Speaker 1: Greetings to the Snaffoo faithful. If you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: you're one of the good ones. You're You're bigger than
Speaker 1: a fan. You're family now. And speaking of familial bonds,
Speaker 1: I never feel more embraced as a member of the
Speaker 1: distinct podcasting community than when I meet and befriend other
Speaker 1: fellow podcasters. I even had the privilege of inviting a
Speaker 1: bunch of my favorite podcast hosts onto Snaffoo this past season.
Speaker 1: Karen Kilgareff and Georgia Hardstark from My Favorite Murder Really
Speaker 1: brought their true crime sixth sense insanity to our tale
Speaker 1: of the kidnapping of William Morgan. Robert Evans, the head
Speaker 1: honcho of the Behind the Bastards podcast, illuminated the Iran
Speaker 1: Contra debacle of the nineteen eighties with incredible wit and gravitas,
Speaker 1: And on a slightly more tech oriented episode, the co
Speaker 1: hosts of Hardfork, Kevin Russ and Casey Newton, provided first
Speaker 1: hand accounts and reactions to one of Facebook's most epic
Speaker 1: fuck ups. So enjoy these hosts and several more on
Speaker 1: this week's compilation episode from my absolute favorite primo podcasters.
Speaker 1: One of the things that might set our shows apart
Speaker 1: is that a lot of murders go unsolved and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But in a lot of murders, like people go to jail.
Speaker 1: In the stories I cover, accountability is virtually non existent,
Speaker 1: like snap Foo's big blunders, the big mistakes throughout history,
Speaker 1: like people just bury it, they walk away or walk away,
Speaker 1: or they're just people who have such extraordinary power already
Speaker 1: that they can't be held accountable, which.
Speaker 2: Kind of feels like part of it because when it's
Speaker 2: like a secret society where they have all the power,
Speaker 2: but it's such a small group, doesn't society always kind
Speaker 2: of want to get rid of those. It's like they're
Speaker 2: waiting for that, you know, that take down. It's all
Speaker 2: straight modern day the Internet attack or whatever, where.
Speaker 3: We love a good, a good collapse the o G
Speaker 3: cancel culture right then.
Speaker 1: Well as for old Willie Morgan himself, nobody ever found
Speaker 1: out what truly happened to him. In the years that
Speaker 1: followed his disappearance, unverified sightings trickled in. Some claimed to
Speaker 1: have spotted him traveling through the Ottoman Empire, others others,
Speaker 1: I saw I saw him, I saw him.
Speaker 3: He had a string in his mouth, he was yelling murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was walking along the top of the Great Wall.
Speaker 1: I swear I saw her. Uh, that's so funny to me,
Speaker 1: just like they saw him in the autumn, traveling through
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire. Others swore he'd turned up in the
Speaker 1: Cayman Islands living as a pirate. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: the fame Captain Morgan, is it. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: this actual that is a real pirate who has an
Speaker 1: actual story.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But and n I think some people, yeah, your rum,
Speaker 1: but I think I think this sort of got convoluted
Speaker 1: with into that. And then there's of course the Niagara
Speaker 1: River theory, which which several people actually maintained to their death.
Speaker 1: And uh, in in my very amateur historian view, is
Speaker 1: probably is the most plausible. Right, he was just dumped
Speaker 1: in the river.
Speaker 3: You don't think they would have found some trace of him.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I you know, I skipped over this before.
Speaker 1: But they they a body did wash up, and Lucinda
Speaker 1: it was like a year later, so badly decomposed. But
Speaker 1: but Lucinda said, yeah, that is him, I can tell
Speaker 1: by his teeth and uh. But then another woman was like, no, sorry, honey,
Speaker 1: that's my husband. I can tell by the clothes he's
Speaker 1: wearing and the fact that he has a full head
Speaker 1: of hair, and and our guy was, So that's not
Speaker 1: very conclusive. I don't know. The Niagara River is huge.
Speaker 2: Also, what if it's the like stone mason bricklayer thing
Speaker 2: where they knew they know exactly what kind of stones
Speaker 2: to weigh a body down with to make it disappear forever.
Speaker 1: A mafia style. Yeah, this is so my favorite murder
Speaker 1: of you. I love how you're thinking. I'm just like
Speaker 1: they knew how to do it.
Speaker 2: They knew, and you're acting like they didn't get together
Speaker 2: every Tuesday night to talk about how to murder.
Speaker 4: That's what the secret was.
Speaker 1: Car. I love that you also said like they knew
Speaker 1: what stones do you use? Right, because like, if you
Speaker 1: want to hold down a body, you got to use granite.
Speaker 1: You can't use sandstone.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna work, no bummus, you get holes in
Speaker 2: the stones.
Speaker 1: We know that, Oliver, forget it. It's got to be
Speaker 1: it can't be volcanic. Whatever it is us.
Speaker 2: Up here Georgia does cold cases a lot, and I've
Speaker 2: been trained to be like, well, maybe I'll fix it,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll solve it or whatever, because it's just like,
Speaker 2: it's so frustrating when you don't get to have that
Speaker 2: kind of like and then these four stones were found
Speaker 2: near this thing whatever. You don't get to have that
Speaker 2: nice solid ending.
Speaker 1: From your perspective, what actually makes a perfect crime possible?
Speaker 1: Is it the Is it like the planning and the
Speaker 1: intelligence or is it all luck? Is it having those
Speaker 1: levers of institutional power timing?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What? What is it?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: What makes a perfect crime? And I'm not asking because
Speaker 1: I want to commit one, I'm just saying for.
Speaker 2: Anything, theoretically, we know if you wanted to, if you
Speaker 2: wanted to write it down a step by step, that'd
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, telling as few people as possible, because people talk.
Speaker 3: You can't get people to shut up, even in the masons.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you know, there's always a loose thread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but these are the people they're so good at keeping.
Speaker 1: See, this is like part of their culture. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, like if you're gonna have a group on
Speaker 1: board something like, make sure it's one that already values secrecy.
Speaker 2: Right and already has the handshakes pre pre choreographed. You
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about any of that stuff. I
Speaker 2: also think there's like back then, well compared to now obviously,
Speaker 2: but much easier because I think those like, first of all,
Speaker 2: they had the they were centered in the power as
Speaker 2: the Masons. They had like hey, I know the mayor,
Speaker 2: I know the judge, I know this lawyer whatever. So
Speaker 2: they had those people kind of in place. So it's
Speaker 2: like I know a guy, I own the the lumber
Speaker 2: mill and we have an incinerator there. We have this
Speaker 2: like those kinds of things. Now I'm planning.
Speaker 1: Them money real specific, but.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, just making it up off the
Speaker 2: top of my head. Sure that idea where there's like
Speaker 2: you've got people with connections willing to all be in
Speaker 2: on the secret.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah right, and then when everyone's a little
Speaker 3: bit responsible, no one's going to speak. I'm going back
Speaker 3: on what I said.
Speaker 1: You get everyone to like do.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 1: When everyone has like some skin in the game, there
Speaker 1: might be more beholden to the secret. Is that something
Speaker 1: you see a lot in these murder stories that you
Speaker 1: guys talk about.
Speaker 3: Well, that's why I love cold cases. I'm so fascinated
Speaker 3: by them and want to talk about them. Is when
Speaker 3: it's not solved, it becomes this like legend and becomes
Speaker 3: bigger than what it really is, which is some horrible
Speaker 3: person who isn't that interesting did something awful. It's not
Speaker 3: like a legend. It's not powerful in any way. And
Speaker 3: so like making it into some kind of you know,
Speaker 3: fairy tale, like just gives it more power. But solving
Speaker 3: it and showing how sad and simple it is, I
Speaker 3: think takes that power away from it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Well, Karen and Georgia, that is today's snaffoo. And
Speaker 1: this has been an absolute delight. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 1: So fun.
Speaker 4: I love that story.
Speaker 2: That was really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool one. It's a cool one, you know,
Speaker 1: in part because I just love how the scale explodes
Speaker 1: after it happens. It's like it turns into this national crisis.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, I think he went to Canada. I
Speaker 3: think he was offered a new life.
Speaker 1: I like that take he said, fuck it. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 1: Lousenda is really getting on my nerves. She's not nineteen anymore.
Speaker 1: I's going to college, forget it.
Speaker 2: And the book came out, so there's a chance that
Speaker 2: he like made the money off the book and was
Speaker 2: up in Canada.
Speaker 1: Like it all did It was like kicking him some dividends? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah maybe what did you do? A Part two? I
Speaker 1: love trying to navigate this insane moment that we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in. Welcome to Snaffoo, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.
Speaker 6: Thank you. You know Scott is definition of snaffho. That's
Speaker 6: you know how we got started.
Speaker 1: It was a snaff that's my stage name when I'm
Speaker 1: a stripper.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, it's your porn name, sna.
Speaker 7: There you go.
Speaker 1: What do you mean that you got started through through
Speaker 1: an was a mistake.
Speaker 6: It was a mistake. We were I was. It was
Speaker 6: I've told the story before, but I was host. I
Speaker 6: was looking for another partner and ran into Scott in Germany,
Speaker 6: of all places, where he was giving this speech about
Speaker 6: his trend speech, which is really cool. He had all
Speaker 6: these charts and I was watching it and I kept
Speaker 6: learning things and I think I know everything obviously because
Speaker 6: I do, and but he kept giving me insights. I
Speaker 6: was like, oh, that was smart. But he was so
Speaker 6: obnoxious on stage. He danced around, he showed off his stomach,
Speaker 6: he did all manner of things, and the Germans were perplexed.
Speaker 6: But I was completely entertained and also horrified, and so
Speaker 6: I went up to him and I said, you really
Speaker 6: are a jerk, but boy, are you smart and will
Speaker 6: come on my show, which is you know, that's the
Speaker 6: you know, meet cute kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And he did, do.
Speaker 1: You see yourself as a jerk or is this is
Speaker 1: this a fair characterization?
Speaker 7: It was my first book, so to get on with
Speaker 7: Kara was a big deal. But just to finish her story,
Speaker 7: she called me and said, and Kara gets pretty high
Speaker 7: profile guest. She said it your episode is, according to
Speaker 7: our data, the most downloaded episode in our history, and
Speaker 7: we think it's a mistake, so we can want you
Speaker 7: to come on a second time. That was my favorite part.
Speaker 7: We're pretty sure it was a mistake, so come on
Speaker 7: the second time. Anyways, the rest is history.
Speaker 1: There's no conceivable reason we could we could. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: doesn't makes sense. Yeah, see why you're.
Speaker 6: That's exactly what I was saying to him, And it
Speaker 6: was like perplexing. But people seem to like our Little
Speaker 6: Dog and Pony show.
Speaker 1: I am one of those folks. And you guys are
Speaker 1: like a vultron of podcasting because you have your both
Speaker 1: kicking ass in your own lanes and then you kind
Speaker 1: of stack up as this giant powerhouse on pivot, and
Speaker 1: you're so well informed but also clearly insanely busy. So
Speaker 1: I have to have been dying to ask you this,
Speaker 1: How do you keep up with the news, Like, what
Speaker 1: are your news consumption habits? What are your go to
Speaker 1: sources carry you? First, I've lately.
Speaker 6: Been using Blue Sky and Threads to keep up with news,
Speaker 6: like I watched them, But I do read the Wall
Speaker 6: Street Journal, the Washington Post when things are suggested, the
Speaker 6: New York Times obviously, but I look everywhere. I find
Speaker 6: news everywhere, weird stories, people things sent to me. But
Speaker 6: I have a pretty strong news diet, and then I
Speaker 6: watch a lot of TV and etc. Try to keep
Speaker 6: on cultural stuff and read people I like right that
Speaker 6: are really smart, including Scott. I read his stuff that
Speaker 6: he reads. He writes all the time and no mercy,
Speaker 6: no malice.
Speaker 1: But I.
Speaker 6: Keep up with it rather actively, and I think Scott
Speaker 6: does too.
Speaker 7: So my media go to is the Economists, the BBC,
Speaker 7: and the Financial Times. At all of that is a lie.
Speaker 1: I get all of my information.
Speaker 7: I get all of my instormation from Instagram, TikTok, threat
Speaker 7: and occasionally threads and I hate to say it, but
Speaker 7: I don't I am, I am. My mind is being
Speaker 7: shaped by algorithms run by psychopaths. So yeah, I get
Speaker 7: all my news from social media now, and it wasn't
Speaker 7: that way two years ago.
Speaker 1: He's also somehow turned crippling anxiety about the future of
Speaker 1: America into a wildly successful media empire. Please welcome the
Speaker 1: one and only John love It. Hi, what an intro?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 7: Hey?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what we do here. We honor our guests,
Speaker 1: we elevate them. And I've been I've been on your
Speaker 1: shows over the years many times. I'm so glad to
Speaker 1: have you on here. So in your job at Crooked Media,
Speaker 1: you basically spend a lot of time analyzing the daily
Speaker 1: horrors of American politics, particularly Trump World, and yet somehow
Speaker 1: you stay quick and clever and weirdly hope full. What's
Speaker 1: your secret?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What's the like are you is it just therapy? Or
Speaker 1: are you on black market ketamine?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: How do you not collapse into despair all the time?
Speaker 5: I want you to know something. If I ever am
Speaker 5: on Ketymine, it will be from a prestigious Los Angeles
Speaker 5: chased pill pushing fancy doctor. I'm not going to do
Speaker 5: black market drugs forgive that why I moved to this city,
Speaker 5: and I should know better. But so it's interesting. The
Speaker 5: truth is for me. I think hope is important. I
Speaker 5: think it's important that people feel it because I think
Speaker 5: without it they may not be as involved or invested
Speaker 5: in it has real, genuine value. There's a whole whole
Speaker 5: media apparatus that wants people to feel cynical and negative
Speaker 5: and to view all politics as corrupt and all politicians
Speaker 5: is useless.
Speaker 1: And if you give into that, the people that.
Speaker 5: Want you to feel that way when they really do
Speaker 5: and as bad as things have gotten, as bad as
Speaker 5: they could continue to get, there are always places where
Speaker 5: we have agency. And if you're giving up, it's not
Speaker 5: because you can't make a difference or you can't be
Speaker 5: involved or you can't have an impact. It's because either
Speaker 5: you don't know the way to find it, or you've
Speaker 5: decided it's too hard. And maybe that's okay, that's something
Speaker 5: people can decide. But like I think there's a way
Speaker 5: a which people try to tell themselves things are worse
Speaker 5: than they seem or are irredeemable, because it makes it easier.
Speaker 5: And the truth is hope makes demands of us. It does,
Speaker 5: and it requires you to do things well said.
Speaker 1: Thank you for reflecting on that with me. I actually
Speaker 1: I kind of only want to talk about this stuff
Speaker 1: with you. I just like how you communicate about these things.
Speaker 1: Just a quick question. You were on the show Survivor.
Speaker 1: That's right. Did you guys at any point on that
Speaker 1: show ever consider eating one another, just like casually a
Speaker 1: backup plan?
Speaker 5: The truth is I was only I was only surviving
Speaker 5: for three nights, which meant I only really missed three dinners,
Speaker 5: and eating a fellow person doesn't come up after three dinners.
Speaker 1: You're already taking this question too seriously.
Speaker 5: But so it never comes to that. The other thing, too,
Speaker 5: is there are coconuts strewn about. Sure, right, you know
Speaker 5: the exact number of coconuts one might need to survive
Speaker 5: happened to be randomly distributed by I think god.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well, today's NAFU does involve actual cannibalism because
Speaker 1: one of the most famous disasters in American history. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the Donner Party. Hell yeah, it's funny. Our
Speaker 1: shows have some some thematic similarities. You focus on bad
Speaker 1: people throughout history. I focus on bad events or incidents
Speaker 1: or mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to
Speaker 1: the dark side?
Speaker 4: Robert Evans, I mean, I think there's part of it's
Speaker 4: just like this little piece in all of us that's
Speaker 4: encoded by evolution to where like if somebody else screws
Speaker 4: up in a major way, you want to like pay
Speaker 4: attention to see. It's like if you see a like
Speaker 4: what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make
Speaker 4: sure I don't get into that kind of problem.
Speaker 1: It's funny you put it that way, because I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a well intentioned or it's sort of a
Speaker 1: positive spin on why we're drawn to these things. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us.
Speaker 1: Like why we look at car crashes. It's not because
Speaker 1: it's like we're looking for ways to avoid that. It's
Speaker 1: because I think, what, what is it? It makes us
Speaker 1: feel safer to see other people injured or something.
Speaker 4: I don't know. That is a good one, because like
Speaker 4: one of my favorite ways to relax, like when my
Speaker 4: friends and I a couple of years ago, we all
Speaker 4: got laid off at the website we've been working for,
Speaker 4: and I had everyone over to the house and I
Speaker 4: just put on hours with a footage of like people
Speaker 4: injuring themselves trying to cut down trees, because it'll be
Speaker 4: like a guy and his kid and like a three
Speaker 4: hundred year old oak tree and he's got like a
Speaker 4: forty dollars saw that you bought from home depot and
Speaker 4: he's like, I can take this tree. And I just
Speaker 4: love watching like the Hubris meet with physics. But there
Speaker 4: is a darkness to it as well.
Speaker 1: I think we all have a sort of schadenfreud of
Speaker 1: gene in us that's sort of like it can be
Speaker 1: soothing to just know we're not alone in our pain
Speaker 1: and misery in this world. Yeah, it's pretty universal.
Speaker 4: And someone always has it worse than you do pretty much.
Speaker 1: Now you have a background in investigative journalism with some
Speaker 1: pretty serious chops in that area. What drew you into
Speaker 1: that space?
Speaker 4: You know, I've always been fascinated by conflict. I came
Speaker 4: into it sort of as like a military history nerd
Speaker 4: someone who was interested in that. But really what kind
Speaker 4: of like broke me into like a significant role in
Speaker 4: media was I just happened to be paying attention to
Speaker 4: these weird little corners of the internet right, as like
Speaker 4: the alt right erupted and you know, eight chan, four
Speaker 4: chan kind of like became major things in terms of
Speaker 4: like people were carrying out attacks and stuff based on,
Speaker 4: you know, having been radicalized in these little fascist corners
Speaker 4: of the Internet. And I just kind of been watching
Speaker 4: them for a couple of years, and so I've realized
Speaker 4: at a certain point, like, oh, there's not a lot
Speaker 4: of other people who understand how these communities work. I
Speaker 4: should probably explain them to people, because members of those
Speaker 4: communities are now killing people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It was a mix of like accident and I guess happenstance.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, it was a product of your own curiosity, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I feel like that's one of the
Speaker 1: traits of the great journalists out there, is like this
Speaker 1: relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place.
Speaker 1: It's not just like how do I get the next
Speaker 1: big scoop? You know, it's like, yeah, I really my
Speaker 1: sense and I'm not a journalist at all, but my
Speaker 1: sense of it is that the journalists, the great ones,
Speaker 1: really have like a personal, like unquenchable thirst to know,
Speaker 1: and this curiosity that drives through because investigative journalism is tedious,
Speaker 1: It is incredibly time consuming, It can be it can
Speaker 1: be dangerous a lot of times, and that thirst for
Speaker 1: the truth or for knowledge or for for clarity on
Speaker 1: something is really powerful. I think it's such an admirable
Speaker 1: space to be in. Do you see great investigative journalism
Speaker 1: happening today?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Who are the people shit that you think are really
Speaker 1: standing out or doing great work?
Speaker 4: I mean besides Tucker Carlson of course, of course Tucker.
Speaker 4: You and I are both big fans of Tucker. You know,
Speaker 4: my old colleagues at Bellingcat continue to do great work.
Speaker 4: You know, the New York Times Visual Investigations desk has
Speaker 4: done some really impressive open source reporting on conflicts, I
Speaker 4: mean all over the world over the last like several years.
Speaker 4: I find myself really interested in BBC Africa I which
Speaker 4: is their kind of open source covering, like particularly like
Speaker 4: war crimes and places like Cameroon. So there's a lot
Speaker 4: of really interesting nuts and bolts work being done by
Speaker 4: folks who are willing to do things like spend hundreds
Speaker 4: of hours combing through like footage that we I know
Speaker 4: is a war crime, but we don't know what militia
Speaker 4: was responsible or where it was done, and like laboriously matching,
Speaker 4: like you can kind of see a mountain in the background,
Speaker 4: and so they'll just spend weeks going through Google Maps
Speaker 4: into like it's this mountain, and because of where it
Speaker 4: is in the frame of the shot, we can like
Speaker 4: now locate this exact point geographically, and we know that
Speaker 4: these militant groups reacted. Like that's really impressive work to me.
Speaker 4: It has so much more of a pain in the
Speaker 4: but than what I did, you know when I was
Speaker 4: covering that stuff. So I have I have tremendous admiration
Speaker 4: for that, and anybody who's doing like financial crimes investigative journalism.
Speaker 4: This the wonkiness required, the ability to dig deep into
Speaker 4: like the financials of a company that's doing something wrong
Speaker 4: is so labor intensive.
Speaker 1: I can barely balance my check book. I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't even wrap my head around that stuff. And then
Speaker 1: it's not not only the digging into it and the
Speaker 1: figuring it out, it's the it's then the ability to
Speaker 1: translate it into English and then interesting way that lay
Speaker 1: people can understand. Well, kudos to you and your colleagues
Speaker 1: and all the people out there doing great investigative journalism.
Speaker 1: Do you have any specific snapoo from your life that
Speaker 1: you can tell us about. Oh, Man, can be huge,
Speaker 1: can be tiny, doesn't matter.
Speaker 8: So many there are so many. I'll tell you for
Speaker 8: folks who don't know. I took it to year sabbatical
Speaker 8: from acting with the intent to always come back acting
Speaker 8: and performing as my first love. But I was the
Speaker 8: President's le is onto young Americans and Asian Americans and
Speaker 8: Pacific Islanders in an office called the Office of Public Engagement.
Speaker 8: Think of it as like an outreach office. And on
Speaker 8: my third day the National Security Council.
Speaker 1: Are you in the White House?
Speaker 8: In the White House, in the actual White House. They
Speaker 8: add me to a massive email chain. And these email
Speaker 8: chains have like one hundred people on them, real serious
Speaker 8: national security people in those days, and everything in government
Speaker 8: is an acronym, right, So like, for example, if you
Speaker 8: get an email from the National Security Council, it'll say
Speaker 8: National Security Council, and then any other time in the
Speaker 8: email it'll just say NSC. And so they had they said,
Speaker 8: you know, plus col cal, because you're the President's new
Speaker 8: the aison to the Asian American community, you should know
Speaker 8: about this delegation from the Philippines, that's meeting at the
Speaker 8: White House. And the thing that you should know is
Speaker 8: about this terror group in the Philippines that you might
Speaker 8: get questions on. They're called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Speaker 8: And then in parentheses it just said MILF, and then
Speaker 8: the rest of the email I'm not working with you.
Speaker 8: The rest of the email said, uh, MILF is considered
Speaker 8: highly dangerous. MILF is known to recruit young men, and
Speaker 8: then things like things like, you know many young men
Speaker 8: grow to the to regret their affiliation with MILF over time.
Speaker 2: This is the.
Speaker 1: Opposite of a snapoo. This is delightful. I love that
Speaker 1: there are these little, uh, these little nuggets of governmental awkwardness.
Speaker 8: Great. So I thought this was so wonderful that in
Speaker 8: my head, I'm at my desk laughing my ass off.
Speaker 8: I hit reply all and I wrote, Yo, their main
Speaker 8: terror group are the MILFs. Amazing, and I hit send.
Speaker 9: And as soon as I hit.
Speaker 8: Send, I was like, you idiot, you are not in
Speaker 8: a writer's room at Universal. You are in the White
Speaker 8: House on an email chain with the National Security Council.
Speaker 8: And I couldn't unsend it, and I and like it
Speaker 8: was silent after that, and in the hallway coworkers, many
Speaker 8: of whom in the in the pod world you all know,
Speaker 8: a lot of the Pod Save America guys and Tommy
Speaker 8: Vietor and Ben Rhodes and these guys who I worked
Speaker 8: with at the time. In the hallway, We're like, yo,
Speaker 8: that you was so funny. We were all thinking it, like,
Speaker 8: will one of you please hit reply all and just
Speaker 8: say lol, that's all I need. I just need one
Speaker 8: of you to l ol me. And they all were like,
Speaker 8: hell no, man, this is going to be a public
Speaker 8: record one day. I just don't want my name associated
Speaker 8: with you calling out the MILF thing. So that was
Speaker 8: my one of my professional snafoods.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I love it. You know what. The
Speaker 1: only thing that would have made that snapfoo better is
Speaker 1: if Obama himself had like walked up into your office,
Speaker 1: like leaning against the door jam and just been like,
Speaker 1: cal buddy, what the hell we're gonna have to fire you?
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna this is not you can't do this.
Speaker 8: If that were the case, I felt like it would
Speaker 8: have gone the other way and he would have just
Speaker 8: been like, did you see.
Speaker 1: The name of this terror group? I feel like the
Speaker 1: government needs more people like you, cal it'd be a
Speaker 1: lot more fun, a lot more like chuckles in the hallways.
Speaker 1: And I enjoyed it. It's so serious all the time.
Speaker 1: At the time, his digital operation was basically non existent.
Speaker 1: So Cambridge analyticas on opening and they moved fast, pitching
Speaker 1: themselves as the high tech edge of the campaign needed.
Speaker 1: Before long, they were brought on to handle all of
Speaker 1: the digital responsibilities for the campaign, and from there they
Speaker 1: got to work shaping what voters saw online. The strategy
Speaker 1: was simple in concept, in unnerving in practice. They'd figure
Speaker 1: out what worried you, what scared you, and then feed
Speaker 1: you content that leaned into those concerns while positioning Trump
Speaker 1: as the solution. So basically anxiety and uncertainty custom tailored
Speaker 1: just for you, just a spigot of fear. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels like a horror movie. It's how cynical is this?
Speaker 10: I mean, it's so cynical, But also like this just
Speaker 10: is how we have built our social networks. They're optimized
Speaker 10: for engagement. So whatever it gets you to open the
Speaker 10: app more, to spend more time there, to do more
Speaker 10: things in the app, that's what you'll see and it
Speaker 10: turns out that if you scare and upset people, they
Speaker 10: look at the app more so, Like that kind of
Speaker 10: brutal calculus is one of the reasons why we're in
Speaker 10: this mess we're in today.
Speaker 1: This is the first place that I've seen or heard
Speaker 1: about fear and terror being like a deliberate effort on
Speaker 1: the part of a campaign, of a social media campaign.
Speaker 1: And yet we have heard a lot about how algorithms
Speaker 1: have sort of naturally steered things in that direction. So,
Speaker 1: which is it or what's the bigger force at work here?
Speaker 1: Do you think is it the built in programming or
Speaker 1: is it like bad actors?
Speaker 10: So, I mean, look, negative political ads have existed for
Speaker 10: a really long time. You can go back to like
Speaker 10: the Daisy ad and you know, do you really want
Speaker 10: this guy's finger on the button? And you know, vote
Speaker 10: for him and we're all going to die in a
Speaker 10: nuclear holocaust. So that kind of stuff has a proud
Speaker 10: tradition in American politics. I think where camra Jehnalytica felt
Speaker 10: really different was that was this suggestion that they could
Speaker 10: essentially micro target and add to your particular fears and
Speaker 10: neuroses and they would manipulate you into voting for somebody
Speaker 10: without you even understanding what was happening to you, right, right, right,
Speaker 10: So you know they could do this at like a
Speaker 10: massive scale. But you know, because the vast majority of
Speaker 10: Americans were on Facebook, they could just sort of reach
Speaker 10: all of those people instantaneously in a way that they
Speaker 10: would not have even been able to do with a
Speaker 10: TV ad.
Speaker 9: Well, I think there's some additional nuanced at here, which
Speaker 9: is it's not clear that what Cambridge Analytica was offering
Speaker 9: to do actually worked right, worked really well. President Ted
Speaker 9: Cruz would have been elected, So this may have just
Speaker 9: been a sales pitch that they were giving. I think
Speaker 9: it is also true simultaneously that the Trump campaign appears
Speaker 9: to have done a very good job of using Facebook
Speaker 9: as a way of getting voters to engage with whatever
Speaker 9: they were sharing to inspire people to go to the polls.
Speaker 9: They ran a very sophisticated, essentially marketing operation on Facebook.
Speaker 9: But it's not clear to me that they did that
Speaker 9: like using the tools and techniques that Cambridge Analytica gave
Speaker 9: them rather than just the advertising and marketing tools that
Speaker 9: are available through Facebook his own ad platform.
Speaker 11: Sure, and also the the the incredible instincts of Donald
Speaker 11: Trump right, like his just unbelievable ability to tap into
Speaker 11: cultural tides of anxiety, and his humor, like the way
Speaker 11: that his I think his undeniable charm was just feeling
Speaker 11: so fresh and kind of unbelievable to people at this time.
Speaker 9: I think he's like a human newsfeed algorithm. He just
Speaker 9: you can sort of see him as he's giving a speech.
Speaker 9: He's just like sort of testing out stuff, and if
Speaker 9: it gets a laugh or people get excited about it,
Speaker 9: he like does it again, and if people don't seem
Speaker 9: to respond, he doesn't do it again. He's sort of
Speaker 9: like running the ab test in real time on his audience.
Speaker 1: You just put a book out. Congratulations. In addition to
Speaker 1: your amazing podcast All about Sports, tell us about Good
Speaker 1: Game first.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so, Good Game with Sarah Spain is the first
Speaker 12: and only, as far as we know, daily women's sports podcast.
Speaker 1: Yes, daily.
Speaker 12: It is a lot of work, but it is what
Speaker 12: was necessary. The folks who started the iHeart Women's Sports
Speaker 12: Network reached out and one of them was Sue Bird.
Speaker 12: And you can't say no to Sup Bird about really anything,
Speaker 12: because she's a legend. But when she said we want
Speaker 12: you to do a show for the network.
Speaker 1: What would it look like?
Speaker 12: And I had just gotten out of thirteen straight years
Speaker 12: of daily radio for ESPN. I was enjoying my first
Speaker 12: year of not having a show every day, and I
Speaker 12: stupidly said, it's got to be a daily show because
Speaker 12: that's what's missing. Because in women's sports, you really just
Speaker 12: need the same cadence of learning about the starstak stats
Speaker 12: and stories that are out there so that you get
Speaker 12: excited about the games and want to watch them and
Speaker 12: attend them and buy the merchant. So we're offering that
Speaker 12: to people and people seem to love it, which is great.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So you have a book. You just put
Speaker 1: a book out called Runs in the Family, an incredible
Speaker 1: true story of football, fatherhood and belonging. Give me the
Speaker 1: quick like breakdown. Well, I wanted to be like you.
Speaker 12: So I wrote it all in the two weeks between
Speaker 12: when You're book came out and mine came out. Can
Speaker 12: you believe it so fast?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 12: So I wrote a story for ESPN and did a
Speaker 12: feature for ESPN a handful of years ago about this guy,
Speaker 12: Dylan McCullough. He's the running backs coach for the Las
Speaker 12: Vegas Raiders and grew up in Youngstown post steel milk collapse,
Speaker 12: was adopted, never knew his birth family. His adoptive dad
Speaker 12: leaves when he's two, so sort of a troubled relationship
Speaker 12: with father, figures, gets into football, gets recruited, has a
Speaker 12: great career until he gets knee injury and becomes a coach,
Speaker 12: and finally, in his forties, the laws change in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 12: where he was born. He can get his birth certificate,
Speaker 12: and he discovers after finding his mom, who never told
Speaker 12: the dad that she had gotten pregnant, was sent away
Speaker 12: to have the baby in private like they used to
Speaker 12: do in the seventies, finds out that his college football
Speaker 12: coach and mentor of almost thirty years was his birth
Speaker 12: dad all along and neither of them knew it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 12: So it's this really unbelievable story. But also there's a
Speaker 12: ton in there about versus nurture, what we inherit through
Speaker 12: blood and DNA, what we inherit through family systems, emotional
Speaker 12: DNA messages, less lessons, all the things. And so I
Speaker 12: really wanted to be a book about him because his
Speaker 12: story is so incredible, but also a book that anyone
Speaker 12: would read and think to themselves, like, what are the
Speaker 12: refutable things that I've been passed on that I can't
Speaker 12: reject or deny? And what are the things I get
Speaker 12: to choose to hang on to or pass on.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to read this. It really really sounds
Speaker 1: insanely inspiring and congrats. Right book is a big work.
Speaker 6: Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's awesome. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: and Snaffoo Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from
Speaker 1: good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Helms,
Speaker 1: Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith Are.
Speaker 1: Managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith.
Speaker 1: Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing
Speaker 1: from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo
Speaker 1: and branding by Matt Gosson and the Collected Works. Legal
Speaker 1: review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone
Speaker 1: at iHeart podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Leeberman, and
Speaker 1: Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick
Speaker 1: up a copy of my book, Snaffoo, The Definitive Guide
Speaker 1: to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any
Speaker 1: book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and see you next week.