Behind the Bastards - Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition
Aired: 2026-01-13
Duration: 42:04


=== Welcome to Behind the Bastards (02:34) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that: trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:36]  What's up, everyone?
[00:00:37]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:00:38]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:00:42]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:00:45]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:00:46]  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.
[00:00:53]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:00:56]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:01:03]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:01:05]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:01:06]  There's a lot of life.
[00:01:07]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:15]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:01:22]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:01:26]  I doctored the test once.
[00:01:27]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:01:32]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:01:34]  Greg Goespiece and Michael Mancini.
[00:01:37]  My mind was blown.
[00:01:38]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:01:40]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:01:41]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:01:43]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:01:47]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:55]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[00:01:58]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[00:01:59]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:02:01]  A shocking public murder.
[00:02:03]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:02:09]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[00:02:11]  Those are shots.
[00:02:13]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:02:15]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[00:02:19]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:30]  Cool zone media.

=== Mystery at City Hall (02:39) ===

[00:02:34]  Happy New Year, everybody.
[00:02:38]  Welcome to Behind the Bastards.
[00:02:40]  I'll be leading this episode.
[00:02:42]  I am your executive producer, Sophie Lichterman.
[00:02:45]  I'm going to ask Robert some of your questions.
[00:02:47]  Robert, how are you doing, buddy?
[00:02:49]  I'm doing.
[00:02:50]  You know, it's that fun time of the year where the holidays are over.
[00:02:55]  We still don't quite have to work, but also I can feel it coming.
[00:03:00]  The real world, having to get back into the real world, you know?
[00:03:04]  So that part's not great.
[00:03:06]  The like looming knowledge that the stuff that you were like, ah, the world's over.
[00:03:11]  News is over.
[00:03:12]  I don't have to pay attention to anything for the next period of time.
[00:03:16]  Well, that period of time has come to an end and it's time to re-engage with reality.
[00:03:20]  I'm at that part of the year.
[00:03:21]  So, you know, mixed.
[00:03:24]  Yeah.
[00:03:24]  What was a highlight for you over your semi-time off?
[00:03:30]  I don't know.
[00:03:31]  Not really any particular highlight.
[00:03:32]  I just didn't do much.
[00:03:34]  Excuse me.
[00:03:37]  We had a party.
[00:03:38]  Thank you.
[00:03:39]  And your highlight wasn't starting fire with the lightsaber torch I got you.
[00:03:43]  Yeah, you got me a lightsaber torch that I started a fire with.
[00:03:46]  That was fun.
[00:03:46]  You looked really cool.
[00:03:47]  You got me some nice liquor.
[00:03:48]  That was fun.
[00:03:49]  I did.
[00:03:50]  You looked very cool that night.
[00:03:52]  Yeah.
[00:03:52]  Robert got me every year.
[00:03:56]  Robert gets me some kind of really cool weapon.
[00:03:59]  At the beginning of 2025, he got me a bowie knife after I had surgery.
[00:04:04]  Everybody else sent flowers.
[00:04:06]  Not my business partner, Robert, got me a really cool axe one year, a machete.
[00:04:12]  What you called, Sophie, this is your purse knife, which was one of my favorite things you've ever said to me.
[00:04:16]  And this year.
[00:04:17]  Everyone needs a purse knife.
[00:04:18]  Yeah.
[00:04:18]  You got me this thing.
[00:04:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:21]  It's like a, it's a Moroccan like a ceremonial dagger.
[00:04:25]  So, you know, you're supposed to, it's like a, it's a, I think it's like 100 years old.
[00:04:28]  You're supposed to wear weddings and kind of fancy events like that.
[00:04:33]  I can do, I could stand and do some rehab on the blade for you.
[00:04:36]  Um, cool.
[00:04:37]  Because it's kind of dull at the moment.
[00:04:39]  But yeah, you could, you could cut, you could cut like a, like a, like a goat's throat with that if you had to, if you're being attacked by a goat and had to defend yourself with a knife, you know, it would work for that.
[00:04:48]  It's pretty cool.
[00:04:49]  You also, one year for my birthday, got me this like horseshoe knife that's like for like, that looks like a horseshoe, but it's for like a cheeseboard.
[00:04:59]  I get compliments on that all the time.
[00:05:02]  And I get that.
[00:05:02]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:03]  I like that knife.
[00:05:04]  Robert's a great gift giver, everybody.
[00:05:06]  Anyways, it's easy if you're just getting knives.
[00:05:08]  Yeah, but you know, nobody gives me a knife the way you give me a knife.
[00:05:11]  You know what I mean?
[00:05:13]  Thank you.

=== Truth vs AI Sources (07:12) ===

[00:05:14]  We got 481 comments on the thread asking for questions for this QA as of time of recording, which is New Year's Day, everyone.
[00:05:25]  I'm going to ask as many as we have time for.
[00:05:29]  You ready?
[00:05:31]  Let's do it.
[00:05:32]  Let me get a slug of my Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
[00:05:36]  Shut the fuck up.
[00:05:37]  That's what you're drinking.
[00:05:39]  Is it good?
[00:05:40]  I'm going to drink a free Baja Blast.
[00:05:41]  Do I need to drink that?
[00:05:42]  Because I've got a Schweps.
[00:05:44]  Is that how you say it?
[00:05:45]  I don't even know if that's how you say it.
[00:05:47]  Is that Schweps?
[00:05:49]  I've got a Schweppes.
[00:05:50]  Yeah, that sounds right.
[00:05:51]  I know what you're talking about.
[00:05:52]  That's a good ginger.
[00:05:53]  Wait, do I need to drink that?
[00:05:56]  I wouldn't recommend it.
[00:05:57]  It's not good.
[00:05:59]  Fair enough.
[00:06:00]  Unless you want to sponsor us, Mountain Dew, then.
[00:06:03]  Yeah, sure.
[00:06:03]  Then it's great.
[00:06:04]  Then we'll say whatever you want.
[00:06:06]  Anyways, what are your tips and tricks for identifying false information while doing your research?
[00:06:14]  Well, that's tough because there's such like a wide variety of false information, right?
[00:06:20]  And some, there's not really any basic tips that can help.
[00:06:23]  I call this like good natured disinformation or good natured bad information.
[00:06:28]  And it's no one's trying to propagandize you.
[00:06:30]  No one's trying to like fuck with you.
[00:06:32]  It's just a false version of reality has spread because somebody got a story wrong and started telling it.
[00:06:38]  And other people have been like retelling it and adding into it.
[00:06:42]  And if there's not like an agenda, that's kind of hard.
[00:06:45]  You just have to actually dig into like what the work historians have done.
[00:06:50]  I would say, as a general rule, if something sounds too good to be true, like if it's exactly what you want to believe about a really complicated and difficult situation, you should take a second look at it.
[00:07:02]  And if it just sounds like too cool and wacky and like something in a movie, like a lot of times that is true.
[00:07:08]  A lot of times history is crazier than anything that winds up in a movie.
[00:07:11]  But if there's like a specific anecdote that I'm like, I don't know, I'll just like type a description of that anecdote in and then I'll put in like ask historians Reddit or something like that to see if and that gets rid of the low-hanging fruit, right?
[00:07:26]  If it's common disinformation or a common just like inaccuracy that gets spread around, someone who knows their shit will have talked about it there and will have sources, right?
[00:07:37]  So you're not just relying on a Reddit post.
[00:07:39]  You can look back, you can find where the myth has been busted.
[00:07:42]  You can also just like type in, again, like a brief description of the anecdote, comma, myth, comma, you know, something like that to see if like it has been discussed in that context.
[00:07:53]  Or if there have been a lot of times what you'll find is historians who are analyzing it and who have found, okay, this, these couple of parts probably aren't true.
[00:08:01]  This part might be surprisingly true.
[00:08:02]  But like, that's, that's kind of how I go about doing that sort of thing.
[00:08:07]  If you're asking about like, how do you tell if like pictures or videos are AI generated?
[00:08:12]  That's a separate set of like skills and tactics that probably runs longer than we have in this episode.
[00:08:17]  But when I'm just like casually studying history and I come across something that I'm like, I don't know about that.
[00:08:24]  It's also useful when you are reading a history book, when you've like, especially like if it's kind of more in the pop history side of things and you're really enjoying it, that always, if it's super entertaining and I find myself like unusually into it, sometimes that's just a sign that like a really good writer got a hold of some history.
[00:08:43]  But it's also sometimes a sign that like someone's massaging the facts to make a better piece of pop history.
[00:08:50]  So I will search for the book and variations of like historians analyze response from a historian and see, are there some professionals who have better or equivalent credentials to the author who have taken issue with some of the claims that they've made, right?
[00:09:05]  These are all kind of like tactics that you can use.
[00:09:08]  There's not like a one size fits all.
[00:09:10]  And like how many sources are you using for different things?
[00:09:13]  I feel like never, never just accept one source.
[00:09:17]  You try not to accept one.
[00:09:18]  Every now and then you run into something where like, well, there's really one book about this guy or there's like one good book about this thing.
[00:09:25]  And I will at least try then to like come across like, well, what's some like untrue, what are some bad books?
[00:09:30]  Like what's some bullshit that got spread?
[00:09:32]  Because then at least we're broadening it from here's what's in that book to, and here's some stuff that spread that's not true or whatever.
[00:09:39]  Like you, you, you try to, like, when I'm at least putting together the podcast, I always want to be saying, like, okay, there's, there's more than is just in this one source.
[00:09:50]  Like when I was working on the nuke episodes, I started reading that Andy Jacobson book.
[00:09:53]  I realized that there's a number of people who have some good issues with that book, including some I discussed in the episode.
[00:09:59]  So I read two other books and I read that John Rubel's like, you know, essays and stuff because they provided like more context.
[00:10:09]  And when I looked at the stuff, okay, there's people who have like issues with this part of Jacobson's book, but they seem to speak highly of command and control.
[00:10:17]  So why don't I use, you know, for that segment of the history, I'll focus more on what command and control or what 15 minutes has to say.
[00:10:24]  And that way, number one, you're just, you're getting a more varied, you're giving the listeners, the audience, something more varied and effortful than just here's one book and what one guy said in one book.
[00:10:36]  And you're also hopefully avoiding some of like the most obvious pitfalls.
[00:10:41]  Sure.
[00:10:42]  And I mean, again, just to say the obvious, never trust the Google AI summary.
[00:10:48]  No, no, and you can always, when you're Googling now, if you just want to avoid that, just with whatever you're typing in, add minus AI at the end, just a space and then minus AI.
[00:10:59]  And it doesn't mean that there won't be AI generated articles or whatever in your responses.
[00:11:04]  That's basically impossible to avoid, but it cuts out the AI generated summary because that alone, sometimes it's right.
[00:11:10]  And when it's right, it's like fine, I guess.
[00:11:13]  But the downside is when it's right, you'll read that instead of reading an actual source that probably will tell you more.
[00:11:20]  And it's also hard to tell when it's wrong.
[00:11:22]  And there's often just kernels of wrong baked into the right.
[00:11:24]  And you're really doing yourself more of a favor by trying to find a better source.
[00:11:28]  So I find that just not having that little summary there can kind of like avoid you sort of casually almost acc because sometimes it's accidental.
[00:11:37]  Sometimes you can't, just the way your brain works, your eyes work, you're going to read part of that summary even before you scroll down.
[00:11:43]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:44]  Right.
[00:11:44]  Yeah.
[00:11:45]  Even if you are scrolling down to read a real thing, you may catch something in there and not realizing it, realize that you're picking up some disinformation.
[00:11:52]  So I kind of start with that.
[00:11:55]  Like that's my baseline.
[00:11:57]  I've also, you can do the same thing on DuckDuckGo, I think.
[00:12:02]  So I've been using that more.
[00:12:03]  I'm kind of experimenting.
[00:12:04]  I'm hoping to find this next year like a search engine solution that I'm happier with because nothing that we've got right now is better than Google was like six years ago.
[00:12:15]  But I found DuckDuckGo generally better than Google now.
[00:12:18]  And doing the minus AI thing gets you better, like, or at least reduces the odds of you getting some bad information.

=== Heavy Lift Efforts Explained (03:28) ===

[00:12:26]  Sure.
[00:12:28]  What bastard or bastards have you not done because the research will take too long or they're just too complicated?
[00:12:36]  I mean, I haven't done the Nixon episode yet because there's so many books that I know I need to get through to do it.
[00:12:42]  And that's only part of it.
[00:12:44]  I had been planning to do it in 2024 and talked about doing it with the dollop guys.
[00:12:50]  They were on board.
[00:12:50]  And my dad got sick and I just haven't gotten like, it's been a while now.
[00:12:55]  I should have gotten back into it.
[00:12:56]  I just kind of haven't because it's such a it's such a heavy lift.
[00:13:01]  Sure.
[00:13:02]  I haven't done Mao yet for the same reason.
[00:13:06]  You know, I do those heavy lifting episodes periodically throughout the year.
[00:13:10]  The nuke one was a heavy lift.
[00:13:12]  You know, there were a number of books involved in that.
[00:13:14]  Himmler was a heavy lift, a number of books involved in that.
[00:13:18]  Just as the Zizians was a heavy lift.
[00:13:21]  Several comments on Himmler.
[00:13:22]  People want more Himmler.
[00:13:24]  People always want more Himmler.
[00:13:25]  That's what everyone was saying when he died.
[00:13:29]  So like I'm trying, I try to do like at least every quarter, like a heavy lift effort, you know, longer episode, but there's a lot of those.
[00:13:37]  So I just, there's not like a particular reason other than I just didn't feel confident tackling that one at that time.
[00:13:43]  Sure.
[00:13:45]  This next one says, what are some unexpected commonalities between bastards other than grew up in poverty and had abusive parents slash guardians?
[00:13:55]  Yeah, I wouldn't even say, I mean, those are commonalities between a number of bastards from specific time periods, but they're not commonalities, I think, because having being poor or having like a household where, you know, you don't have both parents around is a common thing with bastards.
[00:14:13]  It just was really common for kids growing up in those time periods.
[00:14:17]  Like, is it, should we see it as significant that Hitler was poor and that his dad died when he was young and his mom died tragically when he was not a whole lot older and it really fucked him up?
[00:14:27]  But those were really normal experiences for just kids in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
[00:14:33]  Sickness and disease were a lot easier to, you know, just wipe out portions of your family and poverty of that sort was a lot more common.
[00:14:42]  So I think you're kind of like a misnomer if you're, if you're looking at that as like, and those are common traits of monsters, because even if we're looking at the Nazis, it was more common for the big Nazis to have been comfortable and of like what we might call at least like a middle class upbringing than it was for them to be as like poor and downtrodden as Hitler was.
[00:15:03]  And he really, you know, he had a very tough childhood, but I would say that's almost the exception more than it is the rule.
[00:15:11]  One of the big rules is a kind of, I mean, it's almost like too much to say, not even like a sense of megalomania, but a desperation to be somebody, to like be someone who matters in your society as like you see it.
[00:15:31]  And like this kind of desperate need to be attached to whatever group is in power, right?
[00:15:40]  It's this yearning to be close to power that I think often predicts a lot of like the worst people, like the folks who will do anything for their career to like improve the perception of their place in society.

=== Power and Human Cultures (14:19) ===

[00:15:55]  That's like the biggest warning sign I think that you see that somebody's going to do some really bad shit.
[00:16:02]  Let's go to a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more questions.
[00:16:12]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:16:16]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:16:19]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:16:22]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:16:25]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:16:29]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:16:31]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:16:33]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:16:35]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:16:40]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:16:42]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:16:44]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:16:46]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:16:48]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:16:50]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:16:52]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:16:57]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:16:59]  Trust me, babe.
[00:17:00]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:17:09]  What's up, everyone?
[00:17:10]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:17:11]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:17:19]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:17:22]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:17:26]  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.
[00:17:31]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:17:33]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:17:37]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:17:42]  Yeah.
[00:17:43]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:17:46]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:17:47]  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.
[00:17:55]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:17:58]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:18:05]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:18:07]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:18:08]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:18:10]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:18:20]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:18:21]  City Hall building.
[00:18:23]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:18:27]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:18:33]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:18:35]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:18:36]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:18:37]  July 2003.
[00:18:39]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:18:44]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:18:47]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:18:56]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:18:58]  A shocking public murder.
[00:19:00]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:19:02]  Those are shots.
[00:19:02]  Those are shots.
[00:19:03]  Get down.
[00:19:04]  A charismatic politician.
[00:19:05]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:19:08]  I still have a weapon.
[00:19:10]  And I could shoot you.
[00:19:13]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:19:15]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:19:18]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:19:19]  That may have been about sex.
[00:19:21]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:19:25]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:19:32]  I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:19:38]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:19:44]  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.
[00:19:51]  From power to parenthood.
[00:19:53]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:19:56]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:19:58]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:20:01]  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.
[00:20:05]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:20:12]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:20:14]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:20:21]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:20:22]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:20:25]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:20:38]  We're back.
[00:20:40]  All right.
[00:20:42]  So, Robert, what made you initially want to become a journalist?
[00:20:45]  Was there a specific journalist or publication that inspired you to take that path?
[00:20:50]  I mean, I remember as a kid during the Yugoslav Civil War and the, you know, the genocide in Bosnia, catching some news, like live news footage from Sarajevo and thinking that, like, wow, like, what a, like, what a, what an important, serious job.
[00:21:11]  Maybe I'll do something like that as an adult.
[00:21:13]  Like the, you know, the, the, the, the reporters on the ground that were talking about like what was happening in the city.
[00:21:17]  I remember thinking that like, that's, that's like something adults do.
[00:21:22]  That's a serious job for serious people.
[00:21:24]  Um, and so I, I definitely like, I, that's the first time I can remember thinking that like something in line with the career I wound up picking out sounded intriguing.
[00:21:37]  Um, and then I don't know, like as a an 18, 19 year old reading Trans Metropolitan for the first time, it's a comic book series with a journalist as a protagonist that's set in the in the far future.
[00:21:49]  It's very good.
[00:21:51]  Um, it's one of the best illustrated graphic novel series I think I've ever seen.
[00:21:55]  And I, I really, I still revisit it every couple of years.
[00:21:58]  That definitely like jazzed me up as a, as an adolescent, as a young adult.
[00:22:04]  Um, and then I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street.
[00:22:10]  You know, I was there at Zuccotti Park for a couple of days.
[00:22:13]  Um, I saw little bits of some of the regional ones, and I just was never happy with the coverage that was going on, either like the mainstream media coverage or the stuff that was really celebrated at the time, which was like a lot of the people who were like within the movement and kind of doing movement coverage of what was happening.
[00:22:30]  I mean, that's kind of where Tim Poole came out of, right?
[00:22:32]  Um, so I think maybe I was, maybe I was just could see that a problem was coming, but I was, I was not happy with what I was seeing.
[00:22:42]  And I was, I was becoming, as I became more, you know, in my early 20s, more acquainted with like history and particularly like the political history of Latin America and U.S. interactions in the Middle East.
[00:22:54]  I grew like more and more frustrated with the news, with what I still saw as this like really important job that I thought was being like kind of systemically done badly.
[00:23:04]  Um, I took when I was in college, I took courses on the Holocaust and remembrance that was about how the Holocaust has been covered in like movies and fiction, but also how the Holocaust was reported on at the time and afterwards.
[00:23:18]  Um, a lot of that stuff, by the way, made it into the episodes about how like the liberal media helped fascism get a foothold, you know, the last time.
[00:23:29]  So, really, since I was in kind of like 2021, I've been thinking about like the shortcomings of our media and how disastrous those shortcomings are.
[00:23:41]  And I still kind of fundamentally believe what I did as a kid, that it's like a really important job reporting on conflict, especially for serious people.
[00:23:48]  And there's just not a lot of them doing it.
[00:23:51]  You know, there are some great reporters, obviously, much better than me out there reporting on conflict.
[00:23:57]  But I think the bulk of what gets written about war and genocide and conflict around the world, including, you know, in the United States, protests and the like, is bad.
[00:24:08]  And I guess I became aware of that at a pretty young age.
[00:24:12]  Just made me think about when I was in college.
[00:24:15]  I took early on in college, I got approval to take a class.
[00:24:18]  I was a freshman.
[00:24:20]  Everyone else was a senior in the class, but the professor, for some reason, let me take it.
[00:24:24]  And it was a psychology of ethics class.
[00:24:27]  And I had to do this report that was like most of what I worked on that semester.
[00:24:32]  And it was all about, you know, the ethics of the insanity defense for mass shooters.
[00:24:38]  And it was right after the Aurora shooting, the movie theater Batman shooting.
[00:24:45]  And I think a lot of that really shaped the way that I thought about people, which I think impacts a lot of our work.
[00:24:55]  So I don't know, it just kind of takes like one class, I feel like sometimes it's just one, one, or one assignment really to like influence you creatively.
[00:25:07]  Yeah.
[00:25:07]  Yeah.
[00:25:08]  It is because when I think back on like my time in school, I can think I can, I can only really remember like one teacher, two teachers by name that I've had in like the whole 12 years.
[00:25:19]  Yeah.
[00:25:20]  But I remember moments, more than one, like three or four, but there's a, but I do, there are like some moments.
[00:25:26]  And really, for the most part, they were singular moments, like three or four of them that like were absolutely foundational to who I became, which is always interesting to me, the degree to which like both great, like school is just a complete blur.
[00:25:41]  Like I barely remember it.
[00:25:42]  And also I can point out like three or four moments where I'm like, well, that changed everything, you know?
[00:25:47]  Yeah.
[00:25:47]  I guess that's how it is sometimes.
[00:25:49]  It's definitely how it was for me.
[00:25:51]  Yeah.
[00:25:53]  There's several different questions that basically sum up to the same question from folks that they're asking, who's the oldest bastard in history?
[00:26:02]  The oldest bastard?
[00:26:03]  Like, I'm assuming they mean like chronologically, like the first bastard.
[00:26:08]  Yeah.
[00:26:09]  That was asked several different times.
[00:26:12]  I mean, we certainly don't know his name, right?
[00:26:15]  Like there, because here's the thing, and this is, because I've talked a lot, you know, about like something that gets that anarchists bring up quite frequently, which is how you had a lot of in prehistory among these hunter-gatherer tribes, a lot of like extremely egalitarian communities, right?
[00:26:35]  Particularly compared to like a lot of the settled cultures that followed them, right?
[00:26:40]  Where there were significantly more equality between men and women.
[00:26:44]  There were significantly flatter hierarchies, you know, a lot less power being invested in single individuals.
[00:26:50]  And I talked about in the manifesto episodes about like the that ikung ritual, like the shaming of the meat to like try and stop young men who are hunters from getting too big in ego because they think that hunting is all that matters, because it's like the cool, sexy job to have, right?
[00:27:08]  And if you're focusing on that, you're ignoring how, well, most of our calories come from people like gathering nuts and a lot of that work gets done by women.
[00:27:15]  And also people need clothes, people need tools, all of these things that are just as important as going out and killing a deer.
[00:27:20]  And in fact, necessary precursors that are a lot less sexy.
[00:27:23]  So if you let like the young hunter boys get, you know, a fucking ego about them because like, well, I'm the one who brought home the meat, then you're ignoring everyone else's contributions.
[00:27:34]  And that makes your whole community weaker, right?
[00:27:36]  And it creates the opportunity at least that one of those young men is going to lose their shit and bring terrible, terrible suffering onto the rest of the community, right?
[00:27:46]  But I think when we talk about that, we talk about all of these different sort of like rituals and like ceremony, like ceremonies and rules that different like societies adopted to deal with the problem of power to ensure that they had flatter hierarchies, right?
[00:28:03]  There's a tendency then to kind of forget something, which is that those were not, those were not part of those societies because they were more enlightened than modern people, or at least than the people that followed them.
[00:28:16]  It was not like, oh, we used to understand how to be good as a society, right?
[00:28:22]  Or as human beings, like we used to have better cultures, we used to be more ethical.
[00:28:26]  We used to treat each other better and we stopped.
[00:28:29]  I think it's more accurate to say like, well, all of those different like rules and practices are evidence of the fact that there's always been a problem with power in human cultures and that individual people taking too much power for themselves has always been a danger.
[00:28:46]  And our ancestors recognize that and have throughout the entire history of human events.
[00:28:51]  And some of cultures developed methods of dealing with it.
[00:28:56]  But ultimately, we have to assume all of those methods hit points of failure, right?
[00:29:00]  Because those cultures didn't last, right?
[00:29:03]  And they didn't beat out, in a lot of cases, the more stratified and hierarchical cultures that followed them.
[00:29:09]  And so while I think it's really valuable to look at here are solutions different cultures have proposed to the problem of power.
[00:29:17]  The fact that those they had to come up with so many different solutions is evidence of the fact that that problem is kind of universal, right?
[00:29:26]  And that hints at a long history of bastards, of individual assholes and cadres of assholes that have sought in every kind of society, including ancient hunter-gatherer societies, to try and take much more than their fair share from everybody else, right?
[00:29:42]  And so there's certainly a long prehistory of nameless bastards out there.
[00:29:46]  And I think it behooves us to remember that, both because I am one of those people who says we should be looking at what other older, different cultures developed as ways to deal with the problem of power without pretending that they definitely had it figured out.
[00:30:01]  Because again, none of that stuff lasted forever, right?
[00:30:05]  Right.
[00:30:06]  Let's take another quick break and be back with a couple more questions.

=== Remembering Nameless Bastards (11:50) ===

[00:30:14]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:30:18]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:30:21]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:30:24]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:30:28]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:30:32]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:30:33]  And in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:30:37]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:30:42]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:30:44]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:30:46]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:30:48]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:30:51]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:30:52]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:30:55]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:30:59]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:31:01]  Trust me, babe.
[00:31:02]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:31:12]  What's up, everyone?
[00:31:13]  I'm Ego Warden.
[00:31:14]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:31:21]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:31:23]  Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:31:28]  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.
[00:31:33]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:31:36]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:31:40]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:31:45]  Yeah.
[00:31:45]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:31:48]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:31:49]  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.
[00:31:58]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:32:00]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:32:06]  Just hang in there.
[00:32:08]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:32:09]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:32:10]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:32:12]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:32:22]  10-10 shots fired in the city hall building.
[00:32:25]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:32:29]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:32:35]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:32:37]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:32:40]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:32:46]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:32:49]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:32:58]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:33:00]  A shocking public murder.
[00:33:02]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:33:04]  Those are shots.
[00:33:05]  Those are shots.
[00:33:05]  Get down.
[00:33:06]  A charismatic politician.
[00:33:07]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:33:10]  I still have a weapon.
[00:33:12]  And I could shoot you.
[00:33:15]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:33:17]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:33:20]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:33:22]  That may have been about sex.
[00:33:24]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:33:27]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:33:34]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:33:40]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:33:44]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:33:50]  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.
[00:33:59]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:34:04]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:34:08]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:34:11]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:34:12]  That's so funny.
[00:34:14]  Sherry, stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:34:22]  Say you love me.
[00:34:25]  You know I.
[00:34:27]  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.
[00:34:38]  We're back.
[00:34:40]  Robert, do you listen to music while you write scripts for the pod?
[00:34:44]  Yeah, sometimes.
[00:34:45]  I used to do more.
[00:34:47]  I used to listen to more music while I was writing.
[00:34:49]  The last like year or so, I haven't done it as much.
[00:34:51]  I don't know why.
[00:34:52]  Do you have like a, they always ask NBA players, like, what, what's the song you listen to before game time?
[00:34:58]  Do you have a song you listen to before pod time?
[00:35:01]  I mean, not before recording a podcast.
[00:35:03]  I have like different bands that I listen to while I'm writing more often than others.
[00:35:10]  One place I used to go a lot is the white light mixes.
[00:35:13]  If you just type like white light mixes in, it's like a set of like hour, hour and a half long like mixes that are meant for people to like drive to.
[00:35:21]  I think that was the initial idea is that these are great for like road trips and stuff.
[00:35:25]  And so different DJs will do like an hour, hour and a half long set that you can kind of zone out to while you're driving.
[00:35:31]  I found them useful over the years for writing a lot.
[00:35:36]  And yeah, that's that's, I mean, I listen to, I do, I listen to a lot of like live bluegrass shows for whatever reason.
[00:35:45]  I find that helps me concentrate.
[00:35:47]  Last night, as I was working on what'll be some of the first episodes of 2025, I was listening to Green Sky Bluegrass at Red Rocks.
[00:35:56]  I'll listen to, you know, my Ska Streetlight while I'm writing.
[00:36:00]  But again, a lot of the last year, I haven't really been listening to much while writing.
[00:36:04]  And I don't really know why.
[00:36:05]  It comes and goes in waves.
[00:36:08]  Have you ever started an episode on someone commonly known to be a bastard only to realize you actually agreed with them or decided they weren't worthy of being a bastard?
[00:36:17]  I mean, like the Bo Brummel episodes.
[00:36:21]  I started thinking like, oh, this is the guy who like ruined men's fashion and did a lot of damage to the psyches of men for generations by locking people into these like, because that's how he gets portrayed a lot as he invented the suit and made men's fashion boring and made men scared to express themselves through clothing.
[00:36:39]  I don't actually think that's a fair summary of what Bo Brummel did in his life.
[00:36:43]  It certainly was not fair to his intent.
[00:36:45]  I think he was a much more sympathetic person than that.
[00:36:47]  But I also thought there's a lot of bastardry in that story because, I mean, just English culture during the period of time that he was alive was a fucking nightmare.
[00:36:56]  So I decided like, well, this is still good for an episode.
[00:37:01]  I have, there's been a couple of like times not really worth diving into where I've, I've heard like one story about someone that sucks, like a celebrity or whatever.
[00:37:10]  And I've looked into like, okay, can I get like an episode?
[00:37:13]  Or is this just somebody did something shitty once?
[00:37:16]  Katy Perry.
[00:37:18]  We talked about doing Katy Perry once.
[00:37:21]  That happened with a Katy Perry episode where I thought this, the whole thing with her and the nuns, there's this like controversy over this house she was buying.
[00:37:29]  It's not as bad as it seems.
[00:37:31]  Like, I don't, I'm not saying I go into bat for her as a good person, but I don't think she's an interesting subject for an episode.
[00:37:38]  For sure.
[00:37:38]  Right.
[00:37:38]  For sure.
[00:37:39]  Yeah.
[00:37:39]  It's not, it's less that like, I, I don't think I've ever had it like where, oh, no, this person's a hero.
[00:37:44]  Although I do find some things about Bo Brummel to be kind of admirable.
[00:37:47]  But it's more that like, ah, this person just is like a person who did some shitty stuff.
[00:37:52]  And that's not really a bastard, right?
[00:37:55]  Like we're not, we're not declaring someone a bastard just because they like had flaws and did bad.
[00:38:00]  We've all done bad things.
[00:38:02]  We're not all interesting to hear about for two hours.
[00:38:05]  Yeah.
[00:38:06]  Which bastard past or present would be the best podcast guest to cover a different horrible person?
[00:38:13]  Oh man.
[00:38:14]  I mean, honestly, I feel like if I, if he was alive, I would make fucking $50 million doing a podcast with L. Ron Hubbard where I just explain different cults to L. Ron Hubbard and he critiques them.
[00:38:28]  Like he explains, ah, no, this is where you fucked up.
[00:38:30]  This is where you rent a classic.
[00:38:33]  It would be the least responsible podcast of all time.
[00:38:36]  I would deserve to go to prison for making that show because it would just create a new generation of hyper-competent cult leaders.
[00:38:42]  But it would be super interesting.
[00:38:45]  Just getting LRH on the record, critiquing other cult leaders, because they're all worse than him.
[00:38:49]  He was the best at that.
[00:38:50]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:38:53]  All right, guys.
[00:38:54]  We'll be back on Thursday to answer more of your questions.
[00:38:57]  Any final thoughts, Robert?
[00:39:00]  You know, in the new year, fuck it.
[00:39:04]  I don't know.
[00:39:05]  Whatever it is to you, fuck it.
[00:39:07]  Cool.
[00:39:11]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[00:39:14]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:39:24]  Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.
[00:39:26]  New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
[00:39:29]  Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/slash at behind the bastards.
[00:39:36]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, They take matters into their own hands.
[00:39:45]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:39:47]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:39:49]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:39:51]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:39:56]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:39:57]  Trust me, babe.
[00:39:58]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:40:08]  What's up, everyone?
[00:40:09]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:40:10]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:40:14]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:40:17]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:40:18]  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.
[00:40:25]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:40:28]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:40:35]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:40:37]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:40:38]  There's a lot in life.
[00:40:39]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:40:47]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:40:54]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:40:58]  I doctored the test once.
[00:40:59]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:41:04]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:41:06]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
[00:41:09]  My mind was blown.
[00:41:10]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:41:12]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:41:13]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:41:15]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:41:19]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:41:27]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[00:41:29]  How could this ever happen in City Hall?
[00:41:31]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:41:33]  A shocking public murder.
[00:41:35]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:41:41]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[00:41:43]  Those are shots.
[00:41:45]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:41:47]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[00:41:50]  That may have been about sex.
[00:41:51]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:42:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:42:03]  Guaranteed human.