, but it's for like a cheeseboard. I
Speaker 1: got caught all the time.
Speaker 2: And I yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that knife.
Speaker 1: Robert's a great gift giver everybody.
Speaker 2: Anyways, it's easy if you're just getting knives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, nobody gives me a knife the
Speaker 1: way you give me a knife, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: We got four hundred and eighty one comments on the
Speaker 1: thread asking for for questions for this Q and A as
Speaker 1: of time of recording, which is New Year's Day. Everyone,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask as many as many as we have
Speaker 1: time for you.
Speaker 2: Ready, let's let's do it. Let me let me get
Speaker 2: a slug of my mountain dew. Baja Blast.
Speaker 1: Shut the fuck up, that's what you're drinking?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Maybe good? Yeah you're free Baja Blast.
Speaker 1: Do I need to drink that? Because I I've got
Speaker 1: a I've got a sweat?
Speaker 2: Is that what you say?
Speaker 1: I don't even know if that's how you say it.
Speaker 1: It's bad swepes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems that sounds right. I know what you're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: That's a good ginger. Wait, uh do I need to
Speaker 1: drink that.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's not good fair enough unless you want to sponsor
Speaker 1: this mountain.
Speaker 2: Dew then yeah, sure, then it's great.
Speaker 1: Then we'll say whatever you want. Anyways. Uh, what are
Speaker 1: your tips and tricks for identifying false information while doing
Speaker 1: your research?
Speaker 2: Well, hmm, that's tough because there's such like a wide
Speaker 2: variety of false information right, and and and some there's
Speaker 2: not really any basic tips that can help. I call
Speaker 2: this like good natured disinformation or good natured bad information.
Speaker 2: And it's no one's trying to propagandize you, no one's
Speaker 2: trying to like fuck with you. It's just a false
Speaker 2: version of reality has spread because somebody got a story
Speaker 2: wrong and started telling it, and other people have been
Speaker 2: like retelling it and adding into it. And if there's
Speaker 2: not like an agenda, that's kind of hard. You just
Speaker 2: have to actually dig into like what the work historians
Speaker 2: have done. I would say, as a general rule, if
Speaker 2: something sounds too good to be true, like if it's
Speaker 2: exactly what you want to believe about a really complicated
Speaker 2: and difficult situation, you should take a second look at it.
Speaker 2: And if it just sounds like too cool and wacky
Speaker 2: and like something in a movie, like a lot of
Speaker 2: times that is true. A lot of times history is
Speaker 2: crazier than anything that winds up in a movie. But
Speaker 2: if there's like a specific anecdote that I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I'll just like type a description of that
Speaker 2: anecdote in and then I'll put in like ask historians,
Speaker 2: Reddit or something like that to see if and that
Speaker 2: gets rid of the low hanging fruit. Right, if it's
Speaker 2: common disinformation or a common just like inaccuracy that gets
Speaker 2: spread around, someone who knows their shit will have talked
Speaker 2: about it there and will have sources. Right, so you're
Speaker 2: not just relying on a Reddit post. You can look back.
Speaker 2: You can find where the myth has been busted. You
Speaker 2: can also just like type in again like a brief
Speaker 2: description of the anecdote, comma, myth, comma, you know, something
Speaker 2: like that to see if like it has been discussed
Speaker 2: in that context or if there have been a lot
Speaker 2: of times, which you'll find as historians who are analyzing
Speaker 2: it and who have found Okay, this these couple of
Speaker 2: parts probably aren't true. This part might be surprisingly true,
Speaker 2: but like, that's that's kind of how I go about
Speaker 2: doing that sort of thing. If you're asking about, like
Speaker 2: how do you tell if like pictures or videos are
Speaker 2: AI generated, that's a separate set of like skills and
Speaker 2: tactics that probably runs longer than we have in this episode.
Speaker 2: But when I'm just like casually studying history and I
Speaker 2: come across something that I'm like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: It's also useful when you are reading a history book
Speaker 2: when you've like, especially like if it's kind of more
Speaker 2: in the pop history side of things, and you're really
Speaker 2: enjoying it. That always, if it's super entertaining and I
Speaker 2: find myself like unusually into it, sometimes that's just a
Speaker 2: sign that like a really good writer got a hold
Speaker 2: of some history. But it's also sometimes a sign that,
Speaker 2: like someone's massaging the facts to make a better piece
Speaker 2: of pop history. So I will search for the book
Speaker 2: and variations of like historians analyzed response from historian and
Speaker 2: see are there some professionals who have better or equivalent
Speaker 2: credentials to the author who have taken issue with some
Speaker 2: of the claims that they've made right. These are all
Speaker 2: kind of like tactics that you can use. There's not
Speaker 2: like a one size.
Speaker 1: Fits all, and like how many sources are using for
Speaker 1: different things. I feel like, never just accept one source.
Speaker 2: You try not to accept one every now and then
Speaker 2: you run into something where like, well, there's really one
Speaker 2: book about this guy, or there's like one good book
Speaker 2: about this thing, and I will at least try then
Speaker 2: to like come across like, well, what's some like untrue,
Speaker 2: what are some bad books? Like what's some bullshit that
Speaker 2: got spread? Because then at least we're broadening it from
Speaker 2: here's what's in that book too, and here's some stuff
Speaker 2: that's spread that's not true or whatever, like you try to,
Speaker 2: Like when I'm at least putting together the podcast, I
Speaker 2: always want to be saying like, Okay, there's there's more
Speaker 2: than is just in this one source. Like when I
Speaker 2: was working on the new episodes, I started reading that
Speaker 2: any Jacobson book. I realized that there's a number of
Speaker 2: people who have some good issues with that book, including
Speaker 2: somebody discussed in the episode. So I read two other books,
Speaker 2: and I read that John Rubel's like you know essays
Speaker 2: and stuff because they provided like more context and when
Speaker 2: I looked at the stuff. Okay, there's people who have
Speaker 2: like issues with this part of Jacobson's book, but they
Speaker 2: seem to speak highly of command and Control. So why
Speaker 2: don't I use, you know, for that segment of the history.
Speaker 2: I'll focus more on what command and control or what
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes has to say. And that way, number one,
Speaker 2: you're just you're getting a more varied You're giving the listeners,
Speaker 2: the audience something more varied and effortful. Then just here's
Speaker 2: one book and what one guy said in one book.
Speaker 2: And you're also hopefully avoiding some of the most obvious pitfalls.
Speaker 1: Sure, and I mean again just to say the obvious.
Speaker 1: Never trust the Google AI summary.
Speaker 2: No, no, And you can always when you're googling. Now,
Speaker 2: if you just want to avoid that, just with whatever
Speaker 2: you're typing in add minus AI at the end, just
Speaker 2: a space and then minus AI. And it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that there won't be AI generated articles or whatever in
Speaker 2: your responses. That's basically impossible to avoid, but it cuts
Speaker 2: out the AI generated summary because that alone. Sometimes it's right,
Speaker 2: and when it's right, it's like fine, I guess, but
Speaker 2: the downside is when it's right, you'll read that instead
Speaker 2: of reading an actual source that probably will tell you more.
Speaker 2: And it's also hard to tell when it's wrong, and
Speaker 2: there's often just kernels of wrong baked into the right,
Speaker 2: and you're really doing yourself more of a favor by
Speaker 2: trying to find a better source. I find that just
Speaker 2: not having that little summary there can kind of like
Speaker 2: avoid you sort of casually almost acts, because sometimes it's accidental.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can't just the way your brain works, your
Speaker 2: eyes work, You're going to read part.
Speaker 3: Of that summary even before you scroll down, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: even if you are scrolling down to read a real thing,
Speaker 3: you may catch something in there and not realizing it,
Speaker 3: realize that you're picking up some disinformation.
Speaker 2: So I kind of start with that, like that's my baseline.
Speaker 2: I've also I'm you can do the same thing on
Speaker 2: Duck duck go, I think, so I've been using that more.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of experimenting. I'm hoping to find this next year,
Speaker 2: like a search engine solution that I'm happier with, because
Speaker 2: nothing that we've got right now is better than Google
Speaker 2: was like six years ago. But I've found Duck duck
Speaker 2: Go generally better than Google now and doing the minus
Speaker 2: AI you know, thing gets you better like or at
Speaker 2: least reduces the odds of you getting some bad information.
Speaker 1: Sure what bastard or bastards have you not done because
Speaker 1: the research will take too long or they're just too complicated?
Speaker 2: Uh? I mean, I haven't done the Nixon episode yet
Speaker 2: because there's so many books that I know I need
Speaker 2: to get through to do it. And that's only part
Speaker 2: of it. I had been planning to do it in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four and talked about doing with the doll
Speaker 2: Up guys. They were on board, and my dad got sick,
Speaker 2: and I just haven't gotten Like it's been a while now,
Speaker 2: I should have gotten back into it. I just kind
Speaker 2: of haven't because it's it's such a it's such a
Speaker 2: heavy lift. Sure, I haven't done now yet for the
Speaker 2: same reason. You know, I do those heavy lifting episodes
Speaker 2: periodically throughout the year. The Nuke one was a heavy lift.
Speaker 2: You know, there were all a number of books involved
Speaker 2: in that. Himmler was a heavy lift, a number of
Speaker 2: books involved in that. You know, The Zizians was a
Speaker 2: heavy lift.
Speaker 1: Several comments on Himmler. People want more Himmler.
Speaker 2: People always want more Himmler. That's what everyone was saying
Speaker 2: when he died. So like, I'm try, I try to
Speaker 2: do like at least every quarter, like a heavy lift effort,
Speaker 2: you know, longer episode. But there's a lot of those,
Speaker 2: So I just there's not like a particular reason other
Speaker 2: than I just didn't feel confident tackling that one at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: Sure, this next one says, what are some unexpected commonalities
Speaker 1: between bastards other than grew up in poverty and had
Speaker 1: abusive parents slash guardians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't even say. I mean, those are commonalities
Speaker 2: between a number of bastards from specific time periods, but
Speaker 2: they're not commonalities I think because having being poor or
Speaker 2: having like a household where you know, you don't have
Speaker 2: both parents around is a common thing with bastards. It
Speaker 2: just was really common for kids growing up in those
Speaker 2: time periods, Like is it should we see it as
Speaker 2: significant that Hitler was poor and that his dad died
Speaker 2: when he was young and his mom died tragically when
Speaker 2: he was not a whole lot older, and it really
Speaker 2: fucked him up where it's like, but those were really
Speaker 2: normal experiences for just kids in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and early nineteen hundred, sickness and disease were a lot
Speaker 2: easier to you know, just wipe out portions of your family,
Speaker 2: and poverty of that sort was a lot more common.
Speaker 2: So I think you're kind of like a misnomer if
Speaker 2: you're looking at that as like a and those are
Speaker 2: common traits of monsters, because even if we're looking at
Speaker 2: the Nazis, it was more common for the big Nazis
Speaker 2: to have been comfortable and of like what we might
Speaker 2: call at least like a middle class upbringing than it
Speaker 2: was for them to be as like poor and downtrodden
Speaker 2: as Hitler was. He really you know, he had a
Speaker 2: very tough childhood. But I would say that's almost the
Speaker 2: exception more than it is the rule. One of the
Speaker 2: big rules is a kind of I mean, it's almost
Speaker 2: like too much to say, not even like a sense
Speaker 2: of megalomania, but a desperation to be somebody, to like
Speaker 2: be someone who matters in your society is like you
Speaker 2: see it, and like this kind of desperate need to
Speaker 2: be attached to whatever group is in power. Right. It's
Speaker 2: this yearning to be close to power that I think
Speaker 2: often predicts a lot of like the worst people, like
Speaker 2: the folks who will do anything for their career to
Speaker 2: like improve the perception of their place in society. That's
Speaker 2: like the biggest warning sign. I think that you see
Speaker 2: that somebody's going to do some really bad shit.
Speaker 1: Let's go to a quicker ad break and then sure
Speaker 1: we'll back more questions back. All right, So, Robert, what
Speaker 1: made you initially want to become a journalist? Was there
Speaker 1: a specific journalist or publication that inspired you to take
Speaker 1: that path?
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember as a kid during the Yugoslav
Speaker 2: Civil War and the you know, the genocide in Bosnia
Speaker 2: catching some news like live news footage from Sarajevo and
Speaker 2: thinking that, like wow, like what a like what a
Speaker 2: what a important, serious job. Maybe I'll do something like
Speaker 2: that as an adult, like the you know, the reporters
Speaker 2: on the ground that we're talking about, like what was
Speaker 2: happening in the city. I remember thinking that, like, that's
Speaker 2: that's like something adults do. That's a serious job for
Speaker 2: serious people. And so I definitely like that's the first
Speaker 2: time I can remember thinking that like something in line
Speaker 2: with the career I wound up picking out sounded intriguing,
Speaker 2: and then I don't know, like as a an eighteen
Speaker 2: nineteen year old reading trans Metropolitan for the first time.
Speaker 2: It's a comic book series with a journalist as a
Speaker 2: protagonist that's set in the in the far future. It's
Speaker 2: very good. It's one of the best illustrated graphic novel
Speaker 2: series I think I've ever seen, and I really I
Speaker 2: still revisited every couple of years. That definitely like jazzed
Speaker 2: me up as a as an adolescent, as a young adult.
Speaker 2: And then I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street.
Speaker 2: You know, I was there at Zuccati Park for a
Speaker 2: couple of days. I saw little bits of some of
Speaker 2: the regional ones, and I just was never happy with
Speaker 2: the coverage that was going on, either like the mainstream
Speaker 2: media coverage or the stuff that was really celebrated at
Speaker 2: the time, which was like a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who were like within the movement and kind of doing
Speaker 2: movement coverage of what was happening. I mean, that's kind
Speaker 2: of where Tim Poole came out of, right, So I
Speaker 2: think maybe I was maybe I was just could see
Speaker 2: that a problem was coming, but I was I was
Speaker 2: not happy with what I was seeing, and I was
Speaker 2: I was becoming as I became more, you know, in
Speaker 2: my early twenties, more acquainted with like history and particularly
Speaker 2: like the political history of Latin America and US interactions
Speaker 2: in the Middle East. I grew like more and more
Speaker 2: frustrated with the news. With what I still saw is
Speaker 2: this like really important job that I thought was being
Speaker 2: like kind of systemically done badly. I took when I
Speaker 2: was in college, I took courses on the Holocaust in
Speaker 2: remembrance that was about how the Holocaust has been covered
Speaker 2: in like movies and fiction, but also how the Holocaust
Speaker 2: was reported on at the time and afterwards. A lot
Speaker 2: of that stuff, by the way, made it into the
Speaker 2: episodes about how like the liberal media helped fascism get
Speaker 2: a foothold, you know, the last time. So really, since
Speaker 2: I was in kind of like twenty twenty one, I've
Speaker 2: been I've been thinking about like the shortcomings of our
Speaker 2: of our media and how disastrous those shortcomings are. And
Speaker 2: I still kind of fundamentally believe what I did as
Speaker 2: a kid, that it's like a really important job reporting
Speaker 2: on conflict, especially for serious people, and there's just not
Speaker 2: a lot of them doing it. You know, there are
Speaker 2: there are some great reporters obviously much better than me
Speaker 2: out there reporting on conflict. But I think the bulk
Speaker 2: of what gets written about war and genocide and conflict
Speaker 2: around the world, including you know, in the United States,
Speaker 2: protests and the like, is bad. And I guess I
Speaker 2: became aware of that at a pretty young age.
Speaker 1: Just made me think about when I was in college.
Speaker 1: I took early on in college, I got approval to
Speaker 1: take a class. I was a freshman. Everyone else was
Speaker 1: a senior in the class, but the professor for some
Speaker 1: reason let me take it. And it was a psychology
Speaker 1: of ethics class, and I had to do this report
Speaker 1: that was like most of what I worked on in
Speaker 1: that semester, and it was all about, you know, the
Speaker 1: ethics of the insanity defense for mass shooters. And it
Speaker 1: was right after the Aurora shooting, the movie Theater Batman shooting,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of that really shaped the
Speaker 1: way that I thought about people, which I think impacts
Speaker 1: a lot of our work. So I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just kind of takes like one class. I feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just one one or one assignment really to
Speaker 1: like influence you creatively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is, because when I think back on,
Speaker 2: like my time in school, I can think, I can
Speaker 2: I can only really remember like one teacher two teachers
Speaker 2: by name that I've had in like the whole twelve years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I remember moments kind of more than one, like
Speaker 2: three or four. But there's a but I do. There
Speaker 2: are like some moments, and really for the most part
Speaker 2: they were singular moments, like three or four of them
Speaker 2: that like were absolutely foundational to who I became, which
Speaker 2: is always interesting to me, the degree to which like
Speaker 2: both great like school is just a complete blur, like
Speaker 2: I barely remember it, and also I can point out
Speaker 2: like three or four moments, so I'm like, well, that
Speaker 2: changed everything, you know. Yeah, I guess that's how it
Speaker 2: is sometimes stuff with how it was for me.
Speaker 1: There's several different questions that basically sum up to the
Speaker 1: same question from folks that they're asking, who's the oldest
Speaker 1: bastard in history?
Speaker 2: The oldest bastard, Like I'm assuming they mean like chronologically
Speaker 2: like the first bastard Literear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was asked several different times.
Speaker 2: I mean, we certainly don't know his name right like
Speaker 2: there because here's the thing, and this is because I've
Speaker 2: talked a lot, you know about like something that gets
Speaker 2: that anarchists bring up quite frequently, which is how you
Speaker 2: had a lot of in prehistory among these hunter gatherer tribes,
Speaker 2: a lot of like extremely egalitarian communities, right particularly compared
Speaker 2: to like a lot of the settled cultures that followed them.
Speaker 2: Right where there were was significantly more equality between men
Speaker 2: and women, there were significantly flatter hierarchies, you know, a
Speaker 2: lot less power being invested in single individuals. And I
Speaker 2: talked about in the Manifested episode about like the that
Speaker 2: ekung ritual, like the shaming of the meat, to try
Speaker 2: and stop young men who are our hunters from getting
Speaker 2: too big an ego because they think that hunting is
Speaker 2: all that matters, because it's like the cool sexy job
Speaker 2: to have, right, And if you're focusing on that, you're
Speaker 2: ignoring how will most of our calories come from? People?
Speaker 2: Like gathering nuts, and a lot of that work it's
Speaker 2: done by women. And also people need clothes, people need tools,
Speaker 2: all of these things that are just as important as
Speaker 2: going out and killing a deer and in fact necessary
Speaker 2: precursors that are a lot less sexy. So if you
Speaker 2: let like the young hunter boys get you know, a
Speaker 2: fucking ego about them because like, well, I'm the one
Speaker 2: who brought home the meat. Then you're ignoring everyone else's contributions,
Speaker 2: and that makes your whole community weaker, right, And it
Speaker 2: creates the opportunity, at least that one of those young
Speaker 2: men's going to lose their shit and bring terrible, terrible
Speaker 2: suffering onto the rest of the community.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But I think when we talk about that, we talk
Speaker 2: about all of these different sort of like rituals and
Speaker 2: ceremonies and rules that different societies adopted to deal with
Speaker 2: the problem of power to ensure that they had flatter hierarchies.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a tendency then to kind of forget something, which
Speaker 2: is that those were not those were not part of
Speaker 2: those societies because they were more enlightened than modern people,
Speaker 2: or at least than the people that followed them. It
Speaker 2: was not like, oh, we used to understand how to
Speaker 2: be good as a society, right, or as human beings,
Speaker 2: Like we used to have better cultures, we used to
Speaker 2: be more ethical, we used to treat each other better,
Speaker 2: and we stopped. I think it's more accurate to say, like, well,
Speaker 2: all of those different rules and practices are evidence of
Speaker 2: the fact that there's always been a problem with power
Speaker 2: in human cultures, and that individual people taking too much
Speaker 2: power for themselves has always been a danger, and our
Speaker 2: ancestors recognize that and have throughout the entire history of
Speaker 2: human events and some of culture developed methods of dealing
Speaker 2: with it. But ultimately we have to assume all of
Speaker 2: those methods hit points of failure, right, because those cultures
Speaker 2: didn't last, right, and they didn't beat out in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases the more stratified and hierarchical cultures that
Speaker 2: followed them, and so well, I think it's really valuable
Speaker 2: to look at here are solutions different cultures have proposed
Speaker 2: the problem of power. The fact that those they had
Speaker 2: to come up with so many different solutions is evidence
Speaker 2: to the fact that that problem is kind of universal, right,
Speaker 2: And that hints at a long history of bastards, of
Speaker 2: individual assholes and codras of assholes that have sought in
Speaker 2: every kind of society, including ancient hunter gatherer societies, to
Speaker 2: try and take much more than their fair share from
Speaker 2: everybody else. Right. And so there's certainly a long prehistory
Speaker 2: of nameless bastards out there, and I think it behooves
Speaker 2: us to remember that, both because I am one of
Speaker 2: those people who says we should be looking at what
Speaker 2: other older, different cultures developed as ways to deal with
Speaker 2: the problem with power, without pretending that they definitely had
Speaker 2: it figured out, because again, none of that stuff lasted forever.
Speaker 1: Right right, Let's take another quick break and being back
Speaker 1: with a couple more questions. We're back, Robert. Do you
Speaker 1: listen to music while you write scripts for the pod?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sometimes I used to do more. I used to
Speaker 2: listen to more music while I was writing. The last
Speaker 2: like year or so, I haven't done it as much.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Why do you have Like they always ask NBA players like,
Speaker 1: what's the song you listened to before game time? Do
Speaker 1: you have a song you listened to before pod time?
Speaker 2: I mean not before recording a podcast. I have like
Speaker 2: different bands that I listened to while I'm writing. More
Speaker 2: often than other there's a different play. One place I
Speaker 2: used to go a lot is the white Light mixes.
Speaker 2: If you just type like white light mixes in, it's
Speaker 2: like a set of like hour and a half long
Speaker 2: like mixes that are meant for people to like drive to.
Speaker 2: I think that was the initial idea is that these
Speaker 2: are great for like road trips and stuff and so
Speaker 2: different DJs will do like an hour, hour and a
Speaker 2: half long set that you can kind of zone out
Speaker 2: to while you're driving. I found them useful over the
Speaker 2: years for writing a lot. And yeah, that's that's I mean,
Speaker 2: I listened to I do. I listened to a lot
Speaker 2: of like live bluegrass shows for whatever reason. I find
Speaker 2: that helps me concentrate. Last night, as I was working
Speaker 2: on what'll be some of the first episodes of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, I was listening to Green Sky Bluegrass at
Speaker 2: Red Rocks. I'll listen to you my SKA street Light. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm writing, but again, a lot of the last year,
Speaker 2: I haven't really been listening to much while writing, and
Speaker 2: I don't really know why. It comes and goes in waves.
Speaker 1: Have you ever started an episode on someone commonly known
Speaker 1: to be a bastard only to realize you actually agreed
Speaker 1: with them or decided they weren't worthy of being a bastard?
Speaker 2: I mean, like the Beau Brummel episodes. I started thinking like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the guy who like ruined men's fashion and
Speaker 2: did a lot of damage to the psychees of men
Speaker 2: for generations by locking people into these like because that's
Speaker 2: how he gets portrayed a lot, as he invented the
Speaker 2: suit and made men's fashion boring and made men scared
Speaker 2: to express themselves through clothing. I don't actually think that's
Speaker 2: a fair summary of what bo Brummele did in his life.
Speaker 2: It certainly was not fair to his intent. I think
Speaker 2: he was a much more sympathetic person than that. But
Speaker 2: I also thought there's a lot of bastardery in that story,
Speaker 2: because I mean, just English culture during the period of
Speaker 2: time that he was alived was a fucking nightmare. So
Speaker 2: I decided, like, well, this is still good for an episode.
Speaker 2: So I have There's been a couple of like times
Speaker 2: not really worth diving into, where I've I've heard like
Speaker 2: one story about someone that sucks, like a celebrity or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I've looked into like, Okay, can I get laying
Speaker 2: an episode or is this just somebody did something shitty
Speaker 2: once Katy Perry and.
Speaker 1: We want Yeah, we talked about doing Katy Perry once.
Speaker 2: That happened with a Katy Perry episode where I thought
Speaker 2: this the whole thing with her in the Nuns. There's
Speaker 2: controversy over this house she was buying. It's not as
Speaker 2: bad as it seems. Like. I'm not saying I go
Speaker 2: into bat for her as a good person, but I
Speaker 2: don't think she's an interesting subject for an episode, sure, right,
Speaker 2: for sure? Yeah, it's not. It's less that, like I
Speaker 2: don't think I've ever had it like where Oh no,
Speaker 2: this person's a hero, although I do find some things
Speaker 2: about bo Brummle to be kind of admirable. But it's
Speaker 2: more that, like, ah, this person just is like a
Speaker 2: person who did some shitty stuff, and that's not really
Speaker 2: a bastard, right, Like we're we're not declaring someone a
Speaker 2: bastard just because they like had flaws and did bad
Speaker 2: We've all done bad things. We're not all interesting to
Speaker 2: hear about for two hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which bastard pastor present would be the best podcast
Speaker 1: guest to cover a different horrible person?
Speaker 2: Oh man? I mean honestly, I feel like if I,
Speaker 2: if he was alive, I would make fucking fifty million
Speaker 2: dollars doing a podcast with l Ron Hubbard where I
Speaker 2: just explained different cults to l Ron Hubbard and he
Speaker 2: critiques them like he explains, ah, now this is where
Speaker 2: you fucked up, this is where you rent a classic.
Speaker 2: It would be the least responsible podcast of all time.
Speaker 2: I would deserve to go to prison for making that
Speaker 2: show because it would just create a new generation of
Speaker 2: hypercompetent cult leaders. But it would be super interesting just
Speaker 2: getting LRH on the record critiquing other cult leaders because
Speaker 2: they're all worse than him. He was the best at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, guys, we'll be back on Thursday to
Speaker 1: answer more of your questions. Any final thoughts.
Speaker 2: Robert, Uh, you know, in the new year, fuck it,
Speaker 2: I don't know whatever it is to you, fuck it.
Speaker 1: Cool Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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