Robert Evans and Sophie host a year-end Q&A, revealing Evans' anxiety over historical accuracy regarding Netanyahu and Bolsonaro while expressing fury at corporate atrocities like Hawk's Nest Tunnel. They critique modern Star Trek's lack of space battles compared to Serenity and debate fantasy guests ranging from Werner Herzog to LeBron James. Despite personal tragedies, Evans prepares his sequel "After the Revolution," dismissing boring figures like Ben Shapiro and refusing to diagnose public figures without professional input. Ultimately, the episode reflects on the show's evolution from a rejected dictatorial pitch to a weekly exploration of global "monsters." [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Star Trek Timeline Exhaustion00:11:00
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Moda.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How could this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Woods.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans.
This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast by a man who is preparing for the entrance of the new regime, the need to go underground.
So I'm in my Chud block today.
You know, if you're a tall white man and you wear a hoodie with a deer head on it, you're effectively invisible.
So I'm prepared for the new world.
Are you?
You look great.
Thank you, Sophie.
I love my Chud sweat.
It's actually incredibly comfortable.
Every year after deer season, this exact hoodie comes on for sale at a store near me.
And so I can get like three for five bucks each or some shit like that.
And they're crazy comfortable.
And per usual, I spent the last hour trying to make myself look nicer for the camera so people aren't mean to me on the internet.
Yep.
Yep.
Very different, very unequal situation, but I'm also not going to spend any more time caring about my appearance.
Fair enough.
What are we doing today, Robert?
Well, Sophie, the same thing we do every night.
Try to take over the world of podcasting.
Oh, wait.
We already did that.
I guess let's answer some QA's from our fans.
Yeah, so we put out a post on our Instagram at BastardsPod, and many of you sent in questions.
And so we're going to try to answer a lot of them.
Yeah, yeah.
The gist of the situation is, folks, it's the end of the year.
This is when all of the companies that buy ads are really buying ads.
And it's, you know, when everybody wants to get as many people listening as possible.
And we decided rather than doing something that's zero effort and like, you know, running more episodes, which we do when we take a break, we wanted to give you guys a chance to ask us some questions and also make sure that we're providing you with new stuff because you crave new stuff.
You won't stop demanding it.
Every instant of our lives, Sophie and I think of nothing but pleasing your insatiable appetites.
So Sophie went on Instagram and asked if you guys had any questions.
Robert.
Yes.
What was your least favorite episode to do and why?
Least favorite to do.
I assume they're asking ever.
I hate, I really, unless it's a place where I have a specific interest, I really hate the foreign leader episodes.
Like, obviously, Stalin's a foreign leader, but I've been reading about Stalin my whole life.
Hitler's a foreign episode.
I've read more books about Hitler than anybody who's not a Hitler scholar.
But like Jay or Bolsonaro, right?
Like, I don't know much about Brazilian politics coming in.
Netanyahu, I don't know much about, you know, politics over there.
So like getting up to speed, not just because you can't, it's not just enough to like learn what was Netanyahu's childhood like.
You also have to know like, the dynamics of politics prior to him coming into power, and like, the part, like and catching up on all of that in a way that you don't totally embarrass yourself is a is a lot of work and it's also nerve-wracking because like, especially again to go back to Netanyahu, this is a guy who I mean who had been involved in genocidal activity prior to uh, to to where we are right now.
But like certainly, like it was the kind of thing where like, because of how high the stakes are and how bad the things he was up to were like, oh my god, the anxiety about fucking that up and see with Bolsonaro right, this guy who's around the Amazon with indigenous peoples, this dude who is a very important part of this authoritarian trend, but also me, a guy who doesn't know much about Brazil um, i'm always very anxious about those episodes.
It's, they're important to do.
We'll be doing more of them next year.
I just I, I I always like stress out over because there's no, not getting some stuff wrong right like, of course, it's just it's, especially with history, because it's so subjective.
For sure, I really hate when we do the like uh, wilderness camp school things and oh, I love that.
Like horrific shit up horrific uh kids.
Kids think they're in a safe place and then they get, you know, insert horrible thing here.
Those, those episodes.
I really, really hate those.
I'll eat them up all day.
We did get this question quite a bit and people want to know how you celebrated the passing of, uh Henry Kissinger.
You know, to be honest, I that was a pretty normal day for me, like there's not a lot, i'm glad he's dead, but like he lived an incredibly long life and got to do most of the things he wanted and never really suffered.
So it's like how much like let's.
Let's say I had a beer, you know, let's say I had a beer.
Let's say I had a beer, so cryptic.
What the fuck?
You sound so unwell.
Robert, is there an episode, topic, or individual that you have covered that has left you shaken up or angry long after you completed the episode?
Everything we do on healthcare.
Yeah.
Like every time we have done a healthcare, I know this is the week that it is.
Every time we talk about the U.S. healthcare system, I'm fucking livid.
Industrial, the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, Union Carbide in Bhopal India as well.
Like both of those are Union Carbide affiliated disasters.
Those drive me fucking insane.
Like to some extent, I find those guys more offensive than a guy like Hitler, which is not saying that they're worse than Hitler, because Hitler did kill more people than like Union Carbide.
But Hitler was like a guy who very honestly was about murdering people.
Whereas these guys are all pretending to be decent men, family men, you know, just, you know, all I'm doing is trying to make jobs and provide a valuable part of the economy.
And they are just killing people by fucking the city full.
So yeah, those make me very angry.
I'm going to ask you one that won't make you very angry.
Robert, what is your opinion on modern Star Trek?
I love most of it.
That's what they say.
Okay.
Lower Dex is my favorite Star Trek thing since DS9.
Sure.
I've seen some episodes of Strange New Worlds, and there's, I can see why people like it a lot.
I'm kind of exhausted with that time period in the Star Trek timeline.
Like, I want new stuff.
I want fucking A, like, do one where Riker's like an old admiral and we're fucking dealing with Starfleet politics back on Earth in San Francisco.
Give me anything where we're moving forward on the timeline, but we're not leaping into like weird future war shit.
Like, I'm not mostly interested in that stuff.
I'm mostly interested with actually part of why I love DS.
I love TNG because it's really looking at like what is would a utopia be, in a sense that's actually imaginable as something real, that like something that could exist in some ways.
And then Deep Space Nine is asking, what would the dark sides of the that utopia be?
In particular, not even the dark sides, because it's less that and more kind of like what the Culture series you know dealt with.
Like what happens when this utopia and the people in it inevitably make contact or collide with reality like or not reality, because because they live in reality, but with, but with places that are not utopia, with places that are different, that are worse, that have different values, like.
What are those clashes like?
And that's what I love in my Star Trek.
I don't Star Trek's never had good space battles.
I'll say that right, I mean, every now and then you get like a Wolf 359 or something.
There's some pretty cool there, but like fucking a.
There's that one scene in Serenity is a better space battle in terms of like an interesting, cool looking space battle than ever got shot in Star Trek.
But I don't watch Star Trek for space battles.
I've got other for space battles.
That was very thorough.
Thank you uh, I like this Question.
Basketball Draft and Harry Styles00:07:28
Who is your fantasy guest?
Fantasy guest?
Marissa Tomei during the my cousin Vinny.
What are we talking about?
What do we mean by fantasy here?
I think they, wow, very specific.
I think they mean if you could have anybody come and guest on the podcast, who would your dreams be?
Yeah, no, no, I guess.
I know what they meant.
I would love to have, I don't even know if I'd do an episode.
I would just love to talk with either Alan Moore or Werner Herzog.
Like, specifically, if I had Herzog, the thing I'd most want to do with Herzog, I guess we could record it, but I don't really care if we do is I'd like to cook a meal with Werner Herzog.
Sure.
But I think, yeah, in terms of funny people, I think Will Farrell would probably be a really good guest.
He's far too famous for us, but he seems like he's got a good sense of humor about these kinds of things.
Can you guess who mine is?
Who's yours?
Can you guess?
Yours is Harry Styles?
Nope.
Okay.
There's only one obvious answer.
Because it would be like really funny to bring Harry Styles on and just do like unit 731, just like non-stop four hours of the most nightmarish stories of torture.
And you just be like, treat people with kindness.
What are you talking about?
No, that's not who it is.
Uh-huh.
There's only one person it could be.
Okay.
Who?
I'm waiting to see if you know.
No, I don't.
I gave you my guess.
The listeners are disappointed.
Okay.
They're lists of points.
It's LeBron James.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I mean, we could try, we could talk about basketball.
Two experts like us.
I mean, I think a lot of people would enjoy hearing our different feelings on ball handling, on three-pointers, other basketball stuff.
Those aren't the only two basketball-related terms I know, guys.
I think a lot of people would want to hear your opinion on ball handling, Robert.
Anyways, it's time for an ad break.
Wow, Sophie.
Yeah.
The subreddit's going to be very uncomfortable today.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
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.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shari, stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me, you know.
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.
I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Yeah.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancine.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nixon Behavior and Boring Books00:06:11
We are back.
Robert, this question was asked 552,000 times.
When can we expect a sequel to After the Revolution?
Well, the book's done.
Basically, I'm almost, I finished the rough draft.
I am almost through with the first draft, which is when I read through the rough draft chapter by chapter and make the edits that occur to me to make it make sense.
I think probably in January, I'll put out the first three chapters just as kind of a teaser.
But I'll be, you know, working with my editor to get it in the shape.
But very soon, very soon.
It's taken much longer than I had hoped it would.
In my defense, both my parents died since publishing the first one.
So, you know, that's not really an excuse, but it's going to make you feel bad.
And so you're not going to follow up with complaining that the book's not out yet.
I'm manipulating you.
You know, I'm a monster.
I know it, but I'm good at it.
You're allowed.
Thank you.
You've referenced that there are people who start to look into, but ultimately find that there isn't really enough there for an episode.
Who came the closest to being worthy of doing a whole episode about, but who was the most disappointing person that you weren't able to do an episode about?
I know that's happened.
It has.
There's been, and usually when that happens, it's not that there's not enough.
It's that there's just like not enough information about what they did.
You'll hear like a reference to like some CEO who did this like really fucked up thing.
He was like fucking eating poor people or whatever shit, but it's like, well, all I've got is like three sentences from an old newspaper.
I can't really get an article out on that.
Honestly, names aren't coming to mind.
The closest I can come in terms of what I remember is like I almost didn't get to do the Bo Brummel episodes after hours of research because I did kind of come to the conclusion, you know, there's some bad side effects as a result of what he did, but that's nothing like not that morally reflects on him in a negative way.
Like he wasn't trying to make generations of men more limited in their fashion choices.
He just like liked what he liked.
And likewise, I guess.
There's been a handful of people where you've been like, where people are like, it's not necessarily that you've looked into them.
People are like, why don't you do an episode on so-and-so?
And you're like, because they're fucking boring.
Like Ben Shapiro, what am I going to say?
What are you going to say?
What is there really to say about Ben?
You know, I have looked into him.
I did think about it.
And like at this point, he does have a negative impact.
He's just boring.
And like, that's a big, I will say when it comes to, if your question is ever, why haven't you done so-and-so?
The answer is usually either I think they're boring.
And if it's someone where that you're like, well, there's no way he thinks this guy's boring.
This guy's objectively interesting.
It's because that's going to be a shitload of work.
And like, I'm always triaging the like the Lawrence of Arabia episodes, which seem to have gotten a good reaction.
I think I had to read like five books for like a bunch of articles.
I was, I was working in the background, slowly getting through material for, yeah, starting in like January.
Yeah.
And not everything is like, but like Kissinger was like that.
Kissinger was like a year of background work.
And the current big one that I'm very slowly working on is doing another Nixon, doing a Nixon, probably six-parter, because it's fucking Nixon, but at least a four-parter.
And that's going to take me a while because I really don't.
There's so many stores, because you could put that much effort into everybody, but it's a lot of folks, you would just be reading stuff that's largely repeating similar bits with slightly different takes, whereas with Nixon, everyone who digs into him, there's so many stories.
There's so many people who know crazy shit about Nixon.
You really almost can't come to an end of collecting fucked up Dick Nixon stories.
Like it's almost an, it's almost like our most renewable resource on planet Earth is stories of Richard Nixon being a freaking weirdo.
So it takes some time.
Which episode received the most backlash from fans?
Backlash.
I, you know, I had some, there was some frustration over an episode we did that was, I think it was mixed.
It's always really mixed, even when there is like about that doctor who was like doing really bad surgeries for trans people.
There were some folks who had some specific frustrations with that and then some folks who didn't.
And ultimately, it's one of those things where when you're dealing with stuff like that, there are probably multiple right ways to do it.
But it's tough.
I think the biggest thing that I, the biggest thing that frustrates me in terms of like feedback from listeners is when people will be like, obviously figure this person has autism.
Why didn't you bring that up?
Or that's an explanation for this behavior.
Why didn't you bring that up?
And the answer in every case is that person has not been diagnosed with anything.
All I have is the behavior.
Multiple other things could explain the behavior.
I am not going to just declare Jeffrey Bezos to have autism based on my zero experience as a diagnostician because he didn't like music, right?
Like, there are other reasons people might not like music.
And it's just kind of an interesting detail about how he's sort of disconnected from a lot of the people around him.
That can be explained by many different things.
But it's not my job to be like, this is what I believe is going on with Jeffrey Bezos.
And now we all have to act like it's true because it's probably not.
Hey, Robert.
Uh-huh.
Where can I read up on Robert's Warzone journalism or whatever older pieces may be out there?
Man, there's, I mean, most of it was on cracked.com.
Some of it found its way into It Could Happen Here, at least my conclusions based on it.
There was a video that you could view in VR that was like a 360 video documentary of some of my time in Mosul that was published through the EW Scripts Network.
I think that one was called 24 Hours in Mosul or something like that.
It was broadcast also on a bunch of TV networks.
I don't actually know if the link is up.
A decent number of things that I wrote back then for like local news have become lost media because that's how that shit be.
Yep.
Spice Girls Fun Break00:05:42
But you should still be able to find some of the stuff on Cracked that I did.
So yeah, I would say check that out there.
Let's do a fun one before the next ad break.
Robert, if you were a Spice Girl, what would be your Spice Girl name?
If I were a Spice Girl, my Spice Girl name would be doesn't want to say anything mean about the Spice Girls because I am close to several women who grew up in love with the Spice Girls.
Yes, but what would your spice?
So your Spice Girls.
That was my name.
Yes.
I gave my name.
Your Spice Girl name is Afraid of Women Spice.
Specifically, Afraid of the Women That I Like Spice, yes.
Afraid of Women I Like Spice.
Got it.
Afraid of offending them based on having a bad take about the Spice Girls.
Spice.
I think I would be Producer Spice.
Yeah, that's probably fair too.
It's time for Ad's gun.
We'll be back.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
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.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
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.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Jack Jack and Nazi Articles00:04:49
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Oespi and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Robert, we're back.
Can you believe it?
No.
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
When did you decide BTB was going to be your next thing?
Was it something you've been building towards in your life?
Was it becoming a pod, a major goal, or did it just sort of happen?
I'm going to explain this to you in a way that also explains some questions that we can't answer directly about why do you guys work for X or, you know, are involved with, you know, such and such company.
Kind of answered my question.
We can kind of answer that.
We can, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
Sure.
Yeah.
So I, when I was late into my time at Cracked, I was getting bored of writing that, doing the kind of articles I'd been doing for years there, these personal experience pieces where I'd interview someone and then turn their life experiences or the reporting that I'd done into like a listicle.
And podcasts were starting to blow up.
I was interested in the medium.
I'd done one through cracked and found aspects of it pleasant.
And the thing I had pitched was something based on my special interest, which is the Nazis.
You know, I had done an article that had done very well on things you don't know about the Nazis that had delved into things we've touched on in some episodes of the podcast.
You know, all of these, these very weird things.
I talked about Carl May, you know, and Hitler's obsession with these cowboy novels and how that impacted the Third Reich.
And so that sort of stuff.
And I was like, I want to do a series where every season I talk about a different dictatorial regime and all of the crazy weird facts about it.
So season one would be 10 episodes on like these weird things you don't know about the Nazis.
Maybe we'd move on to Saddam Hussein or Stalin.
And then we all got shit canned.
And I remember, you know, you know, you have good friends among your coworkers when like as we're all getting drunk, one of the people who hadn't gotten laid off was Alex Schmidt, good old Schmitty.
And Schmitty and I are talking and I'm like, oh, so I had this great idea.
And Schmitty's running podcasts at Cracked and is still employed.
And I'm like, I have this great idea for a show.
And Schmitty, being a very good friend, is like, don't tell it to me.
So I didn't.
And, you know, I spent the next couple of weeks getting fucked up like you do when you get laid off.
And then had a call with Jack O'Brien.
And Sophie was on that call because Jack had left a few months earlier to work at Stuff Media, which is the company that was producing shows like, you know, Stuff You Don't Know.
Stuff You Should Know.
Stuff you shouldn't know.
Stuff they don't want you to know.
Stuff they missed in history class.
It's the How Stuffs Works team that was originally out of Atlanta.
Yeah.
And our boss is actually the guy who started Mental Flaws.
So like this is, these are all folks.
One of the guys, yeah.
Yeah, one of the guys.
These are all folks who came out of the same era of digital media as me who were all pivoted, had pivoted to podcasting a little earlier.
So I had my meeting with my old boss, Jack, and I tell him my idea for this dictator show that I want to do.
Let's pause for five seconds.
Uh-huh.
When Robert says, I've mentioned this previously before, but when Robert says he tells his idea for a dictator show, first of all, this is my first interaction with Robert, is he's like running through a wind tunnel.
I was jogging in San Francisco underneath a bridge, as I'm often doing near Dog Patch, if you're curious.
And he, I could hear, you know, half the words, and it was like, bad guys, history, worst.
And I was like, yep.
I would like to produce that.
Thank you so much.
Unhinged.
Unhinged.
Good old Jack O'Brien was like, okay.
Yeah.
Because Jack actually had stolen me.
Jack actually.
Jack, Jack actually.
Jack actually, Jack actually stole it, stole me.
I can't even say that.
No, nobody can.
It's a terrible word.
So I worked at a company that bought How Stuff Works.
And I was working at that company doing like project management stuff, which is kind of like why it makes sense, why I'm so able to control the amount of shows we have because a lot of my background was in that.
And Jack, when Jack came on to run the LA version of, and it was originally just comedy of the How Stuff Works team, he stole me from that other company.
Thank you, Jack.
Weekly Cat Updates and Steals00:06:26
Yeah.
And soon after that, I got to meet Robert and changed my life.
Yeah.
So yeah, that's the well.
And during that meeting, again, my show had been, my idea had been seasons about like each season about a different dictatorship.
And Jack was like, what if every episode you just switch and give a different, you know, a couple episodes about a different monster?
And you can go back and forth and revisit different aspects of topics, which is a much better idea.
It would not, the show would not have worked in a seasonal format the way that it does as a weekly, even though making this into a weekly show has destroyed my life.
But in a good way.
Well, it's not even just that because it started as a weekly and then you're like, man, would it make sense if we like split things into parts?
So now it's now a twice weekly show at least.
But yeah.
Oh, our origin.
That's so cute.
But yeah, anyways, we worked at this company called How Stuff Works or Stuff Media, whatever, whatever.
They went publicly by How Stuff Works and then the company was called Stuff Media.
And then all of a sudden one day they were like, oh, hey, by the way, we just got bought by iHeartRadio.
You work for them now.
And we were like, yep.
Cool.
Well, I don't know.
Nothing to do here.
And that's how life is when you're in media.
When you're in media.
And like, you know, I really, I really like our team.
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Robert, can you give us a cat update?
Cat update?
I mean, they're cats.
So very little changes in their day-to-day life if things are doing well.
There's many questions about your cats.
Then just, you know, anything interesting?
I mean, Saddam Hussein had a problem two years ago.
Are you telling this story?
Yeah, he tried to have, there's a blanket he likes to have sex with that's usually on my couch.
I mean, he's been, he's been neutered, but he still tries to have sex with it.
And that blanket got a seed that's like a sharp seed.
It's one of those seeds that's like sticks to your pants in it.
And he managed to get it wedged inside his urethra and it nearly killed him.
But he's fine now.
He's fine now.
And there haven't been reoccurrences of any urinary issues, which are very serious in male cats.
If your male cat isn't peeing, get it to the bed immediately.
Hours matter.
Hours matter.
The most amazing thing about that story is I once made Robert during this time, shortly after we knew Saddam Hasan was going to be okay, join a call with a well, let's just call him an entertainment person that was not being a chill guy.
And do you remember this story?
On a project we decided we ultimately decided not to work on.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we ultimately decided not to work on.
Yes.
But it was like, it was going to be a very unpleasant phone call.
And Robert gets on and Robert has maybe spoken to this man for 10 seconds once.
And he's like, hey, how's it going, Robert?
And Robert's like, my cat got a seed stuck up his urethra.
And I really treasured that moment.
Yeah, so do I.
That was beautiful for me.
Let's do one more.
Okay.
I love questions.
I love answers.
I love answering questions.
I love questioning answers.
You know, all of those things.
A good time.
Robert.
Sophie.
I don't know why I say your name.
Like, who else would I be asking?
I mean, besides Anderson.
Anderson.
No.
What activities do you, oh, this is for both of us.
What activities do y'all do to ease your mental health after researching and hearing about awful things?
That's an option.
This is mine.
This is my answer right here.
This beautiful dog I'm holding.
And for the audio only people, I'm holding up Anderson and she looks quite beautiful.
Yes, you do.
Unfortunately, tragically, I've been sober for a while and will be staying sober.
So I just get depressed and then get better and better at shooting a gun.
That's how I spend my free time.
Jesus Christ.
Do you want that on the internet?
Why not?
I don't know.
You could have said, I go for runs most days.
I go for runs most days.
I lift weights.
I push into me wearing my body armor and try firing a handgun.
Yes, I do all these things.
You have farm animals that are wonderfully magical.
I do have farm animals.
I go hunting in which I train at hitting moving targets in the woods.
You have wonderful friends.
Yeah, sometimes I trained shooting stuff in the woods with them.
Your business partner is a very supportive person.
Sure, yeah, lots of that.
I miss drugs, Sophie.
I hate being sober.
But it's okay.
I've been doing it for years.
I'll keep it up.
You're doing so.
It's just miserable.
You're doing great, buddy.
Well, give the people a Boston Rob, and then we'll be on our way.
And we'll...
Boy, I knew it.
You Boston monkey.
Is that good enough for you people?
Does that make you happy?
Is that what you want?
No one's ever happy when they get what they want.
We'll be back on Thursday with another round of questions.
Questions!
That's how they say it in Boston.
At this point, Robert, what percentage of them do you love?
That number went down from 40, that's for fucking sure.
No, that's probably still about right.
That's close.
Close enough for government work.
For me, 32%.
32%.
Wow, you guys really got to pump your Sophie numbers up.
I don't know.
I feel fine about our fans.
You know, look, there's a lot of them.
And so some chunk of them are always going to be doing something weird and off-putting.
But usually when I encounter our fans, it's in the context of them like doing something nice that's helpful to people out in the world.
Like run into a lot of fans handing out food, run into a lot of fans being street medics, run into a lot of fans protesting genocide.
So I'm generally very positive towards our fans, especially the ones who are forklift certified.
You are really the ones that we do this for.
iHeart Fans and Lesby00:03:39
You know, whenever I close my eyes before sitting down to write an episode that I know is going to really take it out of me, I think of you guys driving your forklifts.
And, you know, that gives me the fuel I need to go on.
Bye.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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