Behind the Bastards - What We Learned From Ben Shapiro's Racist Novel
Aired: 2020-04-09
Duration: 01:06:36


=== True Allegiance Salon Article (14:13) ===

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[00:00:44]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
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[00:01:15]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:01:18]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:01:20]  That's so funny.
[00:01:21]  Shari stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:01:29]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:37]  What's up, everyone?
[00:01:38]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:01:39]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:01:43]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:01:46]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:01:48]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:01:55]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:01:57]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:02:04]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:02:06]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:02:07]  There's a lot of life.
[00:02:09]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:18]  What?
[00:02:20]  Doing something he didn't think he would do, my me.
[00:02:26]  I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, and I'm here looking at Sophie's horrified face.
[00:02:33]  You know, Sophie, my grandpa had a saying.
[00:02:37]  My co-hosts today are Katie Skoll and Cody Johnson.
[00:02:40]  How are y'all doing today?
[00:02:41]  What a great saying, Grandpa.
[00:02:43]  It was weird.
[00:02:43]  We all thought he was going senile when he would just shout that out 20 years ago.
[00:02:48]  But then I met you both.
[00:02:49]  Sorry, Grandpa, Evans.
[00:02:52]  How are you guys doing today?
[00:02:53]  I'm all right.
[00:02:54]  Good.
[00:02:54]  I'm A plus.
[00:02:55]  Good.
[00:02:56]  Cody's right on time.
[00:02:57]  Yeah.
[00:02:57]  Cody is only 37 minutes late to record, which I have to say.
[00:03:02]  Normally, there is a calendar invite that tells me what time we are recording and there was not this time.
[00:03:06]  And so I did not know there was another calendar invite that said 1.30, which is what I was expecting.
[00:03:11]  Cody is ready for coming.
[00:03:12]  Hey, just quick, quick check.
[00:03:15]  Katie, were you on time?
[00:03:16]  I was on time.
[00:03:17]  Hey, Robert, quick check.
[00:03:18]  Were you on time?
[00:03:19]  Maybe.
[00:03:19]  Here's the thing.
[00:03:19]  You were.
[00:03:20]  I checked, Chris.
[00:03:21]  Were you on time?
[00:03:22]  No.
[00:03:22]  He wasn't.
[00:03:24]  I do normally give Cody a little reminder, and that is my fault.
[00:03:28]  Please do not.
[00:03:29]  No, no, no.
[00:03:30]  It's not about your reminder.
[00:03:32]  Absolutely not.
[00:03:33]  Absolutely.
[00:03:34]  No.
[00:03:34]  Sophie, there's nothing woker than letting a woman take the blame for a man's family.
[00:03:39]  Absolutely.
[00:03:40]  I know.
[00:03:40]  I want all of our listeners to know I did not mean that seriously.
[00:03:45]  Yeah, it was Katie and Sophie's fault.
[00:03:48]  They collaborated.
[00:03:49]  Yeah.
[00:03:50]  Like Barack Obama and Pete Buttigig.
[00:03:52]  Katie called Sophie and was like, should I remind Cody?
[00:03:56]  And Sophie was like, no, should I send an email invite like I normally do?
[00:04:00]  And Katie was like, no.
[00:04:01]  And then they laughed and laughed and laughed.
[00:04:04]  I was on the email thread with the one they did.
[00:04:06]  I thought it was messed up.
[00:04:08]  Or perhaps he fucked up.
[00:04:09]  Continue, Robert, with your show.
[00:04:11]  So guys, do you remember how last year we had a couple of fun moments where we got together as friends, as colleagues, as comrades, and we randomly paged through terrible books?
[00:04:21]  How could I forget?
[00:04:22]  We learned about what an egregor is, which is the collective Satan that the Jewish people have created with their own.
[00:04:28]  Seared into my memory.
[00:04:29]  Yeah, that was a good one.
[00:04:30]  Yeah, I remember the science book we read.
[00:04:32]  The science book we read.
[00:04:34]  You remember the QAnon book we read?
[00:04:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:36]  Where we learned a lot of good information.
[00:04:38]  Science Part 2.
[00:04:39]  Science Part 2.
[00:04:40]  Today I got a little bit of a different book.
[00:04:43]  Because sometimes reading through random books at random points in time means I don't have to prepare as much, which can help us to get ahead over here.
[00:04:49]  And I love that for you.
[00:04:50]  And for us, for our show.
[00:04:52]  And today we're going to read a book called True Allegiance.
[00:04:56]  Now, this has been described by the New York Times best-selling author Brad Thor as a blockbuster debut thriller ripped straight from the headlines.
[00:05:04]  And its author is a fella y'all might know.
[00:05:08]  Old Benny Shax.
[00:05:10]  My favorite.
[00:05:10]  Ben Shapiro.
[00:05:12]  Yeah, we are doing the Ben Shapiro book today.
[00:05:15]  This is fun because I've...
[00:05:18]  Novelist Ben Shapiro.
[00:05:19]  I've been muting him or avoiding him on Twitter, so it's been a minute.
[00:05:23]  You've been taking care of your mental health.
[00:05:26]  And I'm ready to just tarnish it right now.
[00:05:28]  Just light it on fire.
[00:05:30]  I also have let Ben go.
[00:05:32]  Oh, God.
[00:05:33]  There's only so much room we have in our day-to-day.
[00:05:36]  That can't have been easy for you.
[00:05:37]  It wasn't.
[00:05:38]  Everything he says is wrong.
[00:05:40]  It is wrong.
[00:05:41]  Now, I wanted to talk a little bit before this about what we do when we have a book by a terrible person that I don't want to support financially, but I want to read.
[00:05:48]  Because there's a trick.
[00:05:49]  And I wasn't telling people the trick before.
[00:05:51]  But now, like, fuck it.
[00:05:53]  What's the worst that could happen?
[00:05:55]  The key is.
[00:05:56]  The key is.
[00:05:57]  As far as I know, this isn't illegal.
[00:05:59]  The key is you purchase the book on Kindle, right?
[00:06:03]  You download it to your device.
[00:06:04]  You disconnect your device from the internet.
[00:06:07]  You apply for a refund from Kindle.
[00:06:10]  And then you finish doing what you're going to do in the book before you reconnect it to the internet and it removes it.
[00:06:15]  Great.
[00:06:15]  Love that.
[00:06:16]  That sounds legal to me, actually.
[00:06:17]  It does sound very legal.
[00:06:19]  So a little bit of advice.
[00:06:21]  Now, True Allegiance was a book published in 2016 by Post Hill Press and, of course, author Ben Shapiro.
[00:06:28]  And I want to read you all the Amazon description so we can know what we're going for here.
[00:06:32]  New York Times best-selling author Ben Shapiro's new novel asks, how close are we to our country's collapse?
[00:06:38]  And will we be able to stop it once it begins?
[00:06:40]  America is coming apart.
[00:06:42]  An illegal immigration crisis has broken out along America's southern border.
[00:06:46]  There are race riots in Detroit.
[00:06:48]  A fiery female rancher turned militia leader has vowed revenge on the president for his arrogant policies.
[00:06:53]  And the world's most notorious terrorist is planning a massive attack that could destroy the United States as we know it.
[00:06:59]  Meanwhile, the president is too consumed by legacy seeking to see our country's deep peril.
[00:07:04]  Brett Hawthorne is the youngest general in the United States Army, and he's stuck alone behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.
[00:07:11]  He's the last lost soldier of a failed war, fighting to stay alive and make it back home.
[00:07:15]  But will he be able to stop the collapse of America in time?
[00:07:19]  Sounds like a real thriller.
[00:07:20]  I have a question.
[00:07:21]  Is there an audiobook version of this?
[00:07:23]  Ooh.
[00:07:24]  Oh my God.
[00:07:25]  Yeah, they're pretty.
[00:07:25]  True Allegiance.
[00:07:26]  Yeah, it's free with your audible trial.
[00:07:28]  Does he read the audible?
[00:07:30]  I have to know.
[00:07:31]  There's no way they would let him do that.
[00:07:32]  It just sounds way better in your voice than it does in his voice.
[00:07:37]  And I feel like it's, yeah.
[00:07:39]  Sophie, could you look it up?
[00:07:40]  I'm not unfair to do it.
[00:07:40]  Because I'm disconnected from the internet.
[00:07:42]  Steal this book from me.
[00:07:47]  So I bet there's a foreword.
[00:07:49]  Oh, my God.
[00:07:50]  Oh, my God.
[00:07:51]  You guys.
[00:07:51]  Oh, no.
[00:07:52]  There's a foreword.
[00:07:53]  It's not even the foreword.
[00:07:54]  You know how books will have a praise for this book page where it has the first quote on the praise for true allegiance page.
[00:08:02]  Meet our new Ayn Rand, salon.com.
[00:08:05]  Salon.com.
[00:08:07]  Salon.
[00:08:09]  Ew.
[00:08:09]  Oh my God.
[00:08:10]  Oh, it's so good.
[00:08:12]  I'm sure.
[00:08:12]  So there's an Ann Coulter quote, provocative, intense, and about five minutes from becoming reality.
[00:08:16]  Ben Shapiro's True Allegiance is a riveting thriller about what happens when America falls apart.
[00:08:21]  This sounds rooted in fact not feeling.
[00:08:24]  He's got an Alan West quote in there.
[00:08:26]  That's good.
[00:08:27]  That's really good.
[00:08:28]  Oh, boy.
[00:08:30]  And then some people that I don't recognize.
[00:08:32]  Okay, so cool.
[00:08:33]  We're on a good story.
[00:08:34]  Yeah, it sounds like it's a good book.
[00:08:35]  Sounds like it's a good book by good people.
[00:08:38]  I'm very excited for this.
[00:08:39]  Yeah, okay.
[00:08:40]  So does he read it, Sophie?
[00:08:44]  Oh, my good gracious.
[00:08:46]  No, that's the right side of history.
[00:08:47]  That's the right side of history.
[00:08:48]  What book are we doing by Ben Shapiro?
[00:08:50]  We're doing True Allegiance.
[00:08:52]  Oh, I don't think he does.
[00:08:53]  I don't think he does.
[00:08:54]  It's funny.
[00:08:55]  No, I'm sure they're narrated by somebody who is not Ben Shapiro.
[00:09:00]  Yeah, what's their name?
[00:09:00]  That's a good call because you might not believe what you learn about Brigadier General Brett Hawthorne.
[00:09:06]  Brett Hawthorne.
[00:09:07]  Bret Hawthorne.
[00:09:09]  And the president who only cares about Obama.
[00:09:12]  I mean, not Obama.
[00:09:14]  He's a different president, right?
[00:09:16]  All right.
[00:09:17]  I'm going to start with, I think chapter one looks like it's opening with like, you know, we're starting with like a terrorist attack going on in New York City.
[00:09:25]  Wait, wait, wait.
[00:09:26]  What year was this?
[00:09:27]  Did you say that?
[00:09:27]  2016.
[00:09:29]  This came out.
[00:09:30]  Yeah, I would have had to.
[00:09:31]  Yeah.
[00:09:32]  Right.
[00:09:32]  So the president obsessed with legacy would be Obama, not the president that is also obsessed with his legacy.
[00:09:41]  Just in a different way.
[00:09:42]  In a different way.
[00:09:44]  All right.
[00:09:45]  Oh, no, it doesn't start.
[00:09:47]  Okay.
[00:09:47]  So the first episode doesn't start with a new terror.
[00:09:51]  It starts with like 9-11.
[00:09:52]  And I think the character who's going to grow up to be our ranch militia leader in New York at 9-11 seeing the towers at the building.
[00:09:59]  So that seems like what we're going on with this prologue here.
[00:10:02]  So that's good.
[00:10:03]  So we're kicking it off with a 9-11.
[00:10:06]  And then we move right in with chapter one to Brett Hawthorne in Kabul, Afghanistan.
[00:10:11]  Brigadier General Brett Hawthorne looked at his M9 magazine and cursed to himself.
[00:10:16]  Empty.
[00:10:16]  He was sat up against a mudbrick hovel in the city's poor part of town.
[00:10:20]  Even in Kabul, there was a large income gap and felt the sweat trickle down cold between his shoulder blades.
[00:10:25]  He hadn't been alone for years.
[00:10:26]  Generals always had a personal security detail, but things had gone hellishly wrong.
[00:10:31]  Hawthorne was a bear of a man.
[00:10:33]  6'3 in his bare feet and 26 ounce in his underwear.
[00:10:38]  Let's talk about this a minute.
[00:10:40]  I've gotten criticized in the past for making fun of Ben Shapiro's shortness.
[00:10:44]  And it's true that you shouldn't make fun of people for being short.
[00:10:48]  Some people in this very room are short.
[00:10:51]  Most of us.
[00:10:52]  Most of us.
[00:10:53]  Most of us, except for you and myself.
[00:10:55]  Yeah.
[00:10:55]  I'm not tall.
[00:10:56]  I'm wearing tall shirts.
[00:10:57]  There are more, there are taller people than me in this room.
[00:11:01]  There are.
[00:11:01]  I think is what there are.
[00:11:02]  And it's fine.
[00:11:03]  There's nothing, nothing, it says nothing about your personage.
[00:11:06]  But also, so like.
[00:11:10]  Well, so here's the other thing.
[00:11:12]  For many, many, many, many years, Ben Shapiro claimed that he was my actual height, 5'8.
[00:11:20]  Oh, really?
[00:11:21]  I was unaware of that.
[00:11:22]  He is not.
[00:11:24]  As we all know.
[00:11:27]  So it's just one of those things where, okay, you're going to lie about this a lot.
[00:11:32]  What is his real name?
[00:11:34]  I don't know.
[00:11:35]  Like 5'4 ⁇ .
[00:11:36]  Okay.
[00:11:36]  I don't know.
[00:11:36]  I'm making that up, but I've heard that.
[00:11:38]  But he's been lying about his height for years.
[00:11:40]  Yeah.
[00:11:41]  It is funny.
[00:11:41]  And it's funny that his clear self-insert character, Brett Hawthorne, is a bear of a man.
[00:11:46]  6'3 in his bare feet and 215 pounds and 215 pounds in his underwear.
[00:11:52]  So what I'm struck by this is like there's all these stories.
[00:11:55]  Ben Shapiro.
[00:12:01]  Sorry.
[00:12:01]  No, no, it's fine.
[00:12:03]  People laugh.
[00:12:05]  Ben Shapiro wanted to be a Hollywood screenwriter.
[00:12:09]  He sure did.
[00:12:10]  And he flunked out of that.
[00:12:12]  There's just these few sentences.
[00:12:14]  I just can feel him being like, this would make a great movie.
[00:12:17]  You know, like he's writing it like...
[00:12:19]  Oh, fuck those guys.
[00:12:20]  If Hollywood won't make it, I'll write this.
[00:12:24]  I'm also wondering as a gun guy.
[00:12:25]  So the M9 is the 9mm Beretta sidearm that was up until recently the standard sidearm of the military.
[00:12:33]  It says he looks at his M9 magazine.
[00:12:35]  Now, there's a couple of things that that makes me think.
[00:12:38]  So if you're actually shooting a handgun like that and it's empty, the slide locks back and you can immediately tell that it's empty because the slide is locked back.
[00:12:48]  At no point if you're in a firefight would you eject the magazine and look at the magazine to determine whether or not your weapon was empty.
[00:12:56]  And I'm not sure how Brett Hawthorne, Combat General, that doesn't make any sense as an opening.
[00:13:05]  Like it would make sense if he was like the slide locked back of Brett Hawthorne's M9 magazine and he cursed to himself empty.
[00:13:11]  Like that makes gun sense.
[00:13:12]  I can explain this to you.
[00:13:14]  Ben doesn't know what he's talking about.
[00:13:16]  No.
[00:13:17]  Thank you for that, Katie.
[00:13:21]  I have to back up real quick.
[00:13:24]  I did one side.
[00:13:24]  I know, I know, I know, I know.
[00:13:26]  We're about a paragraph.
[00:13:26]  I know.
[00:13:27]  We're doing really well.
[00:13:28]  I need you, Robert, real quick to read the blurb at the beginning one more time about Ayn Rand.
[00:13:34]  Oh, about Ayn Rand.
[00:13:36]  Okay.
[00:13:37]  The whole thing.
[00:13:37]  We're scrolling back.
[00:13:38]  What does it say?
[00:13:39]  We're scrolling back.
[00:13:39]  True Allegiance.
[00:13:40]  Meet Our New Ayn Rand by Salon.com.
[00:13:43]  Okay.
[00:13:44]  That's it.
[00:13:45]  So here's the thing, folks.
[00:13:48]  If you were to go to salon.com, Salon.com.
[00:13:51]  And you were to look for that phrase, you'd find an article.
[00:13:54]  And that article is called Meet Our New Ayn Rand, colon.
[00:13:59]  Ben Shapiro's ham-fisted propaganda fiction is even worse than you guessed.
[00:14:04]  That is.
[00:14:05]  Subheader, the wingnut pundit resents the liberal tone of TV, but turns out cartoonish right-leaning prose.
[00:14:12]  Unreal.

=== Meet Our New Ayn Rand (09:19) ===

[00:14:13]  Thank you for looking that up.
[00:14:15]  That is part of somebody's title of it.
[00:14:22]  You can do whatever you want.
[00:14:22]  It's amazing.
[00:14:23]  It's the funniest thing I think Ben has ever done.
[00:14:27]  It's everything about him.
[00:14:29]  We need regulation of book blurs.
[00:14:31]  Taking that blurb.
[00:14:33]  Like, no one would want to be like, oh, I'm the new Ayn Rand, like, already.
[00:14:37]  It's like, well, that's not praise that you would want to promote.
[00:14:41]  But the fact that it's just pulled from this really, really mean headline is so good.
[00:14:46]  You guys, there's so much more to say about Combat General Brett Hawthorne.
[00:14:49]  Okay, okay.
[00:14:50]  Oh, my God.
[00:14:51]  Okay, so Bret Hawthorne, who is 215 pounds in his underwear, has a graying blonde crew cut and a face carved of granite.
[00:14:58]  Oh, my God.
[00:14:59]  Not a face that looks carved of granite, but a face carved of granite.
[00:15:03]  What a horrifying reality for him.
[00:15:06]  I know.
[00:15:06]  What a nightmare for Brett Hawthorne.
[00:15:08]  I mean, I'm kind of into this.
[00:15:09]  It's like a fantasy thing now.
[00:15:10]  Toxic masculinity.
[00:15:11]  He can never change his face to show emotion.
[00:15:13]  I feel like he's touching himself when he writes about Brett Hawthorne, Combat General, and not at all a Ben Shapiro stand-in.
[00:15:20]  So Brett is looking up at the blown-up buildings of Kabul, and he could see the Kabul Serena Hotel burning.
[00:15:26]  The new coalition government had bragged about the hotel as a standard bearer for the modernization of the city with its historically imitative Islamic architecture, satellite TV and wireless internet.
[00:15:36]  Now the flames licked at the windows as ashes floated down on the city.
[00:15:39]  And I feel like he brings up that it's Islamic architecture for a reason to make it seem like even more of a bad idea to try to market.
[00:15:46]  No, I'm just being specific in my prose.
[00:15:49]  I'm sure that if I'm sure Ben knows what Islamic architecture looks like for one thing.
[00:15:54]  No, I'm sure if you were to control F that file and just type Islamic, it would come up as like a descriptor for so many things.
[00:16:04]  Yeah.
[00:16:04]  They do not need that word.
[00:16:05]  I bet you're right.
[00:16:06]  We're indexing right now.
[00:16:07]  I'm going to move right along to so it goes on to him talking about how a few short this is pretty great too actually.
[00:16:13]  A few short years ago, Afghanistan had seemed to be on the upswing.
[00:16:17]  The talent man had been on the run, hiding in the mountains of the Tora Bora region, sallying forth every so often to hit a supply chain.
[00:16:24]  The coalition forces had been systemic.
[00:16:25]  So a few years ago, everything had been great in Afghanistan.
[00:16:28]  But the arrogant president.
[00:16:31]  Hawthorne knew all this because he had designed the strategy, and now the strategy had gone to shit.
[00:16:36]  Well, Brett Hawthorne thought to himself, at least I can tell those stupid bastards.
[00:16:40]  I told you so.
[00:16:42]  Okay.
[00:16:43]  It is delightful to see who Ben thinks that he is.
[00:16:50]  Oh boy, you guys typing in Islamic is a fewer times than I thought, but I'm already seeing some religion of peace talk that I'm sure is going to be fun.
[00:17:01]  Oh boy.
[00:17:03]  All the words that are available in the little search because you only get the few words around it.
[00:17:07]  That late stage Islam is peace pussy shit.
[00:17:12]  That's a sentence for you.
[00:17:13]  I don't know the context yet, but I'm sure we'll learn.
[00:17:15]  I love the idea that as Ben is writing this, he's at his desk typing and he has a cigar in his mouth that he will never light.
[00:17:21]  No, he's just like...
[00:17:22]  Because it hurts his lungs.
[00:17:23]  Yes, exactly.
[00:17:23]  Yeah, he hates the taste and he hates what it does to him.
[00:17:26]  It makes my tummy known.
[00:17:27]  But he knows that, like, I need that.
[00:17:28]  He's got to have the cigar.
[00:17:30]  And like a glass of scotch that is mostly ice that he doesn't sip from.
[00:17:34]  Yeah, it's melted.
[00:17:35]  And it costs him $300.
[00:17:38]  You've got to savor it.
[00:17:41]  So we're going to talk about Brett Hawthorne's background now.
[00:17:44]  Because we start like a great writer.
[00:17:46]  He starts in the action scene, right?
[00:17:47]  Yeah.
[00:17:47]  Brett Hawthorne.
[00:17:48]  Pinned down, under fire.
[00:17:50]  Islamic hotel is burning.
[00:17:51]  Yeah, he grips you right away.
[00:17:52]  He grips you right away.
[00:17:53]  You're like excited.
[00:17:54]  You're like, oh, yeah, it's like diehard, but Ayn Rand.
[00:17:56]  Yeah, Dyn Rand.
[00:17:59]  And now we go back to, let's learn about Brett Hawthorne's background.
[00:18:03]  Brett Hawthorne was the youngest general in the American military.
[00:18:06]  He'd grown up lower middle class in Chicago.
[00:18:08]  His mother a teacher.
[00:18:09]  His father a salesman for a local phone company.
[00:18:12]  I'm sorry.
[00:18:12]  At some point, you got to search how many times he mentioned Chicago.
[00:18:15]  Oh, boy.
[00:18:16]  Is that a thing for him?
[00:18:17]  It's a thing for him because of Obama.
[00:18:19]  It's a thing for him because of guns.
[00:18:20]  It's a thing for him because of black people in general.
[00:18:24]  Boy, so half of the time Chicago is mentioned in this book, it's the south side of Chicago.
[00:18:29]  Of course it is.
[00:18:30]  Which is the baddest part of town.
[00:18:31]  And if you go there, you better beware for a man named Roy Brown.
[00:18:37]  Badly, Roy Brown.
[00:18:38]  He's the best man in the whole damn town.
[00:18:40]  Badder than old King Kong.
[00:18:42]  Matter than a junkyard dog.
[00:18:43]  That's right, Katie.
[00:18:44]  That's absolutely correct.
[00:18:45]  What?
[00:18:46]  That's a great song.
[00:18:49]  So he'd been a shy, gentle, quiet kid, built like a reed, but he learned one skill pretty quickly at Thomas Edison High, how to talk his way out of a bad situation.
[00:18:59]  Oh, good lord.
[00:19:01]  Okay, so he learned this from Derek.
[00:19:03]  Because Brett... Derek.
[00:19:05]  Yeah, I think Derek's going to be a black inner city kid who teaches him how to be cool.
[00:19:11]  That's my guess.
[00:19:12]  He definitely is.
[00:19:13]  So Brett sat by himself a lot at lunch because he wasn't one of the Irish kids.
[00:19:17]  He wasn't one of the Italian kids.
[00:19:18]  He'd made the mistake of trying to befriend a couple of black kids.
[00:19:21]  That hadn't gone well.
[00:19:23]  He'd ended up with a black guy and a few new vocabulary words to add to his dictionary.
[00:19:27]  I'm sorry.
[00:19:27]  Okay.
[00:19:32]  It is, this is, it's every single thing he says, you're like, so did this literally happen to you?
[00:19:36]  You had a bad experience in your life.
[00:19:39]  No, I don't think this actually happened.
[00:19:40]  No, I think he imagined that if he had tried to talk about it, it's like this sweet thoughts in his mind.
[00:19:45]  The thing that you do where you like imagine conversations with people and you get into an argument about that and you're like, well, this is what I would say then.
[00:19:53]  That's what this is.
[00:19:54]  This is his.
[00:19:54]  Yeah.
[00:19:56]  So because trying to befriend black kids is a bad idea, he sat alone.
[00:20:00]  Because of the words you'll learn.
[00:20:01]  Because of the words you'll learn.
[00:20:03]  He sat alone until he made the mistake of looking up one day and standing above him, glaring at him, was a behemoth, a black kid named Yard.
[00:20:13]  Nobody knew his real name.
[00:20:15]  Everybody just called him Yard because he played on the school football team, stood six foot five, clocked in at a solid 280 pound.
[00:20:24]  There's so much height point.
[00:20:26]  He's obsessed with height.
[00:20:27]  That's very funny.
[00:20:28]  But I'm sorry.
[00:20:29]  Nobody knows his name, but he's on the football team.
[00:20:33]  Yes, no one knows his name.
[00:20:35]  What's on his jersey?
[00:20:38]  No one knows his name.
[00:20:39]  Yard?
[00:20:40]  No one knows his blank name.
[00:20:42]  Unbelievable, Ben.
[00:20:43]  He's just number 12.
[00:20:46]  Nobody knows the star football player's name.
[00:20:48]  No, he's Yard.
[00:20:49]  Okay.
[00:20:50]  That's all anyone knows.
[00:20:51]  Never mind.
[00:20:52]  I'm not mad.
[00:20:53]  Where he goes.
[00:20:54]  Nobody even cared to find out where he got that nickname.
[00:20:56]  I'm not mad.
[00:20:56]  You're mad.
[00:20:57]  You're the ones.
[00:20:59]  How are we all doing?
[00:21:00]  Great.
[00:21:00]  Great.
[00:21:01]  Never been better.
[00:21:03]  So, Yard stood 6'5, clocked in at a solid 280 pounds, and looked like he was headed straight for a lifetime of prison workout.
[00:21:10]  Oh, Jesus Christ.
[00:21:12]  Are you fucking kidding me?
[00:21:15]  Excuse me?
[00:21:16]  What does that look like, Ben?
[00:21:18]  Robert, excuse me?
[00:21:22]  Don't be off-put by his laughing.
[00:21:24]  This is just how we deal with this cane.
[00:21:28]  We're not even two pages into the chapter one.
[00:21:31]  This is absolute trash.
[00:21:34]  Headed for a lifetime.
[00:21:35]  Why is he headed for a lifetime?
[00:21:36]  Because he's a tall black man.
[00:21:38]  He's the star of the football team, Ben.
[00:21:40]  Maybe he's not headed for prison.
[00:21:44]  The coach loved him.
[00:21:45]  Everyone else feared him.
[00:21:47]  Ah!
[00:21:48]  Okay.
[00:21:48]  All right.
[00:21:49]  Yeah, so Brett looks up and this causes Yard to attack him.
[00:21:55]  Oh, boy.
[00:21:56]  I thought that Brett was a behemoth man as well.
[00:21:59]  I thought he was a million dollars.
[00:22:00]  No, but he was a man made of stone.
[00:22:02]  That's a good point, Katie.
[00:22:03]  But he was small in school.
[00:22:05]  Okay, he had a growth spread lately.
[00:22:08]  At some point.
[00:22:09]  Oh, and he grew once he started using guns.
[00:22:11]  Okay, that makes sense.
[00:22:12]  At some point, he turned from Ben Shapiro, literally, into War General.
[00:22:16]  Right.
[00:22:17]  It's just like this, like eventually you turn into a bear, right?
[00:22:22]  Ben's just waiting.
[00:22:24]  Like, he's just.
[00:22:25]  My dad didn't grow till he was.
[00:22:27]  He's just watching Brave on a loop, just like, that's going to be me one day.
[00:22:30]  I'm going to be the bear.
[00:22:31]  No, that's liberal propaganda.
[00:22:34]  Also, frozen.
[00:22:35]  Definitely liberal propaganda.
[00:22:38]  So, guys, this is...
[00:22:40]  I looked ahead and it's very bad.
[00:22:42]  So, Ben's, Brett, is sitting down at school, and Yard looks at him, and he makes the mistake of looking up.
[00:22:49]  And then Yard mumbles something in his face.
[00:22:51]  What? said Brett.
[00:22:52]  I said Yard growed, growled, did you just call me N-word?
[00:22:57]  Because I just heard you call me N-word.
[00:23:00]  What the fuck?
[00:23:01]  Yeah.
[00:23:01]  Did he call him N-word?
[00:23:02]  No.
[00:23:03]  I don't think he did, Katie.
[00:23:04]  But I mean, in his head, Ben Shapiro did when he came up with this character.
[00:23:07]  Absolutely.
[00:23:08]  Like, he's like, I bet Brett's thinking this.
[00:23:11]  And, oh, my gosh.
[00:23:13]  Okay.
[00:23:14]  You know what isn't headed for a lifetime of prison workouts?
[00:23:16]  I can't begin to imagine.
[00:23:18]  The products and services that support this podcast.
[00:23:20]  I was going to guess Yard, actually.
[00:23:22]  Yard probably makes millions of dollars.
[00:23:26]  As a talented football player who just got angry because Ben Shapiro absolutely called him the N-word.
[00:23:31]  Yeah.

=== Did He Call Me N-Word (04:04) ===

[00:23:33]  Cool.
[00:23:34]  It still counts even if it's under your breath, Ben.
[00:23:36]  Yeah.
[00:23:37]  Even if it's under your breath every waking hour of the day.
[00:23:42]  All right.
[00:23:43]  Products.
[00:23:50]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:23:54]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:23:58]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:24:00]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:24:04]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:24:08]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:24:12]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:24:14]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:24:18]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:24:20]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:24:22]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:24:24]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:24:27]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:24:29]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:24:31]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:24:36]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:24:37]  Trust me, babe.
[00:24:38]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:48]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:24:54]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:24:58]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:25:04]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:25:13]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:25:19]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:25:22]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:25:25]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:25:27]  That's so funny.
[00:25:28]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:25:36]  Say you love me.
[00:25:39]  You know I.
[00:25:41]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:48]  What's up, everyone?
[00:25:49]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:25:50]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:25:58]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:26:01]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:26:04]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:26:09]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:26:12]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:26:16]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:26:21]  Yeah.
[00:26:21]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:26:24]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:26:26]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:26:34]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:26:37]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:26:44]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:26:46]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:26:47]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:26:48]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:57]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:27:03]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:27:09]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:27:12]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:27:16]  I doctored the test once.
[00:27:17]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:27:20]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:27:24]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:27:27]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:27:29]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:27:31]  Greg Owespi and Michael Marancine.
[00:27:33]  My mind was blown.
[00:27:35]  I'm Stephanie Young.

=== Clayton Eckard Paternity Scandal (06:59) ===

[00:27:37]  This is Love Trap.
[00:27:39]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:27:41]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:27:45]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Amaricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:27:52]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:27:56]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:06]  We're back and we are just slowly making our way through this book.
[00:28:10]  Very slowly.
[00:28:11]  We did the blurbs.
[00:28:13]  We got the description, the physical description of the main character.
[00:28:18]  I don't think we're going to get far through this book, you guys.
[00:28:21]  You know what?
[00:28:22]  I don't care.
[00:28:22]  Because the next chapter is the president.
[00:28:25]  But I want to know how this situation with Yard works.
[00:28:27]  Oh, good God.
[00:28:29]  Yard's hand came down on Brett's shoulder, heavy as doom.
[00:28:32]  Brett could feel his bowels begin to give way when a smallish hand emerged on Yard's shoulder.
[00:28:38]  Oh my God, what a bad writer.
[00:28:40]  As big as Ben Shapiro is a very bad writer.
[00:28:43]  That's so bad.
[00:28:44]  You remember when we've all had a hand emerge on us?
[00:28:48]  He just punches right through like the chest burster.
[00:28:54]  That's so bad.
[00:28:56]  Oh my God.
[00:28:58]  Oh, Ben Shapiro writes the way monks fuck.
[00:29:02]  Just like badly.
[00:29:05]  Poorly.
[00:29:06]  Badly.
[00:29:09]  But also constantly, apparently.
[00:29:11]  Yeah.
[00:29:11]  Yeah.
[00:29:12]  Boy.
[00:29:13]  Okay.
[00:29:14]  So a hand emerges on Yard's shoulder.
[00:29:17]  A black hand.
[00:29:18]  Yard swiveled ponderously to face down the person connected with the hand.
[00:29:22]  Swiveled ponderously?
[00:29:23]  Ponderously.
[00:29:24]  All right, Ben.
[00:29:24]  Yeah.
[00:29:25]  This is his black friend, Derek, who defends Ben Shapiro for not saying the N-word.
[00:29:32]  Out loud.
[00:29:32]  Yeah, out loud.
[00:29:34]  Yeah, so it's good.
[00:29:36]  It's good.
[00:29:37]  So Derek is his friend.
[00:29:39]  Brett is such an obvious stand-in for Ben.
[00:29:42]  Yeah, Brett is an incredibly obvious.
[00:29:45]  And Derek is a stand-in for the friend that the black friend Ben Shapiro has never made in his entire life.
[00:29:50]  Yeah, I wish that he had so that these situations could be avoided.
[00:29:53]  And who would stand up for him every time on Twitter he got called out as a racist.
[00:29:58]  Actually, my friend Derek defended me when I thought the N-word a couple of times.
[00:30:06]  The definite future prisoner.
[00:30:08]  Unbelievable.
[00:30:10]  Oh my gosh.
[00:30:11]  Okay.
[00:30:12]  So.
[00:30:13]  One thing I want you to do at some point is do a search for the word honky.
[00:30:17]  Because I feel like...
[00:30:18]  Yes.
[00:30:19]  You definitely...
[00:30:20]  But first, we have to talk about Brett's growth spurt.
[00:30:27]  It's going to happen.
[00:30:28]  Between his junior and senior years of high school, Brett finally hit his growth spurt.
[00:30:32]  Like his dad, he bloomed late.
[00:30:33]  But when he did, he put on muscle and height like a racehorse.
[00:30:36]  He sprouted five inches to six foot two.
[00:30:38]  He broadened through the chest, filling out to a healthy 215.
[00:30:41]  The coaches had ignored him in high school, but at the Citadel, he goes to military school.
[00:30:45]  He quickly became their favorite.
[00:30:47]  This is so sad.
[00:30:48]  Yeah, it's a real.
[00:30:49]  It's such a sad insight into his psyche of what he desperately wants.
[00:30:54]  I feel like I've learned so much more about Benny Schapps just from the first couple of pages of this book.
[00:30:59]  Let's not hate him.
[00:31:00]  Let's pity him.
[00:31:01]  I mean, he'll hate that.
[00:31:02]  Yeah, it's sad.
[00:31:03]  We're all suffering from the same problem.
[00:31:05]  We just express it in different ways.
[00:31:07]  And Ben has done this instead.
[00:31:11]  I've thought about this before, specifically with Jordan Peterson.
[00:31:16]  Dr. Althazello.
[00:31:17]  Dr. George Balthasar Peterson, yes.
[00:31:20]  Jordan Bumblebee Peterson.
[00:31:22]  In that he is, so he tries to explain things to people and he slips in some, I think, odious views.
[00:31:28]  And he does it in language that seems academic, but is also kind of contradictory.
[00:31:36]  If you parse what he says, it's not great.
[00:31:39]  And he just sort of talks and talks and talks.
[00:31:41]  I've always wanted him to stop what he's doing and write a novel because I know that if he writes a novel, then his views will be very clear.
[00:31:51]  He'll reveal a tremendous amount of time.
[00:31:53]  Here we are.
[00:31:54]  Not intentionally necessarily.
[00:31:56]  It'll ooze out of him.
[00:31:57]  Like, here's what I think about everybody on the page.
[00:32:00]  He will write a novel that he thinks is about a decent man running for president and saving the country.
[00:32:06]  And everyone will point out 10 minutes after its release, like, oh, you wrote Mein Kampf.
[00:32:10]  Exactly.
[00:32:10]  Yes, exactly.
[00:32:12]  You'll be like, oh, all these emotions and feelings you're talking about, and like what you think needs to, like, taking the chaos and turning into order, everything you're writing about.
[00:32:21]  There will be like a three-page part where Jordan Peterson talks about seeing his first Hasidic Jew, and it will be like word for word almost, what to be comfortable.
[00:32:31]  And yeah.
[00:32:31]  And no one will know it until it's published.
[00:32:33]  He won't know it.
[00:32:34]  And I desperately want him to do that.
[00:32:37]  And I'm glad that Ben has done that for him.
[00:32:39]  It shares a lot.
[00:32:40]  So I'm just going to skim the next couple of pages because we've got to move on to the president.
[00:32:46]  But yeah, so when he was 22, he got sent to Saudi Arabia and missed Operation Desert Storm for the most part.
[00:32:54]  And he was really bummed that we let the Kurds die, which I didn't hear Ben speak up a whole lot when we abandoned them in Syria.
[00:33:01]  Why not?
[00:33:02]  He has to be in a position he's changed.
[00:33:03]  Yeah, interesting.
[00:33:05]  He meets someone named Ellen, who I don't care about.
[00:33:09]  They have a kid together.
[00:33:11]  He's in Kosovo as a captain.
[00:33:13]  By September 11th, he's a major.
[00:33:15]  By September 11th, he was a major.
[00:33:17]  A major who, by simple coincidence, knew Pashto.
[00:33:20]  So one of the most simple coincidence.
[00:33:22]  A simple coincidence.
[00:33:23]  He learned one of the most complex and difficult to master languages on the face of the planet.
[00:33:28]  Just as a coincidence, like you do.
[00:33:31]  I was just drawn there.
[00:33:32]  There was no reason.
[00:33:34]  Here's the best part: he's one of the first men on the ground in Afghanistan, and he knew little of the country's culture, but his knowledge of the language made him a valuable commodity.
[00:33:44]  How do you know a little of a culture, but know a language?
[00:33:52]  How did you learn that language?
[00:33:53]  Yeah, how do you learn Pashto and nothing about Afghan culture?
[00:33:57]  Ben's view of the world.
[00:33:58]  It's amazing.
[00:33:59]  It's like, and it's like, yeah, he did like a Matrix.
[00:34:02]  He jacked into the Matrix and he learned the language.
[00:34:05]  But nothing, nothing at all.
[00:34:07]  Not a goddamn thing about Afghan culture.
[00:34:11]  So he hangs out with the Northern Alliance some.
[00:34:13]  Well, Rosetta Stone.
[00:34:14]  There's a lot.
[00:34:15]  Rosetta Stone.
[00:34:16]  He did the Pashto Rosetta Stone.
[00:34:18]  Simple coincidence.
[00:34:19]  Missed all the culture stuff.
[00:34:21]  Cool.
[00:34:22]  Yeah, he hung out with the Northern Alliance, and it was all very Lawrence of Arabia, Brett thought, except that Peter O'Toole had never had to deal with roadside bombs or donkeys laden with explosives or the lure of the opium trade.
[00:34:33]  Such a good point.
[00:34:34]  And it's interesting.
[00:34:35]  He describes it as a lure.

=== Pashto Rosetta Stone Missed Culture (04:46) ===

[00:34:36]  Yeah.
[00:34:37]  Is he like.
[00:34:39]  Is he tempted?
[00:34:40]  Right.
[00:34:40]  There's like half of it where it's like, this is what I think about the world.
[00:34:42]  And half it's like, what if I...
[00:34:44]  It's like, could I do opium?
[00:34:46]  Yeah.
[00:34:49]  No, you got it.
[00:34:49]  I'm sorry.
[00:34:51]  It's so good.
[00:34:52]  It's so good.
[00:34:53]  Okay.
[00:34:54]  So, yeah, the administration makes a terrible deal that dooms the effort in Afghanistan.
[00:35:01]  And Brett Hawthorne is there as it's all falling apart.
[00:35:04]  And he's with a CNN crew and he saves the day.
[00:35:09]  He'd been ushering the CNN crew around because, as he told his wife, got to keep those schmucks from reporting that we eat Muslims.
[00:35:15]  What?
[00:35:16]  What?
[00:35:17]  Wait.
[00:35:18]  Wait, Robert.
[00:35:19]  Wait.
[00:35:19]  Yep.
[00:35:20]  So he's digging.
[00:35:23]  He's making a dig at the mainstream media.
[00:35:26]  Yep, obviously.
[00:35:28]  But.
[00:35:29]  Admitting to cannibalism?
[00:35:30]  But like, yeah, like doing saying the awful thing as like a good thing.
[00:35:36]  He doesn't, because CNN would report that American soldiers eat Muslims because they hate American soldiers and don't, for example, respond worshipfully when we fire missiles at an empty airbase in Syria and talk about the beauty of our weapons.
[00:35:49]  They don't do that.
[00:35:50]  They hate the American military.
[00:35:52]  Oh, then I hate them.
[00:35:54]  Exactly.
[00:35:55]  All right.
[00:35:56]  So a little digging here about how lazy the CNN people are.
[00:35:59]  And then Brett turned to speak.
[00:36:02]  This is after the camera and says they've got enough footage.
[00:36:04]  Brett turned to speak, and from behind the cameraman, he saw a child on a donkey about 300 feet away.
[00:36:09]  His service weapon, a Beretta M9, was in his hand before he even felt it leave his holster.
[00:36:14]  He sees a kid on a dockage and she pulls a gun.
[00:36:19]  What?
[00:36:22]  A weird little racist girl.
[00:36:27]  So I bet it works out, though.
[00:36:29]  I bet he's right.
[00:36:29]  I bet he's right.
[00:36:30]  Oh, he's absolutely right.
[00:36:32]  And the evil CNN cameraman zooms in eagerly as the situation degenerates because he wants to capture the kid being shot by.
[00:36:40]  Yeah.
[00:36:41]  Okay, we're going to go on to the president here.
[00:36:43]  I don't need more of this.
[00:36:44]  You don't want to keep going.
[00:36:45]  Hear the description of the child dying?
[00:36:47]  No, I don't know that the child.
[00:36:49]  I'm sure he saves the child, and the evil CNN cameraman is angry at this.
[00:36:53]  President Prescott.
[00:36:56]  Okay.
[00:36:57]  That's a good name.
[00:36:58]  That's a, I mean, that's a solid president name.
[00:37:00]  Yeah.
[00:37:02]  I'm surprised he didn't do like a very like African name.
[00:37:10]  O'Rock Boba.
[00:37:12]  Something like that.
[00:37:13]  Secret Muslim.
[00:37:14]  Yeah, President Black Man.
[00:37:16]  No, it's Mark Prescott.
[00:37:17]  All right.
[00:37:18]  Okay.
[00:37:18]  Solid.
[00:37:19]  Solid.
[00:37:21]  We simply can't pay for it, sir.
[00:37:23]  White House chief of staff Tommy Bradley was standing over the president's desk in the Oval Office, a sheaf of budget papers in his hand.
[00:37:29]  Crumpled, wrinkled papers covered in red notes.
[00:37:31]  The numbers just didn't add up.
[00:37:33]  President Mark Prescott didn't care.
[00:37:35]  Listen to me, Tommy.
[00:37:38]  Oh, my God.
[00:37:39]  Oh, how transparent can you be?
[00:37:40]  That's so, that's like, that's also like really poorly written.
[00:37:44]  It is because we go from like, yeah, the president's chief of staff standing over a sheaf of budget papers in his hand, crumpled, wrinkled papers covered in red notes.
[00:37:53]  That's not even a sentence.
[00:37:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:55]  Crumpled, wrinkled papers covered in red notes is not a full sentence.
[00:37:58]  There's no action in that sentence.
[00:38:03]  It is a creative action.
[00:38:04]  Yeah, it's like Palanuk style.
[00:38:07]  Yeah.
[00:38:07]  He's got two-word sentences, you know, and yes, I was going to say this has a very Palanucky.
[00:38:14]  Palanucky, right?
[00:38:15]  Yeah.
[00:38:16]  Palanuk-esque.
[00:38:17]  Palanuck-ish.
[00:38:18]  Palanukykukuk.
[00:38:19]  Way too generous.
[00:38:23]  So, listen to me, Tommy, said the president.
[00:38:26]  My re-election relies on our ability to secure funding for this action.
[00:38:30]  You know that.
[00:38:31]  I know that.
[00:38:31]  The polls show it.
[00:38:32]  We don't have a choice in the matter.
[00:38:33]  Okay, so what's this?
[00:38:34]  What's this action about?
[00:38:36]  Yeah, what did he?
[00:38:36]  Oh, he's afraid of becoming a Jimmy Carter.
[00:38:38]  Also, what's he alluding to with regards to Obama?
[00:38:42]  I'm still, we're a while into this.
[00:38:44]  Okay.
[00:38:45]  I can't fill our responsibility what they can't pay for.
[00:38:48]  Right.
[00:38:49]  I wonder if we'll ever find out.
[00:38:51]  I got it.
[00:38:51]  Oh, there was a stock market crash that's apparently this Democratic president's fault.
[00:38:56]  Just like the stock market crash in 2008 didn't start in the Bush administration.
[00:39:02]  It was his fault.
[00:39:03]  Because it was Obama's fault that it crashed in the Bush administration.
[00:39:06]  I mean, it's Obama's fault for being black.
[00:39:08]  That is absolutely true.
[00:39:10]  And I bet if he'd been at high school with Ben Shapiro, they would have had an interaction.
[00:39:14]  Yeah, I bet if Peter saw some in high school, he'd be like, you're going to go to prison one day.
[00:39:20]  Go to prison one day.

=== Obama Fault For Being Black (06:20) ===

[00:39:22]  And nobody knows your name.
[00:39:24]  And nobody knows your name.
[00:39:25]  Star football player that everybody knows.
[00:39:29]  Unreal.
[00:39:31]  So good.
[00:39:31]  The unemployment rates climbed beyond 10% and is headed towards a 15% mark.
[00:39:36]  If you counted those who had stopped looking for a job, the real unemployment rate was closer to 25%, which was the unemployment rate during the Great Depression and never was close to that during Obama's administration.
[00:39:50]  Cool.
[00:39:50]  Leeches.
[00:39:51]  So Prescott did what Prescott knew how to do.
[00:39:55]  He survived.
[00:39:56]  The easiest way to survive, end his predecessors' wars, no matter what the cost, and then pump up the spending at home.
[00:40:03]  There was no glory to be won on the poppy fields of Afghanistan.
[00:40:06]  Everlasting glory didn't come in the form of military victory in this day and age.
[00:40:09]  It came in the form of everlasting social programs that grew and inured to the benefit of all Americans.
[00:40:14]  He's saying that's bad.
[00:40:15]  Benefit of all Americans.
[00:40:17]  He's saying not fighting hopeless wars that waste all of our money and benefit national security not one iota and instead spending the money to help Americans is bad.
[00:40:27]  That it's cowardly.
[00:40:28]  This is unbelievable.
[00:40:29]  Every pundit should be forced to write a novel.
[00:40:34]  Like, I want to know what's in your soul.
[00:40:36]  I want to know what's in there.
[00:40:38]  Would you be able to do that?
[00:40:39]  Yeah.
[00:40:39]  I've written one and it's bad.
[00:40:41]  Damn, right?
[00:40:41]  If I run for president, I will publish my bad novel.
[00:40:44]  Get it out of the way.
[00:40:45]  Mine's just like spooky stories and animorphs parodies.
[00:40:49]  Cody, it's not fair to call them animorphs parodies.
[00:40:53]  They are animorphs' erotic fiction.
[00:40:55]  You know what?
[00:40:55]  I will say erotic literature.
[00:40:58]  I don't.
[00:40:59]  Wait, you've read it and I haven't?
[00:41:03]  All right.
[00:41:03]  Thank you so much.
[00:41:05]  Thank you so much for saying that.
[00:41:09]  My book is going to be just for kids.
[00:41:13]  For kids.
[00:41:13]  About being also Animor's erotica.
[00:41:16]  It's going to be a girl and her imaginary friend donkey.
[00:41:19]  That's a good size.
[00:41:20]  That's a good idea for a book.
[00:41:21]  Yeah.
[00:41:22]  Don't take it, guys.
[00:41:23]  Less thirsty than Cody's book, which is drier than the Sahara.
[00:41:30]  He's desperate.
[00:41:32]  He was 37 minutes late.
[00:41:34]  We can raz him a little.
[00:41:35]  One note, Cody.
[00:41:36]  There's actually no such thing as a fuck Panther.
[00:41:41]  Prove it.
[00:41:43]  I dare you to prove that somehow.
[00:41:46]  I think there's a fuck Panther in this book.
[00:41:48]  Yeah.
[00:41:49]  Several.
[00:41:49]  A couple of them.
[00:41:50]  Type in fuck Panther.
[00:41:51]  Let's see how much I can do.
[00:41:52]  I'm not sure there's a fuck Panther.
[00:41:54]  I wonder if the word fuck does appear in this at all.
[00:41:56]  I bet not.
[00:41:57]  I bet he.
[00:41:57]  Oh my gosh, no, 19 matches.
[00:42:01]  Brett Badass is a military.
[00:42:03]  I mean, he's a loose cannon.
[00:42:04]  I don't fire off a fuck.
[00:42:05]  He doesn't give a fuck.
[00:42:06]  Oh, boy.
[00:42:07]  Fuck you, motherfucker.
[00:42:08]  Get the fuck out of my hood to get his men the fuck off my border.
[00:42:12]  Fuck these animals.
[00:42:13]  There we go.
[00:42:14]  That's what I was looking for.
[00:42:15]  Oh, boy.
[00:42:16]  Unless he's actually talking about fucking animals, in which case I'm not looking for animals.
[00:42:19]  I'm going to pop right over there and see if it's...
[00:42:21]  Animals erotica.
[00:42:22]  Oh, the Taliban had used the hangar as an execution post.
[00:42:26]  There was a line of bodies lying on the floor, many of them wearing American uniforms.
[00:42:29]  Those bodies had been mutilated obscenely.
[00:42:31]  They'd done it slowly.
[00:42:33]  They'd enjoyed themselves.
[00:42:34]  Animals, he said softly.
[00:42:35]  Fuck these animals.
[00:42:37]  Uh-huh.
[00:42:38]  Okay, so not actually fucking animals.
[00:42:41]  In the racist way.
[00:42:42]  Yeah.
[00:42:43]  That's cool.
[00:42:45]  I was going to comment on the poorly written aspects of the breakdown then.
[00:42:52]  All right.
[00:42:53]  Yeah, more about the president.
[00:42:55]  Okay.
[00:42:56]  FDR was worshipped not because of World War II, but because of Social Security.
[00:43:01]  Wait, who's speaking right now?
[00:43:02]  The president?
[00:43:03]  This is just a rant Ben's going on again about the president who can't afford something that we haven't been told what it is yet.
[00:43:10]  I love.
[00:43:11]  This is just like one of his town-a-haul.com essays that he's like, ah, they're not going to publish this.
[00:43:17]  I'll put it in my book.
[00:43:19]  Oh, my God.
[00:43:21]  So Prescott spent.
[00:43:22]  He's spent on green technologies, on education programs, on food stamps and highways, and medical mandates.
[00:43:31]  Who needs a fucking highway?
[00:43:33]  Nobody's going to use this.
[00:43:35]  So the poorest can drive to work?
[00:43:37]  The Pavos.
[00:43:39]  I love that so far the message of the first page of the President Prescott chapter is that he's a coward for spending money on highways and not Afghanistan.
[00:43:47]  He doesn't want to do any more war.
[00:43:49]  He wants to be aware of the war.
[00:43:50]  Are you scared of the guns?
[00:43:53]  I am in the midst of the sound.
[00:43:55]  Why don't you invest in human beings' lives?
[00:43:57]  Yeah.
[00:43:58]  Unbelievable.
[00:44:00]  Unbelievable.
[00:44:01]  So yeah, this obviously spending money on Americans rather than Afghanistan destroys the economy.
[00:44:06]  He's making a great point.
[00:44:07]  Yeah, he is making a very important point.
[00:44:10]  And yeah, and so President Prescott starts to doubt whether or not he's going to win a second term.
[00:44:14]  And then a miracle.
[00:44:17]  In the middle of the night, Prescott woke up with a phrase ringing in his brain over and over.
[00:44:21]  It was as though a higher power had placed them in his mind.
[00:44:24]  He grabbed a pen from his bedside drawer and wrote it down.
[00:44:26]  Work freedom.
[00:44:27]  The work freedom program.
[00:44:29]  That's how Paul McCartney wrote it.
[00:44:30]  Oh my God.
[00:44:31]  Yesterday.
[00:44:32]  Yesterday, yeah.
[00:44:33]  He woke up with the melody in his head and he had to write it down.
[00:44:35]  Yeah.
[00:44:36]  He kept going to all his friends and being like, is this anything?
[00:44:39]  Am I making this up or is it sad?
[00:44:40]  Okay, wait, what?
[00:44:41]  This is like a really gross.
[00:44:43]  Ben thinks he's being smart, but this is a Holocaust reference that he's making.
[00:44:47]  He's comparing social welfare programs to the Holocaust.
[00:44:50]  Of course he is.
[00:44:51]  Let me read you this paragraph.
[00:44:53]  Everyone recognized the value of freedom, but what did that mean other than the right to a job?
[00:44:56]  Freedom meant nothing if you couldn't put bread in your children's mouths at night.
[00:44:59]  And America was a country of workers.
[00:45:01]  Freedom was work and work was freedom.
[00:45:03]  Work freedom.
[00:45:04]  Simple, easy, repeatable.
[00:45:06]  Genius.
[00:45:07]  What was stamped on the gates of Auschwitz and a number of other death camps was Arbeit Macht Free.
[00:45:12]  Work brings freedom.
[00:45:13]  That's literally what he is literally comparing the jobs programs.
[00:45:18]  Yeah.
[00:45:18]  Unfucking believable.
[00:45:20]  Yeah, he's a lot of people.
[00:45:25]  You all who won't, you know who won't make ghoulish Holocaust comparisons to score a cheap political point against a fake president.
[00:45:31]  Jordan Peterson, wait, never mind.
[00:45:33]  Ayn Rand, no.
[00:45:35]  Shit.
[00:45:36]  We're close.
[00:45:39]  Would it be Steven Crowdie?
[00:45:42]  Products and services?

=== Guessing Political Figures Blindly (03:53) ===

[00:45:43]  Katie got it.
[00:45:44]  I can't believe that was right.
[00:45:45]  That was a real stab in the dark.
[00:45:46]  You nailed it.
[00:45:47]  You nailed it.
[00:45:48]  These products and services will, in fact, bring freedom to you.
[00:45:53]  Work freedom.
[00:45:54]  The work freedom products that advertise on this show.
[00:46:03]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:46:07]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:46:10]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:46:13]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:46:16]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:46:20]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:46:24]  Oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:46:26]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:46:31]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:46:33]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:46:34]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:46:36]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:46:39]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:46:41]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:46:43]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:46:48]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:46:50]  Trust me, babe.
[00:46:51]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:00]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:47:06]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:47:11]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:47:16]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:47:26]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:47:31]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:47:34]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:47:37]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:47:39]  That's so funny.
[00:47:40]  Share each day with me each night.
[00:47:46]  Each morning.
[00:47:49]  Say you love me.
[00:47:52]  You know I.
[00:47:53]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:01]  What's up, everyone?
[00:48:01]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:48:03]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:48:14]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:48:17]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:48:22]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:48:24]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:48:26]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:48:28]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:48:33]  Yeah.
[00:48:34]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:48:37]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:48:38]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:48:47]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:48:49]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:48:55]  Just hang in there.
[00:48:56]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:48:58]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:48:59]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:49:01]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:49:09]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:49:16]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:49:21]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:49:24]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:49:28]  I doctored the test once.
[00:49:29]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:49:33]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.

=== Thanks Dad iHeartRadio Promo (09:16) ===

[00:49:37]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:49:39]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:49:42]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:49:44]  Greg Goespie and Michael Maracini.
[00:49:46]  My mind was blown.
[00:49:48]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:49:49]  This is Love Trap.
[00:49:51]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:49:53]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:49:58]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:50:04]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:50:09]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:50:18]  We're back.
[00:50:19]  Yeah, gang.
[00:50:20]  It's time for me to admit something now, 40 or so minutes into this.
[00:50:23]  Yeah.
[00:50:23]  Which is that when we decided we were going to do another one of these, I really agonized over which book to choose.
[00:50:30]  And I really frustrated Sophie by going back and forth.
[00:50:34]  We had a number of contenders for this, and I was worried that the Ben Shapiro book wouldn't be a good idea because I was like, it's probably just like a really lame thriller.
[00:50:42]  Like he wrote like the, like he had like a script for a generic action movie and he wrote it and we're just going to be like reading through turgid prose about shooting people and it's just going to be very boring.
[00:50:51]  Yeah.
[00:50:52]  I would have to be like 20 minutes in and be like, okay, guys, I'm sorry.
[00:50:54]  We got to like revamp and figure out something else.
[00:50:57]  I have learned so much about it.
[00:50:59]  I believe that this was a script he pitched around.
[00:51:02]  Yes.
[00:51:02]  And then I thought that was a novel.
[00:51:05]  And I am certain that in his head, his dream was that like, I'm going to pitch this script in myself as a screenwriter.
[00:51:11]  once they meet me, they'll be like the only person who can play Brett.
[00:51:18]  He's like John Wayne was short.
[00:51:19]  He just built the sets around him.
[00:51:21]  You got to change it so Brett's actually a short, obnoxious guy.
[00:51:24]  It's actually better if you're short on camera.
[00:51:27]  It's better for lighting purposes.
[00:51:29]  Ben, Ben, we love the script, but the protagonist needs to be more unpleasant to listen to.
[00:51:34]  All right, give us some more.
[00:51:35]  All right.
[00:51:36]  We only have time.
[00:51:38]  We will not get through enough of this.
[00:51:39]  You know what, Robert?
[00:51:40]  That's fine.
[00:51:41]  You know what?
[00:51:42]  Is it fine?
[00:51:42]  Robert, I think it's disgusting.
[00:51:44]  I think it's embarrassing that we haven't gotten through this whole thing.
[00:51:49]  I think it's fine, but we got to do like a 10-part series so we finish it.
[00:51:53]  Okay.
[00:51:54]  So what should we go through next?
[00:51:57]  I feel like going through chapter chapter.
[00:51:59]  Some options.
[00:52:00]  We're just going to get bogged down.
[00:52:01]  Is there anything you want me to search for?
[00:52:04]  Well, I have a question.
[00:52:04]  So when he ran into that future prisoner, and he didn't say the N-word, but he thought the N-word.
[00:52:13]  Yeah.
[00:52:14]  Was it typed out?
[00:52:15]  Was the word typed out?
[00:52:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:52:17]  Oh, yeah.
[00:52:17]  So I would say search for the other instances of the camera.
[00:52:20]  I also wouldn't mind hearing about this.
[00:52:22]  What was the woman character?
[00:52:23]  What was her description?
[00:52:25]  What did she do?
[00:52:28]  Oh, do you mean the militia leader?
[00:52:30]  Yeah.
[00:52:30]  Well, I know that her first chapter starts with her baking cookies for a SWAT team that's coming after her.
[00:52:35]  Are you kidding me?
[00:52:36]  Yes.
[00:52:36]  Is this a good one?
[00:52:37]  No, no.
[00:52:38]  I mean, I wouldn't mind checking that out.
[00:52:39]  All right.
[00:52:40]  You absolutely liar.
[00:52:40]  You absolute liar.
[00:52:41]  There's no way.
[00:52:43]  I will lie about a lot of things, Cody.
[00:52:45]  The coronavirus, for example.
[00:52:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:48]  But I will never lie about Ben Shapiro's prose.
[00:52:51]  Soledad, Central Valley, California.
[00:52:55]  The SWAT team didn't expect it the first time she brought them cookies.
[00:52:58]  Nobody brings the SWAT team cookies.
[00:53:00]  But Soledad Ramirez.
[00:53:02]  The lady does.
[00:53:04]  Well, Soledad Ramirez knew the value of good press, and she baked mean chocolate chip cookies.
[00:53:09]  No oatmeal raisin here, she said, good naturedly, handing out the meltingly hot treats to the men wearing full gear and carrying M4s set to burst.
[00:53:18]  Oh my God.
[00:53:20]  Number one, Ben.
[00:53:22]  Does he mean they were about to come?
[00:53:23]  No.
[00:53:24]  So military grade M4s and similar weapons based off the AR platform have a burst fire mode, which does a three-round burst in addition to semi-automatic.
[00:53:37]  No one would use it in that situation.
[00:53:40]  Semi-automatic is primarily for killing, like for actually trying to take aim shots.
[00:53:44]  So if you are entering a building in the thought that you might have a gunfight, you're not going to have your rifle set on BERT.
[00:53:50]  Sorry.
[00:53:51]  It's just very...
[00:53:52]  Yeah, also, if just this is nitpicking, meltingly hot.
[00:53:57]  Meltingly hot.
[00:53:58]  If something is melting, the reader would assume that they're hot.
[00:54:01]  You don't need to.
[00:54:03]  Also melting leaf.
[00:54:04]  Yeah, it's very awkward.
[00:54:06]  Also, they all eat the cookies, which I feel like is a bad call for a SWAT team entering a hostile situation.
[00:54:17]  You just take the food that they give to you.
[00:54:20]  The person you're raiding.
[00:54:23]  Is this...
[00:54:24]  Wait, so, okay, so this woman is the cookie maker.
[00:54:28]  So wait, what militia is she a part of?
[00:54:30]  Well, because also there's the other woman, right?
[00:54:32]  That was like his wife.
[00:54:33]  They had a kid.
[00:54:34]  Oh, yeah.
[00:54:34]  She's unconsequential.
[00:54:35]  Right.
[00:54:35]  So that's what it, like, there's nothing else about her.
[00:54:38]  She's a militia leader.
[00:54:39]  So she's a right-wing militia leader?
[00:54:40]  I am going to guess.
[00:54:42]  But she also knows her gender role and how to nose her way around a kitchen.
[00:54:46]  Yeah.
[00:54:46]  For the meltingly hot cookies.
[00:54:48]  It seems like she's a ranch owner, and the EPA ruled that there's a type of rare fish that was in danger from water overuse in the river, and they were stopping her from doing her important farm work.
[00:55:02]  And we're going to confiscate her property if she didn't stop watering her plants.
[00:55:08]  So That's a way to frame it.
[00:55:11]  Yeah, I think so.
[00:55:12]  Yeah, I think it's a mix of that and like what happened with the Bundies.
[00:55:14]  Oh my God.
[00:55:16]  Yep.
[00:55:16]  Cool.
[00:55:17]  Sometimes.
[00:55:19]  Yeah, but she does know how to bake, and that's important for a woman.
[00:55:22]  She protested.
[00:55:23]  She sued.
[00:55:24]  It didn't matter, according to the government, that her husband's father had bought the farm, worked it up from nothing.
[00:55:29]  It didn't matter that her husband had worked his heart out, almost literally on the farm, keeling over at the ripe old age of 52 while grazing those damn cattle.
[00:55:36]  It didn't matter that she had 50-some employees and their families depended on her.
[00:55:40]  All that mattered was the smelt, that damn fish.
[00:55:44]  It's definitely the Obama exactly that.
[00:55:47]  Yeah, yeah, it is.
[00:55:48]  It is.
[00:55:48]  And it kills all her cows.
[00:55:51]  It's embarrassing, Ben.
[00:55:52]  Oh, my God.
[00:55:52]  There's even a reference to.
[00:55:53]  You guys ever done a lot of driving up the five from Los Angeles North?
[00:55:57]  You know how they have all those like Congress made dust bowl Pelosi does.
[00:56:00]  Even there's even a direct reference to that.
[00:56:02]  They're making her the character who put those signs up on the side of the five.
[00:56:06]  You know what?
[00:56:07]  I've always wondered.
[00:56:08]  I have to drive out there frequently because my family lives in the Bay Area.
[00:56:11]  So I make that drive a lot.
[00:56:13]  Yeah.
[00:56:13]  A lot.
[00:56:14]  I've done it dozens of times.
[00:56:15]  And I'm always wondering who did this.
[00:56:17]  Soledad Ramirez.
[00:56:18]  Soledad Ramirez.
[00:56:20]  Are there any ones that say, stop by for my meltingly hot cookies?
[00:56:26]  Nope.
[00:56:27]  Okay.
[00:56:27]  I wonder how Soledad Ramirez feels about immigration.
[00:56:32]  Oh, boy.
[00:56:33]  Well, good news, Katie.
[00:56:36]  She was a week away from filing, I think, for bankruptcy.
[00:56:40]  Yeah, yeah, filing for bankruptcy when she received the letter.
[00:56:42]  It came from one of her former employees, Emilio.
[00:56:45]  He'd immigrated from Mexico decades before, crossed the border illegally.
[00:56:48]  She'd paid him well, sponsored his citizenship, and brought his family over to join him.
[00:56:52]  He's a valuable employee, she told her skeptical friends.
[00:56:55]  And if you were living on that side of the border, wouldn't you jump it?
[00:56:57]  He's not taking money from anybody except me, and I'm paying him for work.
[00:57:01]  He was one of the last men to be laid off as the ranch died.
[00:57:03]  She cried the night she told him the cash had run out.
[00:57:06]  He thanked her, hugged her, and moved his family to Los Angeles.
[00:57:09]  So he writes her a letter.
[00:57:11]  Well, that's a good immigration story, I guess.
[00:57:13]  I mean, well, I feel like if you do a search for Emilio, oh, good Christ.
[00:57:20]  Oh, no.
[00:57:20]  Did he become a gang member?
[00:57:24]  Oh, no, he became a gang member.
[00:57:26]  Almost, almost.
[00:57:28]  So he and his family had been forced to take a small apartment in East Los Angeles.
[00:57:33]  And Emilio had gotten a job at a factory, a local one of those classic East LA factories.
[00:57:39]  East LA is teeming with factories.
[00:57:41]  East factory town.
[00:57:42]  That's what we all call it.
[00:57:44]  So their son Juan had been enrolled at the public high school.
[00:57:48]  That's where he'd been killed.
[00:57:50]  One of his classmates apparently had tried to recruit him into a gang.
[00:57:53]  When he refused, several of the gang members found him in the bathroom.
[00:57:56]  They started punching him.
[00:57:58]  Yeah, they beat him to death for not joining a gang.
[00:58:00]  Yeah, they did.
[00:58:03]  Football, gangs, and factories.
[00:58:07]  It's just so he's so simple.
[00:58:09]  He's such a simple boy.
[00:58:11]  So she refuses to pay her tax bill and instead sends the money over to Emilio so he can bury his boy.
[00:58:20]  Who didn't said no to gangs?
[00:58:22]  Yeah, and then that's why the SWAT team comes after her because she's not paying her taxes because she had to help Emilio bury his gang-killed boy.
[00:58:29]  And that's what starts the standoff.
[00:58:31]  That's a stand-in for the Bundy standoff that happened when the Bundies refused to actually pay mandatory grazing fees that were very clear and very fair for more than a decade until finally there was an action that was then stopped because the government got scared.
[00:58:46]  Because we don't, or at least didn't live in a rich tapestry.

=== Gang-Killed Boy Tax Standoff (03:32) ===

[00:58:53]  There's a lot.
[00:58:54]  That brings up really important moral questions.
[00:58:57]  And we shouldn't mock it.
[00:58:59]  No.
[00:58:59]  No.
[00:59:00]  No, it's good.
[00:59:00]  You're right.
[00:59:01]  It's good.
[00:59:02]  I don't mean anything I just said.
[00:59:04]  Oh, he talks about there's a character named LaVon.
[00:59:08]  Uh-huh.
[00:59:08]  Yeah, there is.
[00:59:09]  He talks about, oh my God.
[00:59:12]  Levon, not a white character.
[00:59:14]  Really?
[00:59:15]  No.
[00:59:16]  Detroit, Michigan is where Levon lived.
[00:59:18]  Yep, yep.
[00:59:20]  And the first sentence of Levon's chapter is, Detroit was a shithole, but it was his shithole.
[00:59:26]  I hate this so much.
[00:59:28]  That's the way LeVon Williams had thought of it.
[00:59:30]  He'd grown up in this shithole right near Eight Mile Road along streets.
[00:59:34]  This is horrible.
[00:59:35]  This is horrible.
[00:59:36]  Oh, my God.
[00:59:37]  I will not have Detroit slander podcasts.
[00:59:43]  Just write a book.
[00:59:44]  You like saw Eight Mile with Eminem and your dorm room when you were in law school.
[00:59:51]  Did you talk about the world you know?
[00:59:53]  Oh my God.
[00:59:54]  He must, right?
[00:59:55]  He must talk about rap battles.
[00:59:56]  Let's, I'm just going to see if.
[00:59:59]  Yeah, rap.
[01:00:00]  Does he talk about rappers?
[01:00:00]  Oh, my God.
[01:00:01]  There's no.
[01:00:01]  Let's see if there's hip-hop.
[01:00:03]  Or like, I'm trying to think of like vernacular where it's like, oh, Ben, why are you doing that?
[01:00:10]  What do you...
[01:00:12]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:13]  It doesn't look like we have that problem.
[01:00:15]  Thank God for small miracles.
[01:00:17]  Yeah.
[01:00:17]  Thank God for small miracles.
[01:00:19]  Well, guys, I don't know how much more.
[01:00:24]  I mean, we could, we could, we could keep going for hours, but we can't because time is.
[01:00:30]  Yes, Cody?
[01:00:31]  Could you, real quick, just search for the word Marxism?
[01:00:34]  Oh, my God.
[01:00:35]  Of course.
[01:00:36]  Thank you.
[01:00:36]  Of course.
[01:00:37]  Let's just see Marx.
[01:00:38]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:41]  Marxism.
[01:00:42]  Oh, no, only once.
[01:00:44]  Where the president's plan to...
[01:00:47]  Actually, I'm going to read you what the president's plan because this is what Ben essentially calls Marxism and socialism.
[01:00:55]  This is the president speaking.
[01:00:56]  The evil president is the worst person who doesn't want us to be in Marx.
[01:01:00]  15% unemployment.
[01:01:01]  I promise you right now that you will not pay one additional dollar in taxes for this program.
[01:01:08]  You will not lose your job.
[01:01:09]  And if your employer should selfishly fire you, we're establishing a business trust to which all businesses will contribute, which will pay your salary during rainy days.
[01:01:19]  Businesses may try to scare you, but people are always frightened of what they do not understand.
[01:01:24]  Selfishness must not be allowed to trump the vital liberties of the American people.
[01:01:29]  And this action will not contribute to our national debt.
[01:01:31]  It will contribute to our collective wealth with the entire American population working, producing, creating, not just 80% or 90% or even 93%.
[01:01:41]  We will boost our gross domestic product exponentially.
[01:01:45]  For me, this is bad.
[01:01:46]  It's like, what if there was a social safety net?
[01:01:49]  Horrible.
[01:01:51]  Damn you.
[01:01:52]  Highways.
[01:01:55]  Oof.
[01:01:55]  Amazing.
[01:01:58]  One last one.
[01:01:59]  Yep.
[01:01:59]  Do a search for IQ.
[01:02:02]  Oh, boy.
[01:02:03]  Oh, Cody.
[01:02:04]  Maybe.
[01:02:06]  Just a shot in the dark.
[01:02:07]  Who knows?
[01:02:08]  No, no, no.
[01:02:10]  No?
[01:02:10]  Okay.
[01:02:11]  That's for his other book.
[01:02:14]  This has been not that illuminating.
[01:02:17]  I mean, it has been illuminating, but only in affirming the things that we know.
[01:02:21]  Just for numbers' sake, Patriot.

=== Follow Us On Social Media (04:10) ===

[01:02:25]  Oh, boy.
[01:02:25]  Yeah, let's see that.
[01:02:28]  Only two.
[01:02:28]  Yeah.
[01:02:29]  What?
[01:02:29]  Only two.
[01:02:30]  Ben, you loser.
[01:02:31]  Yeah.
[01:02:31]  You don't care about America.
[01:02:32]  You hate America.
[01:02:33]  Unbelievable.
[01:02:35]  I'm so glad you picked this book.
[01:02:36]  I am too.
[01:02:37]  Thank you, Sophie.
[01:02:39]  I am so glad that Sophie finally insisted that I pick this book rather than vacillating like a fucking coward.
[01:02:46]  And I am going to just hop right in right now.
[01:02:49]  Let's go to my orders.
[01:02:51]  Get that refund.
[01:02:53]  Yeah, I don't want old Benny Shapps to get any of this.
[01:02:55]  I want to read his book.
[01:02:56]  Can you give feedback?
[01:02:57]  Can you give feedback as to why you want to refund?
[01:02:59]  No.
[01:03:00]  Say this is trash.
[01:03:01]  Yeah, you know what?
[01:03:01]  I will.
[01:03:02]  I will say this is a lot of fun.
[01:03:03]  And while Robert, while Barbara does that, do you guys want to plug your pluggables?
[01:03:06]  Yeah, Well, you can check out our show that we do with Robert, Worst Year Ever.
[01:03:10]  Okay.
[01:03:11]  I'm sure you guys know about that.
[01:03:13]  And you could check out our show, Even More News.
[01:03:16]  That's our podcast.
[01:03:17]  Cody, you want to tell them about the other things we do?
[01:03:19]  It's a YouTube show.
[01:03:20]  It's called Some More News.
[01:03:21]  Damn straight.
[01:03:23]  You can Google it and Google our names to find all the social media accounts that are associated with the shows and with us personally.
[01:03:32]  Because they exist.
[01:03:33]  They exist.
[01:03:33]  They're out there with tweets.
[01:03:36]  You know what?
[01:03:36]  I love those things that exist.
[01:03:38]  Yeah, Famous for that.
[01:03:41]  Yeah.
[01:03:42]  Well, my item has been successfully returned.
[01:03:44]  So that's good.
[01:03:45]  That's good.
[01:03:46]  It's been processing.
[01:03:46]  I'm so happy for us.
[01:03:48]  So there's a lesson for all of you.
[01:03:50]  If you want to game Amazon a little bit.
[01:03:52]  It's a smart one.
[01:03:54]  That's cool.
[01:03:55]  Also, you can follow Robert on Twitter at iRedOK.
[01:03:57]  You could follow us on Twitter and Instagram at BastardsPod.
[01:04:00]  We have a TaePublic store and a website at behindthebastards.com.
[01:04:04]  What she said.
[01:04:05]  And bye.
[01:04:07]  Bye.
[01:04:08]  Hello.
[01:04:09]  Hi.
[01:04:09]  Shit.
[01:04:21]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:04:29]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:04:32]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:04:34]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:04:36]  We always say that.
[01:04:37]  Trust your girlfriends.
[01:04:40]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:04:42]  Trust me, babe.
[01:04:43]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:04:53]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[01:04:57]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[01:05:00]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[01:05:08]  An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
[01:05:11]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[01:05:14]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[01:05:23]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:05:28]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
[01:05:31]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:05:34]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:05:36]  That's so funny.
[01:05:38]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[01:05:45]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:05:53]  What's up, everyone?
[01:05:54]  I'm Ego Modem.
[01:05:55]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:06:00]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:06:03]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:06:04]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:06:11]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:06:13]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[01:06:21]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:06:22]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:06:24]  There's a lot of life.
[01:06:25]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:06:32]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:06:35]  Guaranteed human.