Speaker 1: Hey guys, ed here this week, we're coming to you
Speaker 1: with a special episode from the archives. It's my chat
Speaker 1: with the Emmy Award winning political commentator Rachel Maddow. Rachel
Speaker 1: is also the host of the hit show Ultra, and
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty three, she and I sat down
Speaker 1: to talk about our fascination with history, the eerily prescient
Speaker 1: stories in our respective podcasts, and why we do the
Speaker 1: work we do. It's probably one of my favorite chats
Speaker 1: I've ever had on this podcast, and so I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to share it with you again today. Keep listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back with a regularly scheduled episode next week. Enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, SNAFU listeners. We're back to discuss a dicey subject,
Speaker 1: a far right coup, an attempt to overthrow the democratically
Speaker 1: elected government of the Night States of America. Because you'll
Speaker 1: never degue our country with wis you have to show
Speaker 1: strength when you have to be strong, we have Nope,
Speaker 1: not that one. In the United States District Court Washington DC,
Speaker 1: Chief Justice Edward C. Iiker, besides, at the trial of
Speaker 1: thirty elled seditionists, here we go. That's the one that's right,
Speaker 1: My friends, back in nineteen forty four, the Nazis tried
Speaker 1: to overthrow the US government with the help of some
Speaker 1: US congressmen know less. I'm talking about the Great Sedition
Speaker 1: Trial of nineteen forty four, which is the subject of
Speaker 1: a history podcast hosted by Rachel Maddow called Ultra Now.
Speaker 1: Ultra and Snafu have a lot in common. Both podcasts
Speaker 1: are deep dives into important moments in American history which
Speaker 1: are largely forgotten, and yet they feel oddly prescient to
Speaker 1: our world today. So naturally, I wanted to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk with Ultra's creator. So today I'm coming into
Speaker 1: your feed with a treat my conversation with Rachel Maddow
Speaker 1: about Ultra and Snaffu. We talk about these two extraordinary stories,
Speaker 1: forgotten history in general, the roots of authoritarianism, and how
Speaker 1: it all weaves into current events. Rachel is well known
Speaker 1: for being a rigorous on air journalist, author, and podcaster.
Speaker 1: She's curious, a deep thinker, profoundly insightful, and pretty damn funny,
Speaker 1: all of which makes her a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to talk to. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, and I think you will too.
Speaker 1: So here it is my chat with Rachel Maddow. Hello,
Speaker 1: Hi and Rachel Maddow. It's so cool to meet you.
Speaker 1: This is awesome to meet you too.
Speaker 2: It's great. This is very exciting.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I agree, thanks so much for jumping into our
Speaker 1: SNAFU universe. So what's happening? Where are you?
Speaker 3: I'm in rural dirt road, western Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Dirton Road. I don't know that.
Speaker 3: It's kind of the ambient vibe where I We're really
Speaker 3: out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: What are you hiding from, Rachel? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Humans?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that's fair. Are you in a bunker?
Speaker 2: What's weird? Actually? And this is true.
Speaker 3: The cottage that I'm in right now, this little house
Speaker 3: in which we built this studio, audio studios and stuff
Speaker 3: so I can do my TV show from here, has
Speaker 3: a legit nuclear bomb shelter in the basement.
Speaker 1: Because you built it or because it was already there.
Speaker 2: No, it was there.
Speaker 3: It was built by whoever had this house in the fifties.
Speaker 3: And it's got concrete like this and triple rebar and
Speaker 3: when we came in to like flatten out the floor
Speaker 3: and make everything normal, the contractor was like, we have
Speaker 3: to leave the basement.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you something. I'm not like a crazy
Speaker 1: prepper kind of doomsday person, but like I would like
Speaker 1: to have a bunker.
Speaker 2: It just seems like a nice option.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well this is fun. I would love
Speaker 1: to go deeper into apocalypse preparation, but we have some
Speaker 1: really fun stuff to talk about. First of all, your
Speaker 1: podcast Ultra was the number one podcast on Apple for
Speaker 1: what like five.
Speaker 3: Weeks, A bunch of weeks, A bunch of weeks it
Speaker 3: was number one, and then it was less than number one,
Speaker 3: and then it was back up to number one again.
Speaker 2: So it was really a surprise and very exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and very well deserved. I listened to it twice.
Speaker 1: I just had it was so fun. I listened to
Speaker 1: it all the way through, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: I gotta hear that again, but I don't have as
Speaker 1: much time, so I listened to it at like one
Speaker 1: point eight. And it's funny when you listen to something
Speaker 1: sped up like that, everyone sounds unbelievably intelligent.
Speaker 3: I had the opposite problem, which is that my doctor,
Speaker 3: who is you know, my doctor like kind of my friend,
Speaker 3: but my doctor texted me all concerned that there was
Speaker 3: something wrong with me because he had listened to Ultra
Speaker 3: and he was like, you really, I know you've had
Speaker 3: issues with depression and stuff in the past, and you
Speaker 3: really turns out he was listening to it on zero
Speaker 3: point seventy five.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he thought I was really down. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: He thought he had special medical insight into what was going.
Speaker 1: On with Yeah, that's amazing. Great Ultra. It is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary story. It is extremely well told. It's incredibly engaging
Speaker 1: and really really fun and I would love to just
Speaker 1: for our Snafoo listeners, if you haven't heard Ultra, can
Speaker 1: you break it down? Just like, what's the basic story?
Speaker 3: The basic story is in the lead up to World
Speaker 3: War Two there was a really really big Nazi and
Speaker 3: I mean that specifically.
Speaker 2: I don't mean like Nazis.
Speaker 3: I mean were the Nazis big Nazi effort to try
Speaker 3: to exploit what the Germans called kernels of disturbance in
Speaker 3: the United States, and so they were trying to propagandize
Speaker 3: us really heavily. They supported a bunch of American native
Speaker 3: fascist movements that were way scarier than we remember them
Speaker 3: in history, and they paid a bunch of members of
Speaker 3: Congress and senators to be on their side for this effort,
Speaker 3: and it all sort of culminated in the Great Sedition
Speaker 3: Trial of nineteen forty four, when nearly thirty of the
Speaker 3: folks who were involved with the Nazis in these various
Speaker 3: plots got put on trial and they got off.
Speaker 2: There was a mistrial, and they were all let go.
Speaker 1: It's so profound, this story, It is so intense, and
Speaker 1: it's totally mind blowing. In your description just now, you
Speaker 1: said that trial was the Great Sedition Trial of what
Speaker 1: nineteen forty forty four? That implies that this was like
Speaker 1: a landmark event that we all know and understand. What's
Speaker 1: so incredible about this story? To me, among there's lots
Speaker 1: of things incredible about it, but one of the most
Speaker 1: incredible things is how forgotten it is. And it's something
Speaker 1: that I think our podcasts share, which is the sort
Speaker 1: of forgotten history stories that are that are insanely important.
Speaker 1: And one of the historians in your podcast actually says
Speaker 1: at one point, I'm a PhD in history, and most
Speaker 1: of my colleagues who are PhDs in history have never
Speaker 1: heard of this, and so then of course the general
Speaker 1: public has no idea, and I wonder why is it forgotten?
Speaker 3: Well, it's you know, I was thinking about the parallels
Speaker 3: with that and with Able Archer, with what you cover
Speaker 3: in Snaffu, and I think there there is something that's
Speaker 3: like important for us to reflect on as people who
Speaker 3: tell stories and who are interested in history, which is
Speaker 3: that sometimes the reason something is forgotten is because of
Speaker 3: who won and who lost. Right, Like the goods, history
Speaker 3: is told by the winners, and sometimes what the winners
Speaker 3: most want is for us to forget that the thing happened.
Speaker 3: And that's definitely I feel like that's a little bit
Speaker 3: of the story that you unfold in in Snaffu, Like
Speaker 3: with the CIA doing its assessment of what happened with
Speaker 3: Able Archer and whether it was a close call, They're like.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was fine. It was no big deal.
Speaker 3: And that's part of the history that you uncover and
Speaker 3: that you tell in the story. But it's also important
Speaker 3: that the CIA wants it to be minimized, not to
Speaker 3: be remembered as a significant thing. And a sort of
Speaker 3: different version of that happens in my story, where the
Speaker 3: good news ending to the extent that there is one
Speaker 3: is that all of the elected officials who were part
Speaker 3: of this plot, who are the real bad guys here,
Speaker 3: the public knew enough, they found out enough about what
Speaker 3: those guys were up to that they voted them all
Speaker 3: out of office, like all but one of them got
Speaker 3: voted out of office. And so even though a lot
Speaker 3: of them were household names, really influential members of the
Speaker 3: House in the Senate at the time, once they got
Speaker 3: turfed out by voters who were disgusted by their behavior,
Speaker 3: they went from being big deals to being losers.
Speaker 2: And the losers get forgotten.
Speaker 3: And so part of the history that we have to
Speaker 3: contend with is how much are the players here minimized
Speaker 3: in history, either because it's convenient for somebody or because
Speaker 3: the good guys won, And how much does that affect
Speaker 3: whether this story is easy to find or easy to
Speaker 3: be told. So I find that dynamic interesting because you
Speaker 3: have to put yourself then in the story in terms
Speaker 3: of how hard it is for you to find these things.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a little bit of a scary reality when
Speaker 1: you think the forgotten stories of history are very often
Speaker 1: some of the most important, because the reason that they're
Speaker 1: forgotten is that they were either painful or embarrassing or
Speaker 1: extremely problematic, and yet those are the things that we
Speaker 1: do have the potential to learn the most from.
Speaker 3: And the other the other circumstance in which that happens
Speaker 3: is because it was a really scary thing and some
Speaker 3: Americans or some characters in the story rose up and
Speaker 3: did the right thing and neutralized the danger, right, and
Speaker 3: then the heroes. Yeah, but that's also those heroes. We
Speaker 3: also need to learn that story, you know. So it's
Speaker 3: it's it can't It can be like a deliberate shunt
Speaker 3: this a way, let's not think about it, But it
Speaker 3: can also be a like who close call, let's forget
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, Yeah, okay, So how the hell did
Speaker 1: you find it? Like with SNAFU, we just we wanted
Speaker 1: to do a podcast, and we wanted to do something
Speaker 1: kind of history and irreverent, and we set about looking
Speaker 1: for the thing. Did you know you wanted to do
Speaker 1: a podcast and look for something exciting and meaningful or
Speaker 1: did you just dig up this story or stumble on
Speaker 1: it and then say this has to be told?
Speaker 2: So I was.
Speaker 3: I sort of feel like the all the best stories
Speaker 3: that I've ever been involved in telling come out of ignorance,
Speaker 3: like come out of legitimate curiosity, like I don't understand
Speaker 3: where this came from, or this thing that everybody thinks
Speaker 3: makes sense to them doesn't make sense to me. And
Speaker 3: I was going through that sort of train of thought
Speaker 3: just as part of my news you know, my day
Speaker 3: job at MSNBC, thinking about Holocaust denial. So we're having
Speaker 3: this big upsurge in anti semitism and kind of anti
Speaker 3: semitism wedded to political power.
Speaker 2: Which is a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 3: And at the core of all of it is this
Speaker 3: sort of burbling thing where people say the Holocaust didn't happen.
Speaker 2: And I've always felt like it's not obvious to me
Speaker 2: how that.
Speaker 3: Can exist intellectually, sure, like it's one thing to be prejudiced,
Speaker 3: it's another thing to say this obvious thing and history
Speaker 3: of which we have all this proof.
Speaker 2: I choose to contend that it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: And so I was interested in where that came from,
Speaker 3: and particularly where it came from in the first instance,
Speaker 3: like how early on did people start denying it?
Speaker 2: And what I.
Speaker 3: Found, to my surprise, is that Holocaust denial really came
Speaker 3: from the United States. It didn't come from Germany, and
Speaker 3: it happened really early on. It happened in the forties,
Speaker 3: which is nuts because there's all these American gis and
Speaker 3: refugees from Europe, including refugees from Germany coming here, who
Speaker 3: are eyewitnesses, who are survivors who had family members killed
Speaker 3: or who were liberating the concentration camps. I mean, so
Speaker 3: all this irrefutable evidence, and yet this thing emerges in
Speaker 3: the late forties in the United States and then starts
Speaker 3: pinging around the world. We're going to say that didn't happen.
Speaker 3: So interested in where the hell did that come from
Speaker 3: and why and who were the characters who dreamed this
Speaker 3: out knowing that it was false, but concocting it for
Speaker 3: a political reason, And in trying to figure that out,
Speaker 3: which is a story I'm still going to tell, but
Speaker 3: I haven't gotten there yet, I realized that actually those
Speaker 3: folks came out of this milia during World War Two
Speaker 3: in the United States that we've forgotten about, and they
Speaker 3: all went on trial and oh my god, the judge
Speaker 3: died in the middle of the trial and they were
Speaker 3: all set free. And then what happened to them is
Speaker 3: so it ended up being kind of the prequel to
Speaker 3: the story that I wanted to tell, but I realized
Speaker 3: there was enough there that I should probably tell it.
Speaker 1: That's that is fascinating. I feel like that's kind of
Speaker 1: how some of the best stories do come about.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you a SNAFU question about that?
Speaker 1: Please? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I thought the thing that I most admired about the
Speaker 3: storytelling in SNAFU was your sort of fearlessness about casting
Speaker 3: doubt on the story. So obviously there's I mean, for
Speaker 3: everybody listened to it, like, there's lots of twists and
Speaker 3: lots of you know, backing up and reconsidering stuff that's
Speaker 3: earlier been presented. And I wondered, when you constructed the
Speaker 3: story and when you decided to do it, did you
Speaker 3: know about the doubt and uncertainty and sort of woliness
Speaker 3: of the bottom line of that story when you started,
Speaker 3: or did you think it was a more certain story
Speaker 3: when you started and you only got to that you know,
Speaker 3: more mature, complex bottom line once you were into it
Speaker 3: in the middle of the research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the latter. Like everything you read about
Speaker 1: Able Archer in the sort of to the extent that
Speaker 1: it's in the zeitgeist, just little blips and blurbs. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a very cut and dry thing, but like anything,
Speaker 1: the more you dig, the more nuanced it becomes. And
Speaker 1: then it became for us as storytellers just feeling a
Speaker 1: kind of response. It's ability to reflect that nuance and
Speaker 1: the complexity. You know, even some even historians have some
Speaker 1: different perspectives on it that are that are very meaningful.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We really wanted to lean into the
Speaker 1: integrity of it, and that made it a little bit
Speaker 1: messier of a story. But ultimately the messiness kind of
Speaker 1: gave rise to some really exciting questions and kind of pontifications,
Speaker 1: and that's really where we wound up kind of putting
Speaker 1: the focus in that last episode.
Speaker 3: Well, it makes it more profound and more real. It
Speaker 3: also makes it more of a contribution to the history
Speaker 3: of it. Right to have all the interviews that you
Speaker 3: do and to have an honest reflection of the real
Speaker 3: you know, the legitimate contention with the various facts and
Speaker 3: the various perspectives on it. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 3: a real work of history with all all the jokes included.
Speaker 3: But also it does get you to a more profound
Speaker 3: place in terms of getting I think encouraging critical thinking
Speaker 3: about seemingly cut.
Speaker 2: And dry episodes.
Speaker 3: I just thought that was really, like I said, mature
Speaker 3: and complex and cool.
Speaker 1: Go on.
Speaker 2: Also, you guys, you're just so handsome.
Speaker 1: And it was No, that's I'm literally like getting chills.
Speaker 1: That means so much to hear from you. Yeah, Rachel,
Speaker 1: I really really appreciate that, And yeah, we really put
Speaker 1: a ton of work into it, and so that means
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: I think you had it harder than I did, because,
Speaker 3: in my case, the Great Sedition Trial of nineteen forty
Speaker 3: four is forgotten. The only histories of it have been
Speaker 3: written by people who sympathized with the fascist defendants, and
Speaker 3: so all the histories of it have all been about
Speaker 3: how they were railroaded and it was terrible that these
Speaker 3: people were put on trial, and how ridiculous this contention
Speaker 3: that the Nazis were working with any Americans? Do you
Speaker 3: believe how prejudiced the Department of Justice is against good
Speaker 3: American conservatives, And so all the history, all the history
Speaker 3: of it was really biased and all in the same direction,
Speaker 3: and nobody had ever revisited that history looking at it
Speaker 3: from a more balanced perspective, And so I didn't have to.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to contend with sort of you know,
Speaker 3: great nuanced, honest broker perspectives on both sides. There was
Speaker 3: just a bunch of clap trap written about it, and
Speaker 3: nobody had ever done a broader, less I think, in
Speaker 3: my from my perspective, less biased look at the evidence.
Speaker 1: Wasn't I thought Roggy wrote a book? But were you
Speaker 1: able to dig that up? Is that is that findable?
Speaker 2: Ish?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, if you want to get a copy of it,
Speaker 3: I can maybe give you a deal. I think I
Speaker 3: own all the copies of it there were. It never
Speaker 3: had like a second printing, It never went anywhere.
Speaker 1: He really tells us, sorry, tell us who Roggy is,
Speaker 1: because I just brought him up out of the blue.
Speaker 3: So Roggy is O John Roggy, who is a German American.
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, he grows up in the United States, son
Speaker 3: of German immigrants, speaking German at home, and he's this
Speaker 3: wonderkins lawyer and prosecutor and Justice Department official. And he
Speaker 3: ends up being the crusading prosecutor who tries to bring
Speaker 3: the sedition trial home, who tries to finish it, who
Speaker 3: fights against the mistrial and the great twist in my
Speaker 3: story in Ultra is when as the trials falling apart,
Speaker 3: Ragi gets leave to go to Germany and he gets
Speaker 3: to try to prove his contention that these weren't just
Speaker 3: conservative Americans who had their own anti Semitic fascist ideas
Speaker 3: that were actually working with the Nazi government. They're being
Speaker 3: paid by the Germans in many instances. He gets to
Speaker 3: prove that from the German side, and he interviews all
Speaker 3: these Nazi prisoners and they in fact give him all
Speaker 3: the dirt on all the Americans they were working with,
Speaker 3: and so he's able to prove the collusion, if you will,
Speaker 3: from the other side. And by the time he brings
Speaker 3: those findings home to the United States, we have won
Speaker 3: the war.
Speaker 2: Everybody wants to move on.
Speaker 3: Roggy has become a political figure in a way that
Speaker 3: he is. He is very much demonized by one side
Speaker 3: and then ultimately by the other side, and nobody really
Speaker 3: wants to hear it. And so he does create this
Speaker 3: really valuable historical record. But by the time it lands
Speaker 3: he finally gets it published, he has to fight with
Speaker 3: the Justice Tournament to get it declassified and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: By the time it finally lands in the public record.
Speaker 3: It's nineteen sixty one, and this is ancient history, and
Speaker 3: nobody buys the book, and nobody reviews it, and nobody
Speaker 3: stocks it in their archives, and it just disappears until
Speaker 3: you know, all these decades later, that story ends up
Speaker 3: being of interest to me because of its resonance with
Speaker 3: our current situations. And thank god he did it, because
Speaker 3: the record's there, even though nobody cared about it in
Speaker 3: his life time and he died in obscurity.
Speaker 1: It just raises so many fascinating questions and issues. Okay,
Speaker 1: so anti semitism or racism in all its forms, these
Speaker 1: are things that most people agree are bad, right, They're
Speaker 1: just bad, bad, and gone. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also seem embedded in most modern emergencies of fascism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, throughout history, totalitarianism pops up in many different
Speaker 1: forms all over the political spectrum. But fascism, and I
Speaker 1: ask this not as any kind of indictment of conservatism,
Speaker 1: but fascism in particular, seems to bubble up from the right.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I do think that there's you know,
Speaker 3: there's different types of authoritarianism, right, and there's definitely you know,
Speaker 3: left wing authoritarianism as well, of course, and the when
Speaker 3: you're talking about you know, tyrannical forms of government. Right
Speaker 3: wing authoritarianism, which in some instances is fascism. Not always,
Speaker 3: but sometimes this is fascism ends up having a recurrent
Speaker 3: appeal in our country and in other Western democracies. I
Speaker 3: think because people don't like democracy. I mean, the basic
Speaker 3: idea of democracy is that everybody gets a say. And
Speaker 3: if you think that you and people like you should
Speaker 3: get a say but other people shouldn't, that's an instinct
Speaker 3: that people have. And there can be left wing authoritarianism,
Speaker 3: which is a different drive and comes from a different
Speaker 3: place and leads to murder, leads to mass murder and
Speaker 3: terrible as much becomes as well, just as much Mayham.
Speaker 2: But on the right.
Speaker 3: The way it works is me and my people were
Speaker 3: the only people who should count as citizens. The other
Speaker 3: people who are technically you're telling me how to be
Speaker 3: part of this democracy are lesser than or evil or
Speaker 3: their interlopers, and we not only need to exclude them
Speaker 3: from the decision making process, but we need to blame
Speaker 3: them for all the things that are going wrong here,
Speaker 3: and we need to exclude them from the decision making
Speaker 3: process and punish them for all the terrible things they've done,
Speaker 3: because if it was just us in charge, everything would
Speaker 3: be fine. And that's the basic idea. And that's why
Speaker 3: authoritarianism on the right almost always.
Speaker 2: Comes with anti semitism.
Speaker 3: It's either going to be anti semitism or it's going
Speaker 3: to be some other thing that looks like anti semitism
Speaker 3: that is directed towards some other minority group because you
Speaker 3: need some out group to define as the source of
Speaker 3: all the problems, because you, the in group, are perfect
Speaker 3: and if you were just given full control, everything would
Speaker 3: be fine. And it's just it's dumb and it's simple,
Speaker 3: and it's recurrent.
Speaker 1: And humans we're dumb. Yeah, humans are dumb.
Speaker 2: We do dumb things, and we don't remember what the
Speaker 2: old dumb things were, so the new dumb things come.
Speaker 3: Around and we're like, whoa, yeah, you're telling me it's
Speaker 3: the juice, you know.
Speaker 2: Shocker.
Speaker 1: There's that great Hegel quote. The only thing we've learned
Speaker 1: from history is that we learn nothing from history. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you have any thoughts on how we
Speaker 1: can do better. It feels like in with modern technology
Speaker 1: we should be able to be better at learning from
Speaker 1: from history, but maybe we're just not wired for it
Speaker 1: in our DNA.
Speaker 3: I think that you know, fart jokes helps, you know,
Speaker 3: like when you know you did that whole riff on,
Speaker 3: like the Valentines, Like I have so many treasons that
Speaker 3: I love you, like Valentine's for Spies, and like the
Speaker 3: well fake game show that you inserted into, like like
Speaker 3: the it's storytelling skill and up being the entertainment quotient
Speaker 3: in direct ratio with the complexity of the story that
Speaker 3: you're telling.
Speaker 2: That helps.
Speaker 3: Like, I don't know that that's technological innovation, but it's
Speaker 3: it's an evolution of our sort of ambition to make
Speaker 3: these stories understandable, memorable, repeatable, you know, both on TV
Speaker 3: and in this podcast and book world that I'm into,
Speaker 3: I try to tell stories in such a way that
Speaker 3: they stick. And so even if you can't persuade somebody
Speaker 3: else to listen to Ultra, or you can't persuade somebody
Speaker 3: else to read my book about Spiro Agnew, if you
Speaker 3: listen to the podcast or if you read that book,
Speaker 3: you will have absorbed the story well on us that
Speaker 3: you can give somebody the gist of it and pass
Speaker 3: it on, right, And that's what you're doing in SNAFU.
Speaker 3: That's the whole idea of doing real history that's rigorous
Speaker 3: and honest and intellectually engage with the ambiguities and all
Speaker 3: those things. But it's also fun and is also not homework.
Speaker 3: It's just it's something that's a pleasure. And I think
Speaker 3: that's you know, if you've got those skills, that's a
Speaker 3: that's a mitzvah. That's a service to humanity into our
Speaker 3: country to use them that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to give give people some some candy
Speaker 1: with the vegetables, right, you.
Speaker 2: Gotta do you gotta do your Nancy astrologer stuff. It's important.
Speaker 2: It turns out to be important, it is.
Speaker 1: It's crazy how important astrology was in the Reagan administration.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3: Growing up in the eighties in San Francisco, I have
Speaker 3: to tell you the fact that Nancy's astrologer was in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, I remember being like.
Speaker 2: Kind of proud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh that's funny.
Speaker 3: This idea, like the rasputant pulling the strings in the
Speaker 3: Reagan White House might be.
Speaker 2: This lady in Bob Hill was actually like a source
Speaker 2: of regional pride for me.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. I think the thing that I feel
Speaker 1: like is missing is and maybe this is a maybe, Rachel,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a book pitch for us. Maybe we
Speaker 1: do a book together, and it's basically like the lessons
Speaker 1: of history. These are the lessons, and then here are
Speaker 1: the events that teach us those lessons. So you can
Speaker 1: no longer say like, well I don't know how to
Speaker 1: interpret that, or I don't know what to learn from that,
Speaker 1: Like we need a pendium of the lessons Leason seventeen.
Speaker 2: Stop blaming the Jews.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what. That's what, right, here's what. This is
Speaker 1: a book we need to write.
Speaker 3: Have a have a phone that connects between Washington and Moscow?
Speaker 1: How about that? Here's that phone? Yeah, and you and
Speaker 1: use it occasionally.
Speaker 2: But I think that.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to me that there really is a lot
Speaker 3: of interest in documentary and history stuff. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: surprise to me, Like seeing like how popular documentaries are
Speaker 3: on Netflix. When Netflix offers you in with literally equal effort,
Speaker 3: like clicking on one side of the screen versus the other,
Speaker 3: you can watch anything. So many people opt for documentaries.
Speaker 3: There there's something there is an there's a rational and
Speaker 3: constructive human hunger to learn stuff, and that's that to
Speaker 3: me is very heartening.
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like, Okay, that's room to run.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree with that, and I actually I
Speaker 1: think the success of your podcast to me was very
Speaker 1: reassuring just the you know, I think the lessons baked
Speaker 1: into your podcast are so important and meaningful and prescient,
Speaker 1: and I loved I was just so thrilled that so
Speaker 1: many people were we're getting thank you both of these
Speaker 1: stories able Archer or Snaffo, i should say, and ultra
Speaker 1: our podcasts. And you have an incredible career as a broadcaster,
Speaker 1: legendary broadcaster for many many years. How how is this
Speaker 1: kind of segue back into audio gone, and how did
Speaker 1: it affect how you consider telling this story.
Speaker 3: It's a good question because definitely sort of falling in
Speaker 3: love with the story and doing the research and realizing
Speaker 3: like kind of where it was going and what the
Speaker 3: bottom line of it was going to be and everything,
Speaker 3: it was definitely an open question as to how to
Speaker 3: produce it, like make I could I know that I
Speaker 3: could write a book about it, because I'm almost done
Speaker 3: with the book about it now, or I could try
Speaker 3: to produce it for TV, or try to make it
Speaker 3: into a movie or do some other thing, and ultimately
Speaker 3: I decided to do it as a podcast because I'm
Speaker 3: kind of just in love with audio. I think that
Speaker 3: my background in radio was I don't know if that
Speaker 3: if it stamped a love for audio on me, or
Speaker 3: if I was just wired that way anyway. But when
Speaker 3: I even when I when I do TV shows and
Speaker 3: stuff like, I don't really think about what stuff looks like.
Speaker 3: I think of the visual presentation of whatever's going on.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of decoration for the words. And when
Speaker 3: you do audio, there's this I don't know, level of
Speaker 3: I don't want to say like, I don't want to
Speaker 3: be too sappy about it, but there's a sort of
Speaker 3: level of intensity, like you're kind of speaking into somebody's
Speaker 3: ear rather than sitting in front of them talking, and
Speaker 3: it's it's it's can be intense, and it's also unforgiving.
Speaker 3: I think you have to be more precise in an
Speaker 3: audio environment and than you do when you have the
Speaker 3: help of visuals to distract people. So I find it
Speaker 3: to be more challenging and more rewarding. It's also kind
Speaker 3: of more more the way that I like to absorb information.
Speaker 3: I don't like to watch stuff as much as I
Speaker 3: like to listen to it.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I feel similarly, I found myself just devouring
Speaker 1: podcasts and audio books in a way that I never
Speaker 1: really consumed television. I mean I watched TV, of course,
Speaker 1: but I never I was never like a you know,
Speaker 1: addicted to shows or anything. And I but then podcasts
Speaker 1: would just suck me in and I realized, like, this
Speaker 1: is this incredibly powerful vehicle and the way that we
Speaker 1: work with a microphone, it's incredibly intimate, and I love that.
Speaker 2: I think it's like, God, I'm pregnant, Oh Jesus, A.
Speaker 1: Very powerful. My voice is very powerful. No. But I
Speaker 1: feel when I watch a documentary, especially something historical, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you can feel the sweatiness of the
Speaker 1: visuals there. They clearly had to dig for something to
Speaker 1: put here, Like okay, we're panning over photographs here, we're
Speaker 1: you know, we've got some weird visual metaphor happening, or
Speaker 1: we're looking at uh like reenactment footage. Sometimes it just
Speaker 1: feels like, okay, we get it, Like you had to
Speaker 1: put something there and you didn't have something. But with
Speaker 1: audio there. You don't, there's no cheating, you just it's all.
Speaker 1: It's all there.
Speaker 3: It's all speaking right into the person's ear, which is
Speaker 3: inside their head, which is right next to their brain.
Speaker 1: It's like a laser.
Speaker 2: And I found that in an interesting way.
Speaker 3: When we put out the first couple episodes of Ultra,
Speaker 3: we didn't make up any of the sound.
Speaker 2: All the sound that we used was was was real.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people thought that we had faked
Speaker 3: the news broadcasts, that we had found actors who were
Speaker 3: going to speak in weird old trans Atlantic accents.
Speaker 1: It is hard to believe that broadcasters spoke in this
Speaker 1: heightened tone like that. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of wild.
Speaker 3: But they told ourselves that old timey news was all
Speaker 3: very objective and staid and there wasn't any opinion or
Speaker 3: emotion in it. Yeah, bs, no, but they really did
Speaker 3: talk like this, and then through all sorts of shade
Speaker 3: and they were side and they were you know, and
Speaker 3: lots of asides and lots of opinion, and that's what.
Speaker 2: It sounded like.
Speaker 1: Well, so don't tell us what's happening next with Ultra,
Speaker 1: because there's a very exciting sort of next step.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I kind of can't believe it.
Speaker 3: But Steven Spielberg optioned Ultra to make a movie out
Speaker 3: of it, and so he's this.
Speaker 2: You know, he's an up and comer, is the one
Speaker 2: that sort of one to watch.
Speaker 1: First of all, huge congratulations and no brainer. This makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. The story is so riveting.
Speaker 2: I hope that that is true.
Speaker 3: I mean what I am learning is as I am
Speaker 3: sort of tiptoeing into this side of the world where
Speaker 3: I have never been before, is that a movie is
Speaker 3: going to be made?
Speaker 1: Is you know, like we're going to ruin it with visuals?
Speaker 2: Well no, but like is a movie going to be made?
Speaker 3: Like until someone is buying a ticket, receiving their change
Speaker 3: and walking into a dark room where a projector is running,
Speaker 3: I don't believe the movie exists, you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean? Like, there's a lot that goes in.
Speaker 3: Between optioning a movie and then it actually coming into
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: And so I believe that it's going to be a movie.
Speaker 2: But we'll see. I know, I'm you know, I did this.
Speaker 3: My previous podcast was called Bagman, was about Spiro Agnew
Speaker 3: and that's also in the movie making process. That's going
Speaker 3: to be a focus features film, but it just takes
Speaker 3: a long time, and there's all sorts of things that happen.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I'm I'm used to a daily production
Speaker 3: cable news world where you think of something in the
Speaker 3: morning and it's on TV at at night, and then
Speaker 3: you have to stop thinking about it because you've got
Speaker 3: to do something else the next day.
Speaker 1: And that the times that ain't how we make movies, Rachel,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm learning there's a whole rigamarole, and you're
Speaker 1: very wise to uh to kind of hold off on
Speaker 1: on the excitement of having a movie until you're walking
Speaker 1: in the door. But but just having a movie optioned
Speaker 1: by someone like Spielberg is so thrilling. Or focus features
Speaker 1: for the the agnews story, those are those are just
Speaker 1: such credible storytellers and and you can sort of feel
Speaker 1: confident that they'll be these stories will be handled very well.
Speaker 1: I feel like this would be such a cool movie.
Speaker 3: Both of them feel like movies to me too, Like
Speaker 3: I let you know, I watch as much you know,
Speaker 3: streaming television and miniseries and all that stuff as anybody else.
Speaker 3: But I do feel like both of these stories like
Speaker 3: seem like, you know, sit down for two hours and
Speaker 3: watch a single arc in the movie theater like its
Speaker 3: just and I would.
Speaker 2: I'd just love for it to work in both cases.
Speaker 1: So I also think I should play Oh John Robb Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I should be Roggy in this movie, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that just feels obvious.
Speaker 2: Obvious for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, So both of our podcasts have a lot of
Speaker 1: present day relevance and impressions, and yours I think is
Speaker 1: really really intensely relevant to right now. So in at
Speaker 1: what stage in your process did the events of January
Speaker 1: sixth happen? Was that? Were you already working on this podcast?
Speaker 3: No, I wasn't working on the sedition trial by that point.
Speaker 2: What was weird is that the.
Speaker 3: Resonance stuff, Like I felt like I got a little
Speaker 3: kick in the teeth from the universe because when the
Speaker 3: first episode of Ultra was posted, when we published the
Speaker 3: day that the Oathkeepers Sedition trial started, So that was
Speaker 3: that was weird.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then it was eight episodes and by the time
Speaker 3: we got to episode eight was when we were waiting
Speaker 3: for the verdict. So it was really just that was uncanny.
Speaker 3: I just felt like that was a that was a
Speaker 3: little that was unsettling almost, But you know it also,
Speaker 3: I feel like you do in trying to pick the
Speaker 3: right story to tell, you have to believe in the
Speaker 3: story on its own terms, sort of regardless of the resonance. Like, yes,
Speaker 3: there is going to be resonance, and there are lessons
Speaker 3: to be learned and things to be gleaned from the
Speaker 3: past that could help us in our current contention.
Speaker 2: But I don't feel like you can.
Speaker 3: You can't let that drive, you know, that has to
Speaker 3: a little bit of that is just going to be
Speaker 3: stuff that you can't see along the way, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about it with able archer and snafu with the
Speaker 3: before the Korean airliner was shot down, you highlight how
Speaker 3: the Russians were essentially paying, We're giving bounties to their
Speaker 3: own side for people who were spotting radar incursions on
Speaker 3: the radar, and so you were essentially saying, like, that's
Speaker 3: bad news in terms of what eventually happens with the
Speaker 3: civilian airliner being shot down after being misidentified as a
Speaker 3: military threat in Russian airspace. Well, you know, just within
Speaker 3: the past week, Russia just gave medals to the fighter
Speaker 3: pilots who dumped all that fuel on the US Reaper
Speaker 3: drone over the Black Sea.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the same.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure you weren't thinking about that when
Speaker 3: you didnable Archer and Snuff. But Russia is doing the
Speaker 3: same thing in monetarily and with military awards, rewarding people
Speaker 3: for doing incredibly reckless things that threaten conflict between the
Speaker 3: East and West.
Speaker 1: Sure. Well, one of the things that I think was
Speaker 1: really profound in Ultra was what this idea that emerged
Speaker 1: that there was no legal remedy for all of this
Speaker 1: horrible behavior. The legal remedies failed, there was a mistrial,
Speaker 1: and then the government basically just gave up on prosecuting
Speaker 1: these misdeeds and because they didn't want the headache. And
Speaker 1: so Roggy sort of makes the case in that Meet
Speaker 1: the Press interview that the remedy then must be just
Speaker 1: transparency and information, getting it out there, educating the public.
Speaker 1: That's all you can do. When this bad behavior can't
Speaker 1: be actually meaningfully reprimanded in some way, all you can
Speaker 1: do is expose it. And I think that's very powerful.
Speaker 1: It's also a little bit terrifying and disheartening, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if you feel like the January sixth trials have
Speaker 1: they've obviously gone a lot smoother than the Great Sedition trial.
Speaker 1: But but is that evidence of progress? Do you think
Speaker 1: we're doing better?
Speaker 3: It's it's interesting because it really does. I think it
Speaker 3: cuts both ways. I think there is a case to
Speaker 3: be made by looking back at the fascist movements in
Speaker 3: this country that were supported by Nazi Germany, including an
Speaker 3: element of that that operated inside the Congress. There's ways
Speaker 3: to look back at that, all that story that I
Speaker 3: tell in Ultra and say, you know, some of these
Speaker 3: things were legit crimes and people should have gone to jail,
Speaker 3: and that like crimes were committed here and crimes should
Speaker 3: have been prosecuted as such, including by some members of Congress,
Speaker 3: where that escaped punishment, I think largely because they bullied
Speaker 3: the Justice Department into not into into not coming after them.
Speaker 3: And we're seeing a little bit of that happening. We're
Speaker 3: seeing some resonance with some of the stuff that's happening
Speaker 3: right now in our new cycle. But the other the
Speaker 3: sort of good news side of what Roggy was preaching
Speaker 3: on Meet the Press that day is that you know,
Speaker 3: the people need to know this information. The legal remedy
Speaker 3: isn't there The legal remedy is the legal solution has failed.
Speaker 3: The legal remedy cannot be used as are the sum
Speaker 3: total of our response here. What has to happen is
Speaker 3: that the people need to know. And obviously people knowing
Speaker 3: isn't an end in itself. That doesn't fix it. What
Speaker 3: he means, what goes unsaid, is that when the people know,
Speaker 3: they will act if and you can trust Americans to
Speaker 3: defend our democracy and to stand up against tyranny and
Speaker 3: to reject authoritarianism and anti semitism and all the other
Speaker 3: things that go with it, but they need to know
Speaker 3: that it's happening. And so that one with alls on
Speaker 3: all of us. Yeah, I mean, it calls on journalists,
Speaker 3: it calls on activists, It calls on everybody who can
Speaker 3: contribute to the public record, including you know, dorks making
Speaker 3: podcasts down the road. But hopefully it means that a
Speaker 3: well informed public will make righteous decisions.
Speaker 2: And I want to believe that.
Speaker 1: I do too, And I think that's a good note
Speaker 1: to end on. Rachel, thank you so so very much
Speaker 1: for jumping in the booth here and having this chat
Speaker 1: with us. It's just really really fun and I wish
Speaker 1: you the best of luck. With the movie adaptation.
Speaker 2: Thanks Ed, Thanks this has been super fun. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Pipelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. Our lead producers are Sarah
Speaker 1: Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis, Associate
Speaker 1: producer Tory Smith. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis. Olivia
Speaker 1: Canny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.