Hello friends, it's me again, Sept. So two, forty seven of the way I heard it, what are you laughing at Chuck? Why are you laughing ethic as seconds before you said this? You said we could also do it on Friday when I get back cause you're so busy, but listen Chuck, and I are both full disclosure and just a little stunned right now, because we just went through. Maybe The most fascinating conversation either of us have participated in a long long time with today's guess, the one and only Dan Carlin of Hard Currency, Dan Carlin, we're fans we fanboys out a little bit. There haven't him on the show so great to pick his brain. We got to talk in and we did something fans of the pond gas

recall the old catchphrase right, quick stories for the curious mind with a short attention span. Well, this podcast is over two and a half hours and I don't say that to frighten you. I say it so you can strap in because the conversation is really really good. Dan is, I think, the greatest fan of history ever and more informed than most history experts that I've met his podcast is enjoyed by many many millions of people he's widely credited with changing the podcast industry and making history accessible for people who otherwise don't care much about it. This conversation chuck, we can put it in two parts if you want, but I say we just let the whole thing play. I think you're right I mean it's enough content for two episode.

But why let people wait? No we're not going to make you wait we're going to give you the whole thing. You've got gotta pause button on your device. If you get tired, gotta go take a pee break, that's okay! Nobody's going to hold it against you, but I'm telling you this conversation is one of the best we've had our guest, Damn Carlin is on the short list of people that I really really really admire in this space he's awesome. He was, super generous with his time. I appreciate you being generous with yours, the, other side of the fourth wall is what we're calling this for reasons that I believe will soon be made evident, chuck final thoughts. Let us get to it, man, it's two and a half hours. Here we go folks, it's a good one, the other side of the fourth wall. This is chuck my old buddy from high school. I've known him forever

fantastic use, impersonating the producer, actually a pretty great job. Isn't it weird man has this happened to you where people you ve known for your whole life suddenly become like exponentially important. As time goes on like the people, you have known the longest. All of a sudden. I think it's the opposite for me. Actually I have a sister, you re ever lost contact in her life right and I know nobody from the old days I mean I feel, like I move through friend groups, know the answers. Now, let's finches, I don't I'm just thinking as a guy who doesn't have time do actual listen to your own podcast. You mean, after their done yeah. No, as a matter of fact, I would pull my hair out what's left of it. If I did, I would just hear all the things I would want to

x for change were visor and, as you probably know I mean you listened to it over and over and over again, not just before it's done, but in all the various identifications, You know there's a lot of cutting room floor stuff that, in my mind, is in that episode, but I just confuse the stuff that actually made it into the final version with all the crap that we cut out yeah. I remember walking into a bookstore, not long after of my book game. And taking it off the shelf and literally making changes in the book, I love that my wife said to me once the same thing I was in a bookstore and I was surprised to find my book there and she said you know you oughta just sign it. And write a bunch of things in the margins and all that. So that would be pretty funny. If you made some changes. Put your little initials inside it said. I hope this is okay with you. Whoever buys this book that's followed all the time, wouldn't it be great. If history were that simple right, you could pull the book off the shelf, get your yellow pen out circles, some stuff and say yeah upon,

The review? There was only one gunman I feel like people have that in history. You know you feel like people, many just change the past and we're gonna revise everything, and I mean Adolf Hitler, one, Second, world war. It would be a very different history book entry than it is now right, a man you're here, because we wouldn't be here without you, we forest Gump their way into the podcast space about six may be seven years ago, and you were the first example I can remember that I listened to- and I thought, okay, if that's possible, that lanes that level of thought that level of engagement, if that's possible, then shore, and so where such fans of everything you ve built and were such fans of history. As well- and I am now I'm not telling you anything you you haven't heard before from other people- you ve just left a huge impact on this industry,

but I want to tell you about a guy. You haven't heard of them Clark Bunting, who was one of my many bosses at the discovery channel and after the second season of dirty jobs. When I had to broken fingers a crack, rib I'd say staff my eyelashes and I'm pretty you sure I wasn't gonna make it through some long extended, run, I said Clark. What can I do here that doesn't involve me enduring this love of of weekly pain- and he said mike- if you can figure out a way to make history interesting for people who don't give a damn about history Then you will have a show for as long as you want. We ve tried to

Do that recently with some success, but you're the guy who's done it to a claim. So I promise not to suck up much more, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. You did what Clark Bunting challenged everyone to do in the nonfiction space and no one with the possible exception of James Burke Sixteen it yeah MIKE, I wanted to get it on the suck up hurry up as well. I need a minute or two to fan boy out just a little bit, because it was Joe Sierra shot out. The joy see her who used to work with us who said hey. You should check out hardcore history. It was a blueprint for Armageddon and I'd never heard a podcast before in my life, and I took the first episode and I looked at the time and it sit for hours and

one minutes- and I said, are you effing kidding me no way? I said oh I'll, listen to maybe ten minutes and get a feel for it, and I listened to it on the way home from Santa Monica that day from Work- and I got to my house- and I had my earphones in I got to my house- I walked in and I sat on my couch and listened to the very end of the first episode all four hours and the amazing thing for our listeners is that all there is is your voice. You know it's just you and it's more than enough, so I'm a big fan. I really dig what you do and that rocked our world. It totally did you guys. First of all, you don't know what that means to me, and you guys will understand this, but for any of your listeners that find themselves in the same situation that I find myself in two thousand five six, seven any of those areas where you dont know. If what you are doing is gonna work all of the advisers. You know that you have you my financial adviser, I swear to God every time I left the meeting with him. I know that they were rolling their eyes and have

conversations about me afterwards, like this poor, deluded fool and truthfully they had a pretty good chance of being right. My wife said to me once she said: do you feel triumphant or whenever we decided this was working? I said no, I just this sense of relief. You know that you weren't completely wrong and worked destroying your family's future, and so I mean for all of you out there listening that are in that same boat. I can't promise you it's ever going to get better, but the only way you ever get from here to there is going through that period where you're just like. Am I even doing the right thing so to hear you guys say that it's such a kick in the pants. Just to be honest in such a motivating thing- and I hope everybody listening understands- that I get all this credit from people like you, but there's so much of this. That is timing and luck, and I mean I looked back at it. I feel like I understand better how other people, where they are all european here in this or that

Maybe you are just at the right place at the right time and just the right skill set with nothing better to do I mean how often do we make decisions based on? I got nothing better go in and this right thank you. It's a huge relief to hear you guys say that and the relief never where's off. You know the history channel low bar You say- and I think I know what you mean by that, had they lived up to their tagline and you'll. Remember it where the past comes alive right, you say it really. Well too, or if I were doing my best and karl- and I would be talking like this- I would quote it and I would say where the past comes alive. There be the meters in the red for sure I love the way you do that. We'll talk about that too. But that's really the thing I mean today the history channel is Download H, that's their logo. It's an age!

and it might even be a lower case h at this point I dont know, but you ve brought the past alive and you ve done it as a fan, not as an expert and if you and I have anything in common aside from excellent taste and head where it's that dirty jobs was a study in managing expectations. Right and not an expert. I want to try it. I want to go and do my best. You brought that to history and wow Think me tell me if I'm wrong, but has positioning yourself as a fan of the past, enabled your brand to grow, to the extent that it has as a supposed to saying, take it from me dad

Ireland. I read a lot of books and I know well, it wasn't my idea to do this and it wasn't my idea to do this because, as a person with a simple ba in history, there's one thing a person like yours truly knows, and that's it I'm not a historian, I'm not uncovering new information, I'm a secondary source guy. Basically, on my mother in law, I was having a conversation at dinner. We were already doing that events podcast, which is just a variation of things I did on the radio- and she said you know, is one of those bloody stories over dinner and I have always theorize that this was a way to change the subject. But she said, if you ever thought about doing podcast about history- and I said I cant do upon cast about history s it I'm not qualified and just quick, ass lightning. She said I didn't know you had to be qualified or has a specific degrees to tell stories and that's when the light bulb went over all over my head. thought. Ok, it's about how you do it and you understand this better than any more rights in framing right and it allowed us to figure out

along the way, because you know, if you listened to the old shows you can hear like with most tv series, you know the development we get better at what we're doing we we discard elements that weren't working we so what ended up happening was you had to figure out how a person who is not an expert? Does this? You know without claiming to me these behead, you invent things. So one of the things we invented is something we call audio footnotes. You know, you'd said: why would you trust an Carlin which is a very good point, so we started to quote people who you could trust and then I realized well people disagree about this events. You have to quote multiple people and the audience was absolutely not that I can

just that there is of one mind a hive, mind kind of thing, but a lot of them didn't realize that it wasn't like math, two plus two equals four, that that you could have an MSNBC and Fox NEWS version of history. Right I mean the truth is as they used to tell us when I was a history. Student is how boring and terrible and historiography was going to be right, the process of how you do history, but that's what that is, and the audience loves that and most undergraduates are never exposed to that cause actually a graduate level element of history. So to answer your question: it wasn't my idea, my mother in law, thought of it, and then you have to unravel what it means to try to do is show I guess what I love about. Podcasting was it's a completely white space from a creative standpoint? You come from a very structured medium and I did in talk radio top of the hour news than you have a fifteen minute window? And then you have you no commercials and so your creative space using it

reset. Where you were you creative spaces, small, the first podcast we were doing common sense as it was just a rebranding of the radio things. So we, you're, not a way to turn the radio show into a pot cast but hark or history was the first thing we did with the full understanding of what a pod cost was and that we had this white space and that we could do anything and that listener feedback influenced. How developed over time, and so I can only take a minor amount of credit for this. It's a group effort started, My mother in law in the audience, has been helping us through the process. The whole way I mean Chuck, you must be by your tongue because I hold career started with a phone call from my mother right across the bay they are taking. That's what I was how funny, because my Grandad's, you know ninety and He was my idle my whole life and she calls to say you know: wouldn't it be great if before he died, he could turn the tv on and see you doing something that look like work. That's it

It's a phone call from your life changes like that, except it's not like that, it's only when you look back, and I d fi that moment at problem really I mean. I know you said the light bulb one off, but it wasn't it. Cooper, Nova right. It wasn't a son. It was a oh wait, a second, if I think about myself as a teller of stories. Instead of an arbiter of the truth. Now I've got more latitude than I thought it before the same thing with me, if I think of myself ass a guest instead of Us host or an apprentice instead of an expert. That's what I meant before when I said. Suddenly, the expectations are managed in a completely different way, and you know when I got into blueprint cause Chuck called after he got home he's like dude. You have to listen to this guy's doing

everything you're doing, except he's smarter than you and a little better, which is deeply deeply painful. But that's a relationship. I have a big white wrong, but I'm going to go that okay. Is that it's starting with the idea of defining yourself accurately? Are you a host or a guest? Are you an expert, or are you a fan, and once I realized that you were truly a fan of history? My next call was to my dad. He taught history in high school and I'm, like you know. I think we found a guy who's doing the same thing that Clark Bunting told me originally find a way in, and so I guess my question is: were you looking to do a thing that you really believed would appeal to the fat part of the bat or be honest, or were you just trying to amuse yourself? Because if you came out of talk, video. Then you came out of a hot massive rigour and a very

guinea lane. So when you talk about a big white space, man you're in it I'm just curious as to why. Well, on the radio when the Telecommunications ACT and ninety ninety six was passed, and this is insider baseball. But you go from a time when a company can only six or eight broadcast stations to the doors are completely thrown open and they could have a thousand and it went from six to eight MA and PA operation to one thousand overnight and Oliver We were working for giant corporations and we were cogs in a machine and- and you know the bane- the industry is consultants and the bane of a lot of industries, and this is not to say that there are not good ones, but the proportion of not good ones too good ones is hard. And especially when you know you ve been doing something for a while, and I came out of television news and moved into talk. Radio so came from a journalistic background and

what is happening is so you already have this confined area your workin within right and I didn't do. I was not a good talk. Radio show host the way that the station managers would have seen, and I was ways the are used to say the Martian in the day part I didn't fit with the people who came before me, a tough to sell advertising. Do I argued with the station managers, I've good night and day outside, you didn't pick us, and I still don't do this now- we're all Americans somehow we have to make this work and demonizing your fellow man or woman anyway. I can't make money off of that and feel good about myself, but the podcasting thing I mean I started a company with some bodies and we were all gonna create a company based on something we were calling amateur content at the time. So think. Ninety, ninety nine there's, no, you too there's no Itunes, but you can see on the horizon, that these tools we're gonna, make it so that there was going to be the ability for everybody to make stuff and me we didn't see Tik Tok specifically, but we knew it and we were going to venture capital firms and none of these guys were buying none of them.

by, and I was supposed to be in this company because it was eight founders. I was gonna, be the example because people literally We needed to see a physical example of what does it look like when sir Joe Small, is doing so. thing on a podcast and there was no day podcast wasn't a name yes, so I was the example boy and my dad had a great line once he said. If you wanted to do a dot to dot and connect your life's progress, he says you could never do that, cause, there's no straight lines. There's all these left turns it Albuquerque that you never could have foreseen, and that's what I tried to tell people all the time because I'll, say I'm on this terrible path, and I say you'd be surprised how quickly that path can change. Your mother in law can have a great idea right or your mom could call you events dear boy events, yes exactly, and so from a creative standpoint, when you were as

and strained. As I was at the end of my tenure, this looked like an escape hatch creatively. Yeah was it I think full of what I did was convert, and everybody should do this if they can convert what I was doing in my private life. To my public life, I mean that I read this stuff for fun, So now I'm just doing it and it has a greater purpose not everybody needs it, but most people who you need it don't have it and most people who do have it don't have enough of it and most people who you have enough of it are paying way too much for it talking about life insurance, and I'm delighted to tell you that we'll see genius could save you fifty per cent or more on the life insurance. You need couldn't be simpler. Folks, you got a policy genius, dot com, the answer, a few basic questions and then you start comparing personalized quotes from top companies.

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I mean seriously, do people look to you and part of this is a compliment because you take the research super seriously and that's a point worth making. So much of this podcast cast Landy that we inhabit is but I do it's talking that's kind of what's happening on a jealous and that by the way you have a big show at the end of three hours. You know that's right mean it's a hell of a thing talks Rogan about that. It's a mosaic, its quilt, but when it really comes down at the short strokes you dont sheet, like there, actually something really really truly there with you. You care deeply and I may be made it small before I said? Are you trying to enrich your audience? Where are you trying to amuse yourself or is there even a difference between the two You use this blank space when you use this medium to scratch. What itches and turn your avocation into a vocation.

I honestly can't tell sometimes who you're doing it for, and I mean that as a compliment It's the same thing when I see a great comic, my favorite com external trying to make me laugh, Trying to amuse themselves and so Your curiosity is both inward and outward. I think, that's also a part of why everybody kind of looks at you and mutters things in hushed tones, oh yeah, that's what Dan Carlin would do and I'm telling him and they do. I appreciate the self deprecation, but you gotta understand you occupy a very unique space in the culture right now. Thank you. I don't always know how to respond to that. But, like I said, I'm just relieved, my children don't understand what anybody wants to hear anything from my mouth ever. But let me back up to where you work, as I don't think it's so positive. I might be more of a negative reinforcement than a positive reinforcement person we had talked earlier about the development of the shows, and so much of the development is based on anger.

Frustration at not doing a better job. And always wanting to improve, so that I'm not angry. With myself ass, I mean I used to get off the radio, sometimes or even before that I remember several nights of coming out after the evening news where my peace had run and just looking but the night sky and going oh, my god. I can't stand this. You know because it wasn t just you want to do a better job and feel like I'm, always striving to avoid the negative feelings afterwards of doing something. We you just. How can I make a mistake like that? you know so any time. There is anything like that. The goal is to not do that again, and this is an artistic problem that goes back to forever right. The idea that if you do something good, the people,

Now that becomes the sea grade now. The next thing has to be equally that good or somehow you fall and right. If the next song is number one butts number two you're on your way down. So there's this constant need it, and this is just a typical artist thing to try to match what you ve done before, at least as good and then hopefully try to exceed that. So I feel the same. pressure. We all do right, yeah. Is there somebody in your universe, the kind of whispers in your ear like the old emperors? You aren't, but a man right. My wife tells me that It keeps me humble at home, I'm not going to lie to you guys. I sometimes I have to say to them. You know people recognize me every now and then you know you could treat me a little better around here. What I do have sometimes, as you mentioned James Burke specifically earlier, I look at the people that we drew up with watching on television out, even mean James burn. You can name fifty people in fifty different disciplines in the era of black and white television, where they're all smoking in, and they may have thought that that was low,

our conversation then, but it looks like Harvard and Yale stuff now right away. I feel like we're going back to some of that in the sense that broadcasting is broad casting right, and I used to say- and this is what I used to say in those venture capital meetings back in the old days- that this is narrow, casting but narrow, casting didn't use to be worth any money, because that just meant a few people were watching what you did. But this is narrow casting to a potential global audience and if you're only appealing to point: oh, oh, oh, two percent of a slice of the demographic pie that can still be a lot of human beings, and so it makes a narrow casting viable does not make sense well, because narrow is deep and broad is civic, so we can talk about the spanish language. Nineteen fifty science fiction, comic books and they'll, be a market for that globally and a passionate market and engage

aged Mart, yes, cause you're the only one given it to them and they never get specifically targeted like that. That's right and that's where enthusiasm comes from enough for passion comes for us and that term broadcasting. You know it's a farming term right. No, yes, tell me about AIDS. Broadcasting came about to describe the technique that was used when you basically would plough the field and then just walk around with a handful of seeds and just throw them and that's what you called it broadcast. How did the term somehow get applied to media same way shallow but why'd, you hit a lot of people when you broadcast was like shooting with a shotgun you'll hit a lot, you'll kill anything or you don't kill money your shooting, with by one of those and fields right, the first time they came into existence, you gotta how it sir you're hitting a very, very specific target but

are murdering it every time, and so it's a very, very different way to plant and it's a very different way to communicate. And you know there is some space and between for sure, but like prevails today. It seems to me that those styles of communication, if become kind of an area, and you can tell pretty quick who you can go deep with an gonna stay on the surface with, and that's the compliment that I met to pay earlier. You have a podcast and now we're in this world. That's very podcasting has become wide and it's become a little surface either two and a half million people. Don't pod, guess that's crazy to your badge I mean no but you're shooting with a high powered rifle, and I think I said this to you chuck it's like you talk a lot about war. We talk a lot about tactics and we talk a lot about technologies and what happens when those two things? Don't

keep a pace, and you have scenes like we had in Shiloh, where suddenly you've got six guys lying dead in a cornfield all killed with the same bullet, because they were marching and align the way they would a March two hundred years ago, without any compensation for the fact that now their marching into not Musket fire, but something very, very different, That strikes me as somehow germane to the way we talk in the way we present ideas and it certainly a big theme in blueprint boys. The same thing right. You got people writing it on horses, dressed up in their fancy. Colors, basically, fighting like they thought Napoleon was still calling the shots with air. Craft over their heads out of my mind, the opportunity that I have here and hopefully the audience, won't care, but we get called a lot from various tv outlets in a ton of the boutique production companies. There seem to be as many of those as there are pod castors these days, who all want to translate kind of what we're doing

wood tv form or so- and you know you follow a couple of these down the road and there's a lot of effort and wasted time and then eventually, you figure out. At least I figured out in the opportunities that presented themselves to me that there was no way we could do this without becoming one all the things. In other words, we were going to turn into them. They weren't gonna, turn into honest. What do you think it's possible to take the kind of stuff that you do and that a lot of other pod casters do utilizing the freedom of the media right. Do you think it's possible to translate that into the more standard forms of media that we Normally consume, come what I do be a television show no, but what you do can be on tv, interesting distinction it's kind of happening right now. The business of podcasting is our best hope of having a long form unstructured, meaningful conversation. The next logical thing to do with that is to record it and put that

somewhere and, of course that's happened. That's what you to bear at visuals things like thou timing. Yes, but it's baby steps right. It's just the Tipp right, let's just start with three goods on a screen, while still call it the podcast and will still listen to their conversation, but let's create a place where we can watch them and be a fly on the wall. The next step. That's the part of the map that says you're be dragons. That's what Clark Bunting It's talking about figure out a way to deliver the same level of passion, engagement and nourishment that Dan Carlin does with hardcore and turn it into a show. It seems so simple, but you're running headlong you're, like the guy climbing out of the trench, filled with the corpses running across no man's land crawling across the barbed wire and trying to make it big.

as all of the obstacles in your way is just the brute realities of the business, the advertisers, the t, r t your total running time, the size of the act, the mandatory break the product integrations Nielson. I live in that World Ryan. I found a way to try and navigate in a way that you know leaves me solvent and satisfied your fundamentally in this other world. And I'm so interested by the fact that the podcast world and the broad cast world sooner or later are going to couple and have some unholy union- and I don't quite know what the spawn will look like- that runs a muck as a result of that coupling. But if I were to wear Europe. I bet you and I are gonna, be in or around it it's coming. I just don't know quite what it looks like,

let me share a story with you about one of these attempts that I made where we went pre far down the road right. We were guesses, oriels, all that kind of stuff right and the reason that I went farther with this group than any others, because they gave me the dreaded assurance that I would be able to do things. The way I wanted to do it right and this is first of all, I'm spoiled rotten. Let's understand, I am the creative staff. Yet right, I don't have to do with creativity by committee. In other words, I was tell people the creativity by committee is not a bad thing per say. But it's like a blended whisky. I am a single malt whisky, whereas you may hate what I taste like, but it'll be something very distinctive, the two things that happened when we went on this attempt at morphing. What I do into a television show. The first thing was the creativity by committee instantly reared its ugly head and it was always with the suggestion. You know with the airports a suggestion, but then the next thing was the way that I tried to bring one I do into this story, was to take a historical event. This is you,

ago. So, if the people who were with me on this are watching this, we were gonna just for this is a real look at the late sixties, early nineteenth seventys, the new left with bombings in the weather, underground and all that stuff. What I wanted to do, because I can't stand things like that recreations all the ways they have to fill. When you don't have footage, so we shot creations in the spine of the story which we usually have in the hardware history podcast to theirs. Least one sometimes multiple themes that run underneath it, and in this case the theme, that was running, underneath it is what if we had had the modern twenty first centuries tight terror laws and the capabilities that we have now. But we were used in them back then? So we had somebody rest up in an american flag. T shirt with Abbe Hoffman type, hair being water boarded by Hoover's people were shot. all these things

and they showed them to the test audiences in the outlet that was going to run them, and they say we can't show this in multiple parts of the country. I mean there's whole groups of people who will be completely offended by, but the whole point was to blend the historical tail, with the ramifications that might come into play. Now the twilight Zone side of the history that we like to focus on, but that's a perfect example of how we were trying to create a single malt whisky. Very a show and they Tell me right now, some of those flavors we're too harsh and wind appeal to this demographic. In other words, the broadcasting thing got in the way again because if it appeals to the people in this state, but not the people in this state, you're doomed, and so I follow these opportunities, far less often that I use do when they seemed novel and interesting unbelievable these days. They just look at like wastes of time. I think to me what thoughts on that you're in that world. As you said well, the head

lines, as I said before, will catch up to you and the technology will catch up to the content, and sometimes the content has to catch up with the technology, but here's how hard it is to do the thing you ve just described because it's the very thing that chalk and I wanted to do now- we did it. It was called six degrees it was a straight up, oh that by the way. Yes, ok, so you will appreciate the approach to the reenactments because we're in a world where Ridley Scott we'll be hired by the history channel to recreate Gettysburg. What you're gonna get in that recreation is the very best cinematic look at that day in history. That's imaginable, you're, going

to get the best actors, you can find you're going to have the best sound design. There is you're, gonna cut no corners and it's going to be as good as it can possibly be. How do you compete with that? The only way to compete with that is to completely take the piss out of it, which is why Chuck played thirty five characters in six degrees, bad, wigs, suspicious, costumes, curious accents. We not only cheap doubt we aggressively cheap that we leaned into it yeah, but that's just the beginning Dan. We also threw animation at it. We threw cheap graphics. I walk through the scene in much the way Burke did back in nineteen. Seventy eight with connections but then it's the business of convincing the network to put it on, now they say they want to make history fun. They say that want to make it accessible and everybody kind of genuflect when you invoke James Burke's name, but here you have a modern day. Take on that very thing that very notion of can

actions and the scepticism is still high in the brick wall is still there. I had to go to the energy industry. I had to find a sponsor wife, this thing- and I dare you had to yes me, I found a sponsor who had millions of dollars who loved the fact that we were trying to make the case. They were all connected and they also loves the fact that, as I am sure you know very well, the impact of energy on world events can't be overstated, so they, loved it. So now now I go to the network. I've got the money. I've got a sponsor. I've got an idea. I got my buddy wearing bad wigs but I also have a pretty smart show that can make a pretty conceivable case that a horseshoe can help. You find your soul, mate and I'll walk you through all those steps over the course of an hour. That's there James Burka and yes, it's totally Bergen.

and by the way there are no new ideas right dirty jobs is very George plumped install that great line with me once he was talking about, because I had said that I was gripped him off and he had said that he, they had a professor tell him once when he D apologized for doing something similar in the professors. At my dear boy, where do you think ideas come from We steal them out with somebody else had them we found them. It occurs. To me and I'm thinking on the fly here, never smart thing to do, but that maybe what you're talking about when you talk about it coming and a way to imagine that old industry, a broadcasting somehow embracing a more narrow, deep dive. Could the streaming services or the streaming outlets that these made. broadcasters are employing is almost a parallel distribution system for their content. Could something like that may be bridge the gap. It's gotta be part of it. Today, as we speak on this Friday, my boss, one of them David's ass,

who runs the discovery. Channel has literally swallowed a basketball we'll make that figuratively Jaska say do you really know really me? That's a tick tock video right there, that's a living again! I dont know how do you get it here? That's a basketball. His company founded my old friend, John Hendricks in a garage just bought Timor. These two giant companies are coming together today in, what's going to prove to be the most consequential merger, I think in the history of media. What is that going to mean for what we're talking about I'm not sure, but it's going to be part of it. I'm thinking more along the lines of what happens when you take a couple of cameras, lock them down and film a play right. A play couldn't be simpler, but I stumbled.

Cross this very thing not too long ago and found myself completely riveted to the tv, because it wasn't quite the theatrical experience, but it wasn't anything. I was accustomed to seeing on that particular sixty inch screen, and so it combined these two very familiar elements with an existing technology and reminded me that sometimes it simply impossible to improve upon the simplicity of a given experience. The theatrical experience is a big deal and I want to ask you to about the theatre of the mind, because this whole notion of trying to bring to life your podcast is something we are exploring too, but its risk because your basically saying hey, I can show you something that's going to be more interesting. And the thing your imagination can create

and I'm not so sure, that's not a suckers bet. You know, I wonder if these things don't go in cycles, so the theatre, the mine thing, for example, I remember having a conversation about how we were gonna go back. he was gonna seem like reinvention to a bunch of younger people, but we were gonna, go back and rediscover techniques that they do. Need any more once they provided the visuals right in. I remember my mom was working in London when I was a kid, so we had to go from Nineteen, seventy one LOS Angeles to nineteen, seventy one, London and I'm a kid right. So the first thing, a kid notices nineteen seventy one. London is you go from having a bunch television stations to BBC Wan and BBC to write and their problems. both showing classical music performances and my other. There had a great line, though she goes. If you grew up watching. This as opposed to the Saturday morning, cartoons I was watching. You would develop an appreciation for

but I'm almost wondering if there is the opposite, where, if you are devoid of something for a long time that you don't even know how much you might like something like a long form podcast or in other words it becomes novel cause you d, see at the simple rarity of encountering. It creates an interest that otherwise we would be Plaza about. So a generation raised on Tik, Tok and Instagram and all these kinds of short form offerings. I wonder, and I am always told that they ve lost the ability to appreciate it, but might it be a hundred and eighty degrees different mighty create an appetite simply because here. We have something new for you, but it's not really knew right. We got that once upon a time, but if new to them look Chuck, would you say about a joke, no such thing as an old joke. If you ve never heard it before right. That translates pretty nicely Sanna right. Those who don't learn from are doomed to repeat

People look around today and they just can understand how we could possibly be in the same situation that we were in a generation or to or five or ten or fifty. We all have to discover the joke or the thing or thy history in our own way. Yeah. That's all just a long way of saying my crystal ball is cloudy too, but I'm pretty certain that some mix of tactics and techniques and new discoveries and old chestnuts all that stuff still matters today as it pushes forward into whatever's next. I dont know that I want you taking hard core history and making it more accessible and broadcast. Where I dont know it's the joy of discovering something.

as opposed to having it blasted out to you. It's the difference between buying a thing you find in love, being sold, something simply because you were walking down the thoroughfare of a souk where a farmers market or a mall, it's different. We got to find you, and that was part of what was special. What do you do? It was assenting with dirty jobs, but it was like a little secret. Nobody was promoting it. It was just kind of out there and there was this and then it got big, and then I became a cell and then I had. I took the failure of our way before dirty job. That's do you know? This is actually a great point, because when I mentioned earlier that I was not a very good talk. Radio show host and part of it was because the sound so weird and not a phrase this and I'm not gonna, put on an act right

they used to scream at me about not creating enough controversy and heat was the word that they liked at the time were heat because he creating cage meant in heat, makes people come back for more and I didn't have a problem with creating real heat, but it was the artificial stuff right that was the problem, and so I feel like there's an often tissue to that allowed to maintain, because I don't have to meet with the promotion staff and boil down what we do to seven or eight agitate. that can be used to guide us down. Who's gonna write a promotional campaign about mean we don't have any of that, now what that means is we have no choice but to be discovered. Serendipitous Lee right, I tell you this is how long I've been podcasting in about two thousand six, two thousand seven, seven and we'd already been doing in a couple of years. I was trying to figure out how we could get the word out that there was anything even being offered by MR

called a hundred radio stations and I wasn't stupid. I didn't call radio stations in New York and allay I called public radio stations and, like North out and no one would put us on so then I bought a package of ads in college newspapers around the country, hoping that at least kids are technically savvy. They'll know nothing worked, and yet, if they told me all, listen if you'll just boil down your show to seven or eight pithy adjectives. You know, will it ever. I probably would have taken that deal once upon a time when we just needed listeners now, I feel like it's, this wonderful luxury. We have that we can afford to be authentic. because we ve reached some level of critical mass where MIKE rose having us on his podcast, you know but selling. might have been an option years ago, but nobody was buying and now I'm in a position where I don't have to sell out, because we managed to wear

the storm long enough to still be here, I guess we'll. The thing that I wanted to say to you dad is that I believe that the people horse common and sniffing around your podcast try to turn it into a tv show they need you more than you need them. Finally, you doing what you want, you being the creative. You know eight hundred pound guerrilla, that you are, you can do whatever you want now you ve got the platform to do it. You don't necessarily need their platform. They will try to turn it into something different. I'm glad you say that because half the time I scold myself for being lazy for not pursuing or of these potential has because now they write all the time, because there's this like dearth of content or something must explain it, but in the old days I used to feel bad if I didn't at least pursue some of these things now. I feel like as you guys know better than I do it's a zero sum game. You only have so much time so much energy, and at this point the aid, propound guerrilla allows me to say you know what the smart move here.

Is actually not following these tv opportunities, are you know, because that's luxury everyone. How do you know me? That's the fortunate place we find ourselves in now and remember to the gorilla. wasn't always eight hundred pounds now right at these spent a lot of time at fifty sixty band and weight than it is a hundred, then too, then three so there are a lot of animal kingdom metaphors here, but the frog in the boiling water is also a good one. You just wake up one day and look around and say only crap, it's hot in here. How did that happen a little bit at a time? So now you're, you know you're a big deal do but how much of this is timing. So, if Dan Carlin is in the same position, nineteen, seventy eight, no, I mean what am I doing, Xerox in news letters and putting them under people's win she'll wipers at the supermarket right? Will you, maybe maybe, but if you are you're, making it interesting you're dead

doing it in a way that the other guy didn't do. If you are who you are back, then you're still looking for the reverse, commute you're still looking for a way to be a jagged little bill, you're still looking for a way to do the thing that other people are, doing in a way that either amuses you or that's more efficacious, that's who you want to say, I hope you're right, that I would like to think that that's the truth. Yes, I would hope so all right. Well then, how about this way you you talked about heat languages. It fascinates me. It is so important and the difference between heat and light. If the distinction that I think a lot of people, miss they're easy to confuse. But I look at heat, not just as conflict, but as meaning as meat on the bone lights, easy light, you just shine it wherever it is, and you can look at a thing. People are always at

two different things at different times. The gorilla is never the same weight throughout the course of his life. Everything is always shifting, always changing, and that is the reality of the industry wherein, but it kind of feels tools, It's the reality of the topic that made you famous. This is what history is and by the way I said this to chuck years ago to your podcast could be called the way I heard it. Mine could not be called hard core history because is that the way you ve taken in so many different versions of what we think the past might be and woven together into something that feels persuasive that's talent, man, that's not slip and a flyer under a windshield wiper, that's a much more complicated trick. If you ever wanted to change, the name of the way I heard you can have, I find you like TAT, Herodotus could have entitled is histories the way I heard it out work perfectly,

It reminds me of what I was saying to you earlier the whole gratitude thing. I wonder you know I was a theatre major for my first two years and and I remember when I really sort of his family thing, and I thought two years into what I never like reading anybody else's words So I did a lot of improv, but I always had a hard time when I never wanted to read anybody else's words, so our number one. I shifted to history, which had been a lifelong interest. It was the most natural thing to do that. I remember thinking damn I just wasted two years, a college right. I just wasted all that time and shifted to history, with an emphasis on like ancient and military in all these kinds of things, so that you find yourself in a position which is my dad said you never could have connected the dots at the end of your life on how you got there and all of a sudden, I'm using the theatre and the military in an ancient history every day in my job, in a job that didn't exist when I was in college, you too, you couldn't even said well, maybe I'll go into podcasting and figure out a way to make it all work and yet there,

you are right. None of the tools that you'd been taught that all theatre them and with radio that's all stuff that I ended up using and so with my kids, one of them's in college. The there's gonna go to college soon I tried to teach them the same thing. That look. Don't worry about this if you feel like you're wasting your time, does they I feel like you need to be in whatever you're going to be in, if you're going to be an accountant for a living, you better be an accounting school and I just keep telling None of this will be wasted somehow some way this is all going to be stuff. You can repurpose and weave into some story, and so when you say you know that that's kind of what we do I don't know how all these influences came to be, but I use them all the time it's like they. It makes you, as I always tell my kids, a more formidable person that more formidable version of yourself, and so I mean I feel like measure sang, I mean the luxury of being able to make a living weaving these things that I both would do on my free time anyway.

If you have a job, you love right away, but also I mean learning how to deal with time, codes and editing and all this stuff. You learn when you're in the news business right I mean I use all those frickin skills and I can't imagine how it just worked out. I mean I've. A very fortunate person is what I always say I got a lotta deliveries to my house. These days, boxes and packages filled with all manner of things, but there's only one box. I look forward to obey every month like a kid on Christmas morning. That would be my butcher box, but your box is a subscription service that takes all the guess, work out of high quality meat. No more urging the grocery store for one hundred percent grass FED beef or free range, organic, chicken or wild caught. See food or any of my other preferred prose. Now, every month now Butcher box ships me a curated selection of high quality meat right to my house. Sometimes

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Slash row, a a Na Sads ride, butcher box, dot com, slash row, I'm going to shift gears a little bit and just talk about some of the stuff enough about this. Yes, exactly shift gears, please our audience really enjoy Is this because peeling back, the layers of the union are always kind of fun, but going back to blueprint? Actually, maybe we should go forward from that to war remains because that virtual experience. I want to hear more about why you did that. I want people to understand what it is where they can go to experience it because, if the history channel again is to be taken seriously for anything, it's for their logo

where the past comes alive, if you're going to bring the western front to life with virtual reality. As it looks like you have, then you may eclipse John Carpenter and all the other, a horror showgirl, because this this could potentially be the thing that really new taxes people think about war for real. It was a very interesting experience, but let's give credit where credit is due. I had not when put on Vieira goggles or anything and then one day It's not a name, dropping thing. This is a credit where credit is due thing. I was with Rick Reuben the music producer, who somehow knows every Craig It is out, let's go, and I don't know he's on the hours in the day for this guy to be informed as he is and he said one day I want to show you something, and he took me overdue. The house of one of these Oji guys Inv, are who put the headset on for the first time.

And I walked out there with my mind just pinging, because the guy was a filmmaker too he's. Not a computer guy he's more film maker who sees this as a new way to shoot movies and he was trying to explain to me the different ways that this would impact movie. So, for example, he was saying from an intellectual property standpoint. You can go redo most of your favorite found them. How many mutiny on the boundaries of they done right. Well, though, We are one in the future. He was explained to me from a Alfred Hitchcock Perspective how a person was doing. A vcr movie would have to do things differently than a film directory says the murderers, top of the stairs and they're coming down. The stairs were in the movie you pan to their, but in the Vienna thing you have to have a noise that if you turn and look so it was all these intricate things about movie making through this different lands, and so I walk out of that get together and my head is pinging about all the different things that you could do with this I was thinking about it. I mean normally in the old days you would have had to have a giant tell

vision, network or a movie or universal studios or whatever, to partner what to do this, and then you run into all the things we ve already talked about creativity by committee broadcasting, all these kinds of things, but with this it was an early enough industry so that when somebody said to me later, what would you do if you could do thing in virtual reality and I said a time machine, which is what I do talk about my show anyway. So then we started talk, about well. Where would you go and what would you do and- and so we toned this down into an idea where I've always imagined- and you guys know this. If you've heard me where the worst place to be in the world on any given day might be, that was one of tv ideas to the worst place in the world and I always came back to being stuck on the western front in the first World war, especially later into the war. When you ve got the remains of the earlier part of the war all around you and your living amongst it, and so that

Tell the idea came to be in a company called Mw M. Were the people behind this who said fine we'll make it happen, and then at one point this got so hard to do right that we brought in some real experts the guys at Skywalker allow over near you and all these people together we had to sit down and- and ask how it is you create a negative human experience in a way that makes you wonder, we experience it, The lion was between how far you could go. It's it's a weird line because normally you don't have to consider the store cool realities of the dead, but in this case, with It would be an insult if you made something like this, not horrific enough write them in the p will that died in this war and suffered. I mean you have a fidelity to their experience that you have to create, but at the same time you also can't make them death from the sound

explosions, even though a lot of them came home from the war with hearing problems right at one point, we were playing with the idea of a certain or a series of buttons right at the start of the experience which you walk through its part. We are in part old fashioned, haunted house in the sense that you see barbed wire and headsets there's barbed wire there to touch right. We were trying to figure out. Maybe you can have a series of buttons at the beginning that let you picked how intend she wanted to be. So if you wanted to be more gory and and- and you could do that eventually, of course can't then it becomes its own form of the broadcast problem right where there's a problem with even trying to create something. It's entertaining out of this right. So if you can I'm out of it and want to do it again. Is that a personal victory for us or personal defeat so it was, as you know, it has and must get back to you shortly, brought it to allay to just show it off to a few people a while back, and it was one of those invitation, only kind of deals and

we're fooling around and one of the producers said. How do you feel about smells? said, smells he's Well, I found any, and it's almost like finding some sort of weird guy deals in like exotic animal, Cases are tasks or something in it goes well. He works in these. Two things, and they have all these special aerosol cans of like corpse smell, when this moment and I said I don't know so we have these fans as part of the exhibit. So he was spreading this stuff for the view IP, is just to test it out. Was over the line. You know when we talk about where's that and it was over the line but intense. your question: this was something that sounded like the kind of thing. I would like to do myself, which is my current best mark for whether or not I do something and the thinking about it because from my standpoint It's not long enough to know what we if charging money for this, I would want to make it. You know an hour long, something where you really get your money's worth and they were saying an hour long would traumatize people we had people die.

being out of this thing. There's a scene in a hot air balloon, that's one of the parts of it not to give anything away, and we had people jump and out of the exhibit they're just because of a height thing, but I found A fascinating example of the medium and I've been thinking. Often ever since then. Ok, what would you do next? and if you were gonna take what you learned. What would be the next thing, so currently on display at the World WAR one museum in Kansas City right now. If anybody wants to go you have answered your earlier question. I'm fumbling around trying to describe a future where technology and tactics and advertising and all of these things come together in a way that makes a creative person go hey what if well, maybe it's we are or something like it. Maybe your act, really on the Tipp of that spear. When you just don't know it will see. Why did I just imagine a product placement add in agenda cons. Hmong goals are running down the street, murdering people, but there's a coke can over

corner in the window. Sill, as you pass by me, I'm sorry. I just I've worked with people, often enough to say worthy opportunities. Here till you know get a little compensation for what we do. Certainly in virtual reality, they're everywhere. It's like the football games. Now you can put an add on the field. That's crazy, earning the gay yeah yeah, it's bananas. What that was, I going to say. I'm sorry for the interruptions. I'm doing this all the time. I'm too much coffee will actually You know what that's not what I was going to say, but it's worth pointing out this, rim of conscious thing that we're doing right now. You improv not quite improv, but you don't have a script when you sit down to tell AL of four and a half hour story of whether it's eat, pray or be prayed to or the Psalm or Verdon or whatever it is you're not reading from a script. I think it's important people understand that you know that comes from the radio thing, so we were talking

God, how there's a format in radio and generally in like a talk radio thing, especially in your first, our theirs. that sort of setting up the shot rights. Will there be an intro to the show big voice, announcer comes in, and then you have ten to twelve or thirteen minutes to sort of do a monologue. Really. This is the part that I did best. Was all downhill after the first but fifteen minutes of my radio show. But when we converted the radio show to a podcast, I was just little stream of consciousness- and then something happened in this- is an example about trying to learn the new medium urine and the dish. things in radio. As you guys, probably know, there's a cough button. You can cut signal underneath. If you have to cough clear your throat whatever it might be, so we had done a bunch of podcast again the current events, one ah straight through so be half hour. Yours truly just gagging away a lot of coffee, which is the talk radio show hosts. You know best friend and worst Gimme fuel. So I had to clear my throat or something like that, and there was no cough button and our

returning to the producer and saying target. Ok, we have to start over and he goes start over he goes. We are you talking about. He we're just going to cut it out, pick it up from where you are. Often I remember saying to him, because this is how podcasting was. I was worried? I was gonna ruin my radio chops. If I relied on little slick editing, I would lose the ability to talk for ten or twelve minutes, but what is it about? Slowly, but surely I realize I'm never going back into radio. is what I'm gonna do and that's when the first edit started. It was over the fact that we weren't just go start over when something went wrong. Twenty five minutes into the show the early History show the first one I think we're like sixteen minutes, so that was well within the realm of what I could pull off in a single sitting, but as they got longer and longer this became harder and harder, and then you would say something I remember once we found something that was wrong. Then this is a terrible problem because

this is like a live performance and then someone comes out later and says. Well, you know you hit a wrong note during that you need to redo the whole thing and you just go. It's a live performance, but we would cut things out. To all of us are now you're starting to do more editing, but we ve never met any bones about it. I mean I walk in there and if we do fifteen or twenty Goodman and sometimes really do five good minutes that stays in the next day. I walk in the studio. We pick it up from there and what this is- To do also explore sometimes will go off on a tangent and sometimes the tangible, be three or four recording sessions before we'll go. That task, doesn't work and caught it all out this? lot of cutting room floor stuff, so this developed organically. I will that super interesting I'm sorry, I get us back to the process stuff, but I am what I look at it like care levels of care versus levels of authenticity,

production in many ways, at least in my mind, and in my world production becomes the enemy of authenticity, at least on tv, at least in non fiction. The viewer once and often take experience. Well. Why, then, would we take great steps to hide the crew from them? Why would we hide the lights? Why would we pretend that we're capturing this performance? It's not a performance that that's very interesting. You ve heard of Fourth wall sharp rigging, the fourth wall, while breaking the fourth wall, is no less deliberate, then not breaking the fourth wall, ignoring the fourth wall. Now that is more analogous to removing the cough button. You don't have the option now to pretend that you're not coughing, and if you take the editing process away too, there's the bargain.

what you're saying to you of your is warts at all. If I have to call off if I gotta run, take a piss in the middle of this thing, you're coming with me right now, I'm cool think. You're gonna hear it. Now it's not pretty, but you get something for that your case, I think you're selling something different. I think hard core has an element of performance to it, back to your old, theatrical background, and I think that soup, important, and this show in its early adoration was a straight up. today? I will Harvey. It was the related to our Harvey right, and so I tried to write those still he's and deliver them in not quite stilted, but it wasn't quite me either there was a little bit of performance art in that thing, so here we are again

This is: u balancing all those things you need to tell a story. I'm not surprised a kind of horrified to know that you might come in and look back at three days of work and go yet we do that. We throw our whole shown before she left, but that gets back to what we said earlier in my book. I need to look back and live with. It. There's a great show and I don't even think it's South park. I think it's something like the making of South Park and they show the two Koreas. you guys, but one guy really comes up with the whole thing they actually follow him around. With the camera made, my wife come and look at it. I said this is my situation. It's called six days to air ok, there you go in it's one of the greatest behind the scenes look South Park by the way, I believe, will he remembered years from now as the greatest satirical romp of all time. I think those guys really and truly figured that out and when I saw the documentary you're describing right now. That is a look at how the sausage,

made sorry to interrupt or I arrive, interrupt you multiple times, I'm glad it even the score. A little bit but there's one seen your recall where they have all these ping pong tables and places for the crew and the staff to keep themselves entertain, The skateboards everything, but the one guy who actually has to come up with the idea is walking around the hallway, and you can even see the look in his eyes and ears. He passes the ping pong table, everybody stops and looks as if to say has come up with the idea yet because you know as you said six days to air right, the clock is ticking not having. That is both a programme com but for us it allows us to do what you just said and we will throw away a show or three days of work or whatever in order to end up with something I described it to. Somebody once is digital stone, assert, won't you realise these things are not going away and Instead of the South Park, people who have to come up with something in six days, it's more important for us to make something that we can live with, but also that down the road

Somebody five years from now, despite some of the historic accuracy which may have changed new discoveries may have made moot some of the things that we might have discussed, but to have it be valid, or for them in the future requires us to realise that the audience it's gonna? Listen to this may not and born yet so we're try, to create something that a different timeline for us than the six days to air and the ADI consuming this we describe it more like a record album or a book Jimi Hendrix, not been around for a long time? It Jimi Hendrix is still selling albums. You talked about this in terms of framing once you decide that the said. The parameters in which your operating it changes you do what you do. I remember hearing William Shatner say something to the effective once if he'd known what a big Deal STAR Trek was going to be to put more into it at the time and I'm trying to not have that regret, but I find that even listening to the old shows, which may have been considered good by the standards

that era. I want to redo all of em, you can't you remind me of someone ass, you can! Yes, you can that's what you're wrong you can take. swift is re, recording all her songs and I'm walking through, Barnes and noble with a yellow, pan changing and I bought that's right. You can do it. Chuck is referring to an episode of DE listener. Gladwell much yeah. Sometimes we had a on show once he's done, a lot of interesting things, I'd love to meet the guy, but he did a really interesting examination of what separates creatives in the most fundamental way, and he basically creates two columns, there's a castle and their citizens, And people argue all the time over who the greater master was, and I

have an opinion on that. But Gladwell point was Picasso worked very very fast and when he was done, he was done saves on was never done. He was the guy who would go into the museum with some water, Collins, brick and lily just write. He never ever. Really finished, a painting everything he ever sold, he sold as incomplete, and so that's him. that saves on and you can find who wrote that Great Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, The version that song, you know is the five hundredth take while he says on and there are other musicians who are Picasso, and this is true of writers. It's true of performers, which one are you. I'm definitely says I'm definitely

even close- and you asked an interesting question earlier and of course I spun it off into something else, but I do want to address it where you were talking about performance. The fact that there's a performance element to this somebody said to me once- and I forgot where was I was doing. like I'm doing right now, this it you don't sound like you do on the show, and I said well, wait a minute. That's because we're doing a different thing. I said we're having a dialogue here and it you sound like you, do when you're doing a monologue you sound weird, like my theatre teacher, was this wonderful guy who had this exaggerated, theatrical way of speaking even in normal life? And I said you sound like Mr Gilchrist, if you around talking like that. But when you're telling a story- and you sitting down you're going the equivalent of once upon a time, you're telling a story.

It's the same voice that I use at home, telling a story, but in conversation with back and forth its inappropriate, it sounds weird and affected its not that you're becoming a different person. The circumstances are different right. You are giving a performance, but it's the kind of form its grandpa might have given you know a thanks giving dinner after he stood up and started telling a story to I mean when the story gets interesting, the voice pacing gets increased in the level of intensity goes up and that's just normal. That's not some artificial thing it's all authentic in its own way correct its fake real, the cave man around the fire s or the oral storytellers that have been transmitting history, and national society since time immemorial? That's, why I'm not sure what I want for you, not in its any of my business, but if there is a camp fire there is once upon a time except its history and its facts in you. You have.

of a kind of spell- and all I would say to you in regard to your earlier question- is whatever you do in the future: will either enhance it or diminish it? I dont know what will happen. I just know that right now in this particular space and time. You got a good thing going and I'm wondering what's the best direction back to the theatre thing, and I no you're, probably your own worst critic, but what's the best direction, anyone is ever given you. You mean like advice. What are we talking about here? I'm talking literally like a director like you- must have somebody other than you who listens to your stuff or over the years maybe was stationed manager. Maybe it was a director of a play. Whatever was was there a bit of direct oral and vice that actually work for you. The short answer is, I am sure that there was the long

answer is, I dont. Remember it because so much of it was about and you'll understand because this dovetails into something we discussed earlier. So much of it was about how they could change what I was doing, but what I was doing, wasn't it on purpose It was something that I couldn't chisel, for example You do. I remember some comments by the boss at the radio station it the urine old bring a commercial breaks, so yeah run out and just happen to be next to the boss. Benito! Don't do a lot talking at the urine alone, all of a sudden, not unaware, I'm about thirty seconds from air. He turns around just goes. You ever thought about having your adenoids out. It was because his was the day where having the deep big Voice was still in vogue, and I sound like I sound now, but not as deep rights over time you know how the voice gets a little bit more wrong residence and everything. I remember they asked the football great Keith, Jackson, out got his voice does when he said cigarettes, Alabama, whiskey and so just happens over time. But the point was

I used to write the liners for the big voice guy and I talk too fast and I talk too loud and I didn't have at the time. Preferred voice? And so we decided to turn lemons into lemonade and I would write all the liners for the big voice. Guidest these loud he's the that became the branding, and that They didn't sound like the mistake that it was the thing that I couldn't correct, that they were telling me to fix it. Like we were trying to do that and somehow I spanned. The era where we went from the time when all those things were verboten to wear all of a sudden. The consultants were telling you you need to find your own unique voice. You know that, and we just great father ourselves into that accidentally, If you carry a balance on multiple credit cards, there is a very real possibility that you're paying more interest than you need to. Even if you have excellent credit. You're a pr could be twenty percent. Twenty five thirty percent, even higher

credit card interest rates today are officially out of control and way too many Americans are paying way too much unnecessary interest, find if your among them at light stream, God COM, slash row and if you are for crying out loud, oh your cards into a single low payment at a fixed rate as low as five point, seven, three percent, a pr without pay, an excellent credit. Loans range from five grand to a hundred grand processes so fast. You get your money and pay those cards off as soon as today, and if you apply now, you get a special interest rate discount and save even more at lightstream dot, com, slash row that L, I g h, T S, T r e, a m dot com, slash row and now back by Pop- We also demand the disclaimer sung, with great reference in the style of gregorian monk, surgeon, granted approve raise race.

five point: seven three percent API to nineteen point: ninety nine percent. Eighty, zero point. Five percent pages and low Israel requires excellent, in the conditions of blah, I and others are subject to change without notice. That is, life ring cars.

In a shop the that was kind of the point I was trying to get at a lotta. People have told me what they think I should do, and a lot of people have directed me and a lot of different scenarios. But for me there was an acting teacher in college, who only directed one way. She would sit there and she'd smoke a cigarette and she'd watch. You do your thing and if she lie Did she said okay and if she didn't like it should say, bullshit ball, shit, smuggler cigarette and looking back, I'm like tat, can you give me some more, but the truth was it was invaluable because it forced you to figure it out my best. this part or now has a version of this. She might not like what I'm doing and I'll say what would you think and shall say I was thinkin, you could suck less a try.

again in this time, just suck a little less and let's see how that works, to be forced or to be allowed to figure it out, it seems, will almost always bring you to a better place than to be given a super specific roadmap, at least for me. I think there's a lot of truth to that, but what I always find is it's usually a cheap sort of an advice, especially when we're talking about industry people and the cheap sort of advice is usually to act like somebody else, so so in so doing great and all these market, you should be more like so and so, whereas that wasn't it the great thing about the podcasting deal is that you could be the single malt whisky like we were talking about and what we figured. It was something that, instead of inheriting a naughty- and so when I was on radio, I was heralding the audience of the guy before me. So all that was part of I had to set up the guide next to me in this yourself, selecting an audience over time and law.

ago. You know people would say well why don't you do it on the seventeenth century, India story or something, and I would say, cause I'm not qualified. I wouldn't do a good job and our half do I'm just going to talk about the thing that I'm excited about it over time? The people that don't like that will leave and the people that do like that will stay, and then you will know how to predict your audience over time, because it will just be anything you want, because those are the people that would have stuck around. So I'm not an reading an audience from the network or the person before For me this is an audience that enjoys what I enjoy, because they would have left long ago if they didn't, but it allows me to sort of crystallize. Our thinking I mean advice why is now- I don't have listening- I do listen because I want to learn and the audio Sometimes they have bad advice, but sometimes we have very good advice and sometimes I am also do this and I still do that. I think when you get to a certain point, the in that I have liked the way we do things once upon a time they would told me to get my adenoids out. You know so I mean over time we ve found a way to make

my while you were yes, yes, but that's just called good management right. I little face time with the boss in a very different sort of circumstance, but it does set your equilibrium sort of askew when you go back on the air thirty seconds later and you're still trying to process that. In any case, though, I mean to answer your question a little bit, I do think that what done over time is turn lemons into lemonade? Turn our quirks into things that People say now. Are we get people imitate the things that were considered bad things earlier on I've. Still thinking about your fourth Wall comment and trying to figure out if James Burke was breaking fourth wall, with his style or if that was just, addressing, and I don't mean to take your shown completely change the direction of, but was Burke breaking the fourth war

or was the entire approach to the show, do not have a fourth wall. Burke, I believe, was trying to do what Clark Bunting asked me to do twenty years later, which was make history interesting for people who otherwise, wouldn't give a damn at the time. It was a very very stylistic thing to do. I mean here, you ve got a very english guy in a white leisure since comparing the glasses with glasses with those crimes black glasses and that ridiculous suit, explaining with the level of passion that you really don't see with you know, historians or presenters, that was all knew it was this level of enthusiasm for some time the simplest things and the wind blows and blades on the mill turn and then on the other end there. It is the grist every change you like that

Why am I so excited to learn our window works, but it's the same thing with the stirrup radiance without the stirrup. they can't stand in the saddle they can't stand, then the forces that impact with them science is gonna, knock them off the saddle and basically negate the whole point of it. That stirrup was based sickly puts us on the road to thermonuclear war. Who was doing that with that level of enthusiasm in a white leisure. So this is the professor. You wish you had suddenly on PBS, making it interesting in ways we ve never seen before. Today we look at that exact same show and say: old fashioned. Stilted tried. Whatever then man cutting edge. Could they do that again today, because this dovetails with our earlier conversation about what an audience is ready for or the cycles of entertainment? You know because it seems to me now:

draw parallels, but whatever it was Burke was doing with the forthwith You have a similar approach. Europe directly talking to the audience in a way that makes you a tour guide for an experience. If you will- and I felt like Burke- was a tour guide for you know. You'd mentioned the stirrup episode, for example, but a tour guide through the on texts of this thread that he wants you to examine, I feel, like you, have a similar sort of approach. It makes it so related I mean I watch these stupid video, sometimes and once again, flash back to me trying to explain to venture capitalists what amateur content might be there? all shows with millions of views, were there just watching some guy in India with a straight razor, given other in a shave, flag, Zuckerberg. met, Iversen you're, getting to roll a burrito, but you can't eat it. It didn't do anything for my beer but there was something that millions of people saw that video that spoke to them. I feel like what Burke was doing.

You're doing too is a little bit of saying. Hey, I know you can't be. here where I am right now. I also know you might not want to given the way it's howls and dirty is? But let me show you this and I'd feel like there's something very compelling about that. The same street different house burn, I had something I don't have real benefit. Is he was a real, Oxford educated historian. You have a knowledge base, is way beyond mine in history now I've got something So maybe you don't have I've got access? Absolutely I got jet fuel. I got play. It'll, take me anywhere to crawl through any little pitted despair in some town. You couldn't find on a map with some guy, you did know, exists to spend a day with them to get a sense of it. That's very Plymouth yeah. I am an avatar, I'm a safer, but I dont show up with a meaningful base of knowledge. I show

with curiosity about there's a reason. You're doing it and not ten thousand other people object that there's a thing that works for me, but it's not being prepared and it's not being informed. It's just being curious and that's where you I would diverge. You are prepared. You'll leave ray hours of stuff on the floor. If you don't think it's up to snuff I'll, tell you something: it's true that freaks people out in the Indus dirty jobs, but only or every week for twenty years, while we've done over three hundred and fifty never once have we shot something that didn't air. No, every single thing we ve ever shot, even ones that went so spectacularly off the rails. We turned into a segment why the network understood that that was possible once they understood that the crews,

to be in the shot whether they wanted to or not all that stuff. Those were big battles that had to be fought at the time once we showed them. Look it's nonfiction. So if it doesn't go the way we want, that's ok, The viewer isn't tuning in simply to be enlightened, are informed there tuning in two Go on the right there tuning in to come along. Whether you're in a sewer or up on a bridge or out on a crab boat you're there, first and foremost for acts. So that's what I said: You sell enlightenment and its first of all. Let me point out that the thing I'd love for those it gives to understand what you guys clearly knew is your audience, isn't gonna turn out cause, they saw the crew and the shot doesn't have any. to do with whether or not you know that tv guide, this is dating us right, the tv guide, review might say, sloppily produce, show the but the audience

care at all it doesnt impact what they're taking a wave You pointed out very early on in this conversation. It might actually lend often each of the whole thing, because you're not taking out the car moments and all that I'm uncomfortable with this idea that I'm bringing this enlightenment to the table cause. I don't think it's enlightenment I described this were let's just play with a number and say there one in different ways, your brain can be organised. I have a friend who is a math guy, everything is filtered in his perceptions through the math lens, and I know this because we ve had enough conversations where everything is filtered in my mind through the history which simply means in a linear narrative form right, contextual, that's how I place everything I can Imagine what seeing the world through the math thing is, and he can't imagine what minors, but when we talk to each other long enough, you can begin to see through lots of discussion

how he sees it a little bit better. I can't meditate and I It seems like I'm going sideways on you, but I can't meditate. I've tried many but I find I have a much better chance. It there's somebody who's good at it who can sit behind you, and leave you through the process. Some people are just good at this can get themselves. Other people someone, is a guide. I feel like that's how a math person is with trying to help. Somebody is not good at math, and As a history guy and I feel like one twentieth of the human population sees the word through the same linear, contextual lens that I do, we don't need Dan Carlin or anybody else to appetizers for history. We problem in reading it, since we were kids Reich because we in innately array, well to put ourselves in the moccasins of the people in the story and but other people need a little help getting into that equivalent of meditative. Stage, and maybe they need a guide and a person who already sees history that wake as that's how they think can help a math person.

see it through their lends a little bit better and I feel like that's what we're doing a reason there's, even if a bookstores today, that's stuffed animals and toys and music, and almost no book there's still a nice history section there, because there is a group of human beings who their naturally incline. They need anyone like me, but I do get nice emails from people who said I never liked history, but something about the way you did it. Helped me to figure and then they go on and loved without me, so what I can learn to meditate with help. Sometimes I can get back there myself once we appetites people, this stuff, they go on. that's. Why we say if something's wrong with the story, Europe, something from one of the many sources that we list on our websites that we use and you'll learn at the right way, but you might not have gone in those sources or wanted to read them until Somehow you were appetite for the subject. History right does not make sense

perfect sense, especially in the world, were living in there's a group of people that I referred to as the correctors, and that group is now pretty much the entirety of the species and they are also the reason the podcast is called the way. I heard it back to the whole expectations. Cyclopes, any body with access to the internet, can find a source to confirm or deny any clue, aim than anybody makes anywhere at any time. That's the thing, and that is shaping an impacting. I think a lot of the way we communicate with each other, but I am curious about how do you deal with that because you do such a great job at bringing in sources from other countries, for instance the French have a very dear. Recollection of Waterloo. I would suppose than the Brits whose writing the history, whose telling it, but still it doesn't matter how good you are at this stand. You're going

at some stuff wrong and when you do my god, I'm guessing you hear about it. I guess I've been fortunate, and this is part of what we're trying to always do better. So I had said earlier: there's always this sense of wanting to continually improve. So if you go, listen to the early shows that we were doing in two thousand and six two thousand and seven. It was a very different world back then in terms of expectations and in the process, getting better and in the process of having competition out there. That was also raising the bar and more and more people getting into podcasting, including professional outlets and all of a sudden, so the standards change, and so when you talk about, are you getting in trouble for things that you get wrong? There's allow and I think I just read it the other day and I'm careful about quoting people now, because every time this place to your point perfectly every time you quote somebody said that's actually not a real quotes or I'm always careful, and I use all my journalistic self protective words. You too defensive journalism, like Mark TWAIN, is alleged to have said, but one of the things mark, TWAIN is alleged to have said

and I'm gonna forget what I was gonna say here. I'm sorry this podcast is so long. If I had had more time and be shorter. no, he had a line about being right or wrong. He had had a line it's not the things that you don't know that get you in trouble. It's the things that you think you no and that you're wrong about so we're I get into trouble is not normally on new information, except that once upon a time I knew this and what I knew is no longer true, but because you think you No, you don't go check that so far, when we were all raised with history books when we were kids right, but so much that is wrong euro no wait and you think ok, I don't have to learn that cause. I know that right, I went through college took these courses. I know that yes, but in the twenty five or thirty two years since I've been in the college, there's a new thinks and new discoveries and things that without which you are not true, but because you think you know

don't go check that that gets me in trouble much more than things that I'm learning for the first time cause I'm reading the best info, I will say pronunciation. Is you mentioned French? That's a perfect example of something I'm gonna have a. problem with, even if I research it and by the way in two thousand and six two thousand and seven researching something like that was a lot tougher than it is today. I can just usually type it in Google and have an audio pronunciation guide, help me where that wasn't available in the old days, but even with that, my chinese pronunciation might be horrifying, even if I'm imitating something I just heard online. So I think I get into trouble more with the things that I think I know because I used to know them, then the things that I didn't know that I've recently bound up on got it to me that this,

those down to our current love affair with certainty- and I think you ve done a great job of being both accurate, informed curious but could be wrong. That was the alternative name for this dark ass. I could be wrong. I probably am Ray Rice talk a little bit if you would and by the way, I'm going to be respectful of your time. You got somebody be more worried about you guys in a very long winded guest. So I'm fine on this end, we're way over what we normally do, but I'm telling you, the fans of the show, are going to love you and they're going to love this certainty. That seems to be the thing that were very very long in these days- everybody sounds so certain Dan historians sound certain about the past Scientists sound certain about the present journalists sound certain about whatever their ripping and reading. Our politicians, of course, sound certain

about everything and it so easy to talk in a crisp well modulated baritone, assuming you have one and drive the point home, we just hear it everywhere from advertising to talks to MSNBC to everything in between. If you would just talk a little bit about how certainty can be our friend with regard to understanding the past and maybe maybe a barrier. In the same way, production is a barrier to often city, is certainty, a barrier to understanding. The short answer is yes, the long answer is you know we're getting into actual things that touch upon personal struggle. what I'm having trying to make sense of reality, because we history people tend to look at the past. fast and always assume that there's you know, as the old saying goes, there's nothing new under the sun right, but there. Some new things under the sun as anyway,

was raising kids now understands your children have things at their despair. It's in a world that those things have spawned that has never existed before ever. I read a line once that said that a person living a hunch, two years ago would have had more in common and understand more about something from the time the biblical era of Jesus Christ, then they would with now and so what we are seeing, because in the end this is one of my favorite topics. To get into is the pace of change, human beings and societies can't change at the level of speed that the new iphones are changing and that that pace is speeding up. So even if you could get a handle on it, it's moving faster. All the time. There's going to be a point where, if it has already happened there, going to be of divergence between how quickly things can change and how societies and individuals can change to keep up with that. So, for example, when you look at all

the things that are analogue in this world? Let's talk about countries, nation states, things like that. Those are crew, aided in a pre modern world once upon a time. Soviet union considered a single radio signal from Radio Free Europe. That could cry the iron curtain to be. dangerous as all get out now, look at what would you couldn't have the Soviet Union in today's communication, air right and yet that's Soviet Union that feared that one radio signal had more in common with Ancient Rome, the persian empire. All those people would have wanted to control information that same way than they do with the now we're everyone realises. Not only can you not control it, but countries have troll farms of people that work with their intel These agencies to deliberately throw misinformation out there the same way that a aircraft trying to confuse he

seeking missile will throw chaff and flash out to confuse it rights and if you can't control the truth by having a single outlet that you control you can control it by throwing so many falsehoods out there that you can't find the needle in a haystack. So when we talk about what you're talking about, I always look at it in terms of will guinea pig generation going on here and so something like new wants that you mentioned earlier or certainty. I feel like that's less of a thing now than even ever before, because of all of the stuff that is thrown out there to hide fact am because facts themselves me what'd, I mentioned to you earlier. I get in trouble with former facts that are no longer facts, stuff that we thought we knew but that is no longer valid. If you can't have something the corrects the record you get into trouble, worried, and this is what I meant about this- getting personal, I'm having a crisis of confidence in the very idea of democracy, t because if it were ever true

that the average human being and it was never the average human being. We all know that these democracies, we're not the kind of democracy, is that we have now in ancient Greece or something, but if once upon a time, those people could handle the level of new wants that that era required. I mean the stuff you to filter through now to find the truth, if truth even exist is so incredible. I used spend my life in journalism reading tons- different newspapers right back in the newspaper day, I used to know all the report. On their tendencies in everything else, I must sophisticated news consumer cause. It used to be my job and I can't wade through the crap out there today to find the nuggets of knowledge and truth. So what is a person who have the luxury of being paid to do that eight hours a day. How they navigate it and if we have to navigate it to be. Playing our role in the Democratic Republic that we're supposed to play, and yet we can't navigated. What does that mean? So I'm trying to figure out in a nepal,

political sense and in a structural sense how people can make a republican The credit system work in an era with the challenge that we have now that we ve never had before, not just that. What we have now is probably going to pay in comparison to what we're gonna have soon, and so, if we think it's bad now, what's it going to be like when you actually have a meadow world to compete with? What's truth- and One's gonna be when people can put on the equivalent of goggles to get to the visa our war, one experienced thing you were talking about what happens when they can to a world where Miss information is the truth. You don't you habit of world. That's all your hearing, your inhabiting were with that's what your experiencing the world were now, or at least the state of my,

that were in now for a lot of people. We just can't square the facts with the present. We have statues that can't be allowed to stand for all sorts of reasons, and I don't need to get it super political either, but I just listen to blitz your most recent, which, by the way, the one on the slave trade, he asked why it's just it's crazy, because you paint a picture. You really good obtaining a picture that brings history to life with joy your voice, here's the same thing all I see as a disorganized mass right who yeah, but you manage the expectations. folks. If you don't know what we're talking about dance most recent foray is a five and a half hour. Look at the Atlantic slave trade it's called blitz human resources. It's a blitz edition shop, it's called human resources, but yes go okay right right so like when you do a blitz, it sort of just a like a very quick sort of lightning strike.

It was supposed to mean that its turned into a different kind of show, so a normal topic of his either hours. I never did rhythms well compared the twenty two hours. I do my bit come back. That's what I always say too, but usually we examined something, that's less structured rights. Are we getting diving and out of the idea and in the normal shows yet more linear? And none of this happened in this happened in this happens but here we are in this day and age, your taking a really deep dive into slavery and you're, making a point which I think is super important. That is, this institution is not peculiar. It's not unique an unwilling labour force has been at the heart of virtually every advanced civilization. It's the diverse setting right always always always there, and so personally, I dont think that pulling statues down in the public square is any more and effective method.

Then eliminating racism by reducing slurs too single letter. I did get really does anything, but I have to admit I listened to your thing and I thought well look I understand why people don't want to see Christopher Columbus statue? I understand why that would rankled, but I think that The thing that worries me is that we can fix the present or change the future. I dont think until we really understand what the past was, we certainly can't fix it by whitewashing over inconvenient were AIDS or pulling down statues? We need to understand and why that's kind of what I was getting out with the certainty thing. The people who want those statues down or certain they need to come down, and they have reasons for the people want to keep em up or certain to everybody. It seems is dug in and may be. One of the ways

we can navigate out of that binary trap is to better understand in this case the long and horrifying history of the slave trade. You know it's worth point now, because I always feel better about our own times. If I can find things that Them seem more more a part of our humanness rather than some anomaly right? some anomaly now that so terrible can never like this, and can you imagine there's a long history of destroying statues when time change and some of my favorite pieces of the really art at this point, but from the ancient world you'll see the sculpture of a ruler or something, and somebody would have gone in defaced the front of it and not doubt, and I knew I mean or like you'll, see these wonderful mosaics or something and somebody will it shipped out the face of somebody that they don't like or whatever I dont have a problem if people say times change, so we're not

going to celebrate this person. The way we use to because our value system is different and we want to celebrate the people who you want to have things that in the old days you would have said to provide a good example for the kind of youth we want to create a whole bunch of things that they would say now idle. like to see any statues go away myself, but that's cause. I'm not. I would just add new that use next to them right would change the context or whatever you might do, but the certainty question. I don't have a problem with the certainty part as much as I have a problem with the fact that nobody cuts anybody some slack for not. having modern day values when none of us would have modern day values if we existed in a time when those weren't the values so by judging people by the standards today and measuring them by a standard that they didn't know existed. You create conditions, where there is almost no body from the past worthy of celebration, and so that becomes the and here's. The other thing you forget, you also

screw yourselves for the future not realising that there's going to be a time where the values that you have today that you're so certain with that you'll change societies, heroes because of it, you don't know what you're going to be judged on five hundred years from now. Either rights. Are you fifty yes figures, have to understand that the culture operates in a way that you can only if your luck we understand the now. That goes back to my question about whether or not we can do Jobs in a democratic society anyway understanding the now. But then I try to say well, you know this guy from the past he's a terrible human being because he did X, Y and Z, but X, Y and Z were being done everywhere and nobody thought it was bad. How is that person? supposed to know. The other thing you get you- and I'm sure you understand this as well or better than I do- is the way our heroes squashed into you know. We tell him in the recent episode Card Board, cut out of the sort see too convenient or two dimensional images

at user- like this too, that is supposed to sort of represent these values right. This is a person who represents this idea. This value that we set rate and want our society to emulate. But then, when you find out that that person is a person and has come, nowadays that you wouldn't want your child, perhaps growing up with, or that are a little inconvenient cause. It clashes, ironically, with there's other qualities that somehow we throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don't realize that everyone is human. few of us are saint and that people who do things that we really should celebrate can also be terrible people In the most recent episode, we try to talk about Thomas Jefferson, ideas, here's a guy who's ideas are actually used by the very people, is he enslaved right in play, is like modern day Haiti as the impetus for them in their freedom, so that doesn't make Jefferson a better guy in the things where he wasn't a good guy, but it shows-

how somebody can actually can viewed something to humanity that we should celebrate, and we can still celebrate that without endorsing the things that he did, that we wouldn't want to celebrate. In other words, you dont have to contribute a three hundred and sixty degree perfect person. to humanity to be a positive impact. You just have to contribute that really important thing and in Jefferson's Yes, it's those are mortal lines right. We hold these truths to be self evident right that all men are created equal by their creator with certain inalienable right, unalienable right. But my point is that that guy contributed so much to world freedom at the same time, these enslaving hundreds of people himself. So what you do. Do you throw out the great lines that contributed to people becoming free because they die did those same words and values and ideas, because that guy had on people working for him, I mean

What I'm saying is, none of us are perfect and if we have to be perfect for ideas to matter we're all in big trouble right, so that with the new wants comes in the new once the certainty and in this case the discernment, the reason beside from all the other bootlegging we did. The reason I'm a fan is because, have this very thing, I've ten questions, I wanted to ask you, I didn't ask you any of them, because the truth is. I prefer to have this kind of I did the same thing in my interviews, this is it its being able to discern and accept

the undeniable reality that Thomas Jefferson was a genius whose head was filled with great ideas who held slaves. You have to hear that America, you have to know that that is the case and you have to find a way to square it. You must discern, I hate to break it to you, but Hitler liked dogs and he was a pretty good painter- that kind of cognitive dissonance, Genghis Khan, as I learned from my friend Dan, was a remarkably progressive guy right up to the point. where the progress didn't suit. His empirical goals, the guy he discovers penicillin, is a bad human being. He still disk word penicillin right? Let's give it up,

millions of people are alive today, because blah blah blah right. I worry more than anything else that, in our rush to be certain, have lost our ability to discern, I think, you're, a hundred, that right, fifty, maybe a hundred years from now. What are our descendants going to look back and judge us on meat eating capital, hiring abortion? Take any art button. That's controversies today, a flash forward, an imagined the certainty with which our descendants will look back and say what were they thinking driving cars, eating cowls, so crazy? And yet that's exactly what we do right now. We look back just honoured in fifty years. What were we thinking? How could we imagined tolerate process, the idea of owning another human being

while for starters, maybe you didn't see them as human beings. Maybe you saw them is property, but I think one of the things that you had on was that's not true: either they knew they were human beings, thousands years ago, of course they know it was just so inculcated in the way progress happened and in the way countries became countries that it was baked into the whole thing. What's baked to us today. That's going to be so self evidently insane through the eyes of our descendants in a hundred years. I don't know won't. Let me ask you a question, and this is the stuff that I think histories pretty helpful with, because it doesn't teach lessens the way people think it teaches lessons, but it teaches other things. So I would ask. on this question of new, wants whether or not this is really a new development like we think it is. Maybe people have always had this problem with dealing with new wants. Maybe that's how you get

which is burned at the stake and all these kinds of things when you turn around and realise that, maybe what we're seeing here is this m tendency people have always had, but just a heck of a lot more power, to show it off to the rest of us through social media and everything else, and once upon a time as world enough to remember this, when Dan Carlin cause he did wanted to say something he would write the editor of the paper locally to try to get a letter to the editor published which might or might not be published, but you had to write a little thing at the head of a going. Here's my here's, the issue that it relates to here's, what I want to say Baba and they might or might not publish it, but there were gatekeepers all across the way again. This is flashing back to me trying to venture capitalists on amateur content, but one of the big selling point at the time was the gatekeepers will be gone right. Nobody can tell you what to say. We had something that in the end, trying to be humble? But we have something called news based on your views, which I invented, which was going to be the news page.

the late. Ninety nine, these internet with a slight or bar, and slighter bar initially would have left right and centre, but it was gonna devolve into all kinds of some political genres eventually and asked change. The slider bar the headlines would change the outlets that the stories were coming from would change and it was intended not to give you a if space, where you only thought like the people, it was more tended to show you the different ways, the coverage happened and how you could shade stories differently or pay as an assignment editor different things to cover, and so it was a compare. contrast kind of deal, but what ended up happening is that world became true and instead of having I used to say. Even if the New York Times the Washington Post were wrong in the nineteen seventies enough, people believed it that you had a bad of knowledge that you could argue with other people about over the water cooler. So you could say well, I saw this in the New York Times, and that was enough to shut down. Some

But he sang that's not true. Once you say. No, I don't believe the New York Times because they might be wrong, then that as far as the argument gets right. You disagree over sources and it never gets the discussion. I feel like that question about we always been nuanced or not, always been nuanced- is that don't think humanity's changed at all. I think our ability to see exactly how not nuanced our neighbour might be. Is the part that new and that Why it feels so shocking. You know it's a little like finding out how many people might be smoking marijuana, but you don't know it until they make it legal and then go. Where did all this happened from? I think it's a similar shortly. I think we're being exposed to aspects of humanity that you would have had to be next both to on a one to one basis. You know in the old days, and now you can just read it person after person, after person on Twitter, Judge Danforth, who I think consigned some of those which is to their fate man. He was certain the townspeople up there

certain, not burn somebody or hang somebody unless you're pretty damn sure that is act of a thing. Do you look around today and see which trials? Do you see that kind of thinking in the headlines. You know it's funny, but I don't know if this is an answer to your question or not, but it's what I first thought about when you pressed us with it in this, is that so much This is dishonest, so I mind a legitimate political debate, because you could find the most intelligent, well informed people in the world, and that doesn't mean they're going to agree on things right. You know something make its illegal if everybody were smart and informed and they would all think the same way, but they don't the dichotomy. Between a certain right answer or certain wrong answer: the dichotomy between people, who can the debate on the merits and people who don't and a lot of times the reason they don't ask if they don't know the merits, because the people that are giving information are not sharing the merits, because it's not in their interest to do so. It gets back to the heat. Adjective we used earlier. Every time I look

media. Now I hear somebody in the background going he tt in my head, because that but this is I mean we have people who divide and I'm just gonna the United States as an example. We are people who divide us from each other for money. Now, I'm Kay with dividing us from each other. As part of the normal political part of a democratic republic which is not a bug, it's a feature not supposed to all be on the same page right, but to have people who have an interest financially in not just dividing us, but to create more heat right to create more anger at each other, because it sounds so right. This is, if you want your rate. Things to go up. Make people angry! Okay! Well, if you make people angry at the fact that their late in the drinking water in Flint michigan- and this is really important. Well, that's an all. Sixty minutes trick. That's advocate, He journalism in the sense that you get people angry about something they didn't know about it. Outrageous and because their outrage, progress happens, right changes are made, but if you give people angry and then you

point them at their neighbour and say it's their fault. Will holy cow how far you from Rwanda, then, when one radio station there is able to incite people, let me tell you quickly when I was a news reporter I was stuck in relatively small community in the relatively all communities you're, not doing the Big NEWS, you're doing nice shows and then every now and then there's something that happens. That seems like a real story that you can sink your teeth into. So when real big stories happen- and you guys already know this- this is for your audience. It's very common to do something called localizing us worry so when I was in news, everything went down in the former Yugoslavia, so it breaks up and you start having the sort of images on your television that we're seeing come out a Ukraine right now, so we local, the story by finding people who were from that area who would move to our air in you would go interview them and they were from all the different groups. Serbs Croats bosnian Muslims and you too, to them and they all said the same thing things were going great. We,

have any of these problems. These ancient hatreds we'd had for each other had disintegrated. I can't tell you how often I heard the story of the inner Mary between these different groups right as a sign that this is all over. But then, when things turned economically in the former Yugoslavia. Bad and demagogues could get up there and blame ancient hated peoples. It was like the embers of a fire that had not gone out and you could just poor. little gasolene on them in the right circumstance and get people angry neighbours, and you saw what happened. I feel like we a financial we ve created- and maybe it always existed because world must remember the Joe Pines and all those kinds of people, but we created a dynamic here, where there is a financial interest in Americans being turned against each other and when we were younger, you know it's funny with. I know all the little, pensive journalistic wiggle words, because I used the myself alleged almost kind of things once upon a time. The defence of people who did this would be

that they are not angry at the individual's right that these are people. whoever mindset that is damaging to the country, so we're out there to change their mind, somewhere along the line that change to this is an immutable part of people's character, and if the Democrats or the Republicans, I'm just growing in a couple of words there. If that person can't change their mind, but if their views destroying Amerika will then what's the answer. You follow the logical progression. How do you fix that problem right? If it's not about changing mines and if there are destroying the country? What is the logical inference there, when this is done, not because these people are true. Believers right the feature not the bug in this damn, you are allowed to be have a different opinion. Actual to have this haggling in dialectic struggle between the two sides, but when it's not done honestly when it's that done, because you really feel that way, but because this is how you create anger and heat which

all's advertisements when it's not an honest debate and the debate itself demonize as your countrymen, it's very hard to find. and a societal force to contradict that destabilized to create an equilibrium between in things that are dividing us and things that keep us together to go back to James Burke He said on my show when I interviewed him that he thought nation states might be obsolete and that in the future, people were going to be able to create virtual nations. Aids through. All of the communication tools we have based on like interests and all these kinds of things, if you can imagine, the United States devolving back into fifty components states, but they weren't Le Bam, Californian Nevadas. They were instead people that had decided to be together because they had enough in common and if things ain't, you could leave the Alabama virtual country and go to another one that suited, in other words, what you always There was a civil war and divided into two countries. What I always say to people. As you know, you're gonna have children and they're gonna

need stuff and then you're gonna end up with people who think just like the people, you boy away from a generation or two. But if you could shift allegiance is constantly be moving to countries that more likely represent your points of view. This James Burke future type scenario would then that might be more interesting, but we have to live each other and right now we have people who are paid to make the end me. Your neighbour, and I just don't know how, without some sort of countervailing force that ends up well, does that make sense it makes a horrible sense. Are you more concerned at this point in time about the likelihood of a world war were the likelihood of a civil war? I think you can make a case. I was Try. This is always fun exercise a stupid, but fun exercise. I we try to imagine how our era will be written about in the future. So when time compresses, when the come is known when people can go back and connect the dots in a way that those of us living through the time can't. I was one

If they'll see this as a precursor to some terrible thing that happens in the future- and I don't have an answer- that I do remember that there were some papers written that said that the natural tendency in the United States- and this was in the nineteen nineties- is to pull apart. and it is only certain cataclysmic events, things like pearl, harbor or nine eleven or wars that create the countervailing force that poles us together again, so that Why said I dont know what keeps us from drifting further apart if current trends continue so that would lead to some sort of division? I dont know if that's a civil war or a breakdown in the political structure that allows people to really leave or James Burke's possibility overcomes everything else, I do know that when you have nuclear weapons on the plane, at the. That is always something that needs to be in the back of our minds and also in the United States has a

civil war- let's not joke about this- that would be a catastrophe not just for the United States, but for a lot of other countries in the world right. We are pillar of the internet she'll system. But if you have in full on nuclear conflict? That means people another kind, We too have no say in our policies and no say in the other: side's policies are going to be caught up in the two hundred tonnes six hundred million people die in that and the permanent damage to the planet I feel when you have something out there, that is, that catastrophic, great the kind of catastrophes that used to be called acts of God in your insurance policy. Once upon a time I feel like, What was your has to be at the forefront of our thinking and I think that problems in Europe are the perfect example of why we be thinking about these all the time, because now we're thinking about the possibility, but if you ve been thinking about the possible ten twenty thirty years ago, and some people were. Let's be honest, maybe you don't get to this point, but when people say

The only reason it's getting that much coverage in a place like Ukraine is because its white folks shooting white folks- and you don't get this kind of coverage in africa- the Middle EAST and their right about that, but this has the potential for nuclear war somewhere in the potential threads here in ways that fighting in the Congo doesn't yeah. You know you talked about these ancient simmering animals. cities that a little breeze can bring to life in the south. anyway. We call that human history yesterday right up what about the unintended consequences, not of the animosities but of the friendship of the alliances. I learned in blueprint that you know the Brits had an obligation to what Belgium, I guess right or Brussels, Belgium yep Belgium was created to be a neutral and everybody had sort of vowed to defend the neutral party and then when the war broke out Belgium was invaded, everybody was sort of put on the spot right. We have an obligation, yeah, that's whiskey

Ozma it scaring. I you're right there, Poland's right there, Ukraine them in its seems like to some degree anyhow. The first World war happened not just because similar simmering ancient hatreds, but because of alliances it will you look at NATO today and you look at the map and there's you. Crane and there's Poland and their there. They all are in here. We are again just a hair s breadth away, it seems- and I don't know it's more frightening to you, our friends or our enemies are alive. answers or our hatred. First of all, just a back you up, it's always been considered one of the potential costs is or one of the main potential players in the first World war rights. individual disagreement between the country of Serbia and the Austro hungarian Empire all of a sudden, involves multiple major powers, fighting each other in the worst war that the world has ever experienced.

It's a when people were doing the post mortem literally after that they were trying to achieve angle. All the various causes in the alliance system was given as one of the main potential players in this, but an alliance systems. Because you can make the same argument about pr Ding war. Until it doesn't, I had been amongst and it sounds horrible today, as the Ukrainians, are suffering brutally by what's being done to them? It sounds horrible to us. that years ago, but I still feel this way that NATO should. Not have expanded closer to Russia. You know this was hardly are you week viewpoint. There's lots of people, I mean Tom Friedman from the New York Times. I mean that's about his main stream. Is you get me? He was saying this Buchanan on the far right was saying it sure, His guys on the far left. There are a lot of people. That said this is not something we have to do, and there was a great you guys have probably experienced this in one place or another. It's a It sort of a management exercise and they will say, take out the most easy the obvious solution to solving the problem,

and now solve it without that now Tat was the easiest way to create the conditions, were there be some sort of deterrence to any sort of future. Can you know that if you talk to the people who border Russia, modern day, Russia. They almost seem fanatical to you about it. I would kid them. Sometimes We got Russia on the brain and I used to say you know Russia. If you look at their history, you could be forgiven if you said that they have a case of national PTSD from their recent in the last hundred years of history, but here's the thing: the people who live next to run you also have a nest no case of PTSD, but there is about things the Russians have done to them, so those people We are always going to say to you: it's not fair. If of an alliance system to protect yourself from the Russians. But you leave us the most vulnerable out there in the cold right as they're gonna come and get us because they have a pity de about Russia. So, are we had said at the time- and I have said many times sense- is that if you take the easy,

NATO answer out of the equation and solve the security problem. Without it will, then you talk about an alliance between these people who have a shared interest in a revolving, just Russia rights. He got the Baltic, you got Poland, you got you, and you can play with a number of other countries, the entire old Warsaw Pact in, although there is a lot, obvious differences in some pro russian sensibilities and a bunch of these districts. But by and large aspect was, as this was a way to not only created deterrence so that those people had some defence, but you weren't, creating that deterrence out of a historic enemy, NATO. We look in his benign cause. It's our alliance bud Generations of Russians grew up with those as the threat so rather than antagonize a country that has historical PTSD, because it's been invaded twice the twentieth century right with horrible thing, go communism all that sort of stuff. What, if you had a regional alliance between a bunch of countries that have a shared interest in protecting each other from

Resurgent Russia, and here is the other advantage of something like that is that I have friends in the Baltic Sea, and what I have warned them about for years, and I don't mean sound anti american with this, but I say dont depend on us. I said if Latvia gets invaded and we're in its position, we have to go to def con crazy on this and get into a nuclear war of Latvia. The american people are not going to follow you once more this was an argument- a lot of people made to most Americans and understand that they were pledged as an article five pledge to treat Latvia, I'm not picking on Latvia, beginning I'm saying as an attack on LOS Angeles is the equivalent of that you'd mention the Belgium example. In the first world war. There were serious talk in Britain about not upholding Britain's pledge to protect Belgium, because the cons, quences of letting Belgium go seemed far less important than and had they known what were one was gonna, be. I think you would have even had a greater number of people going what the hell

we can free Belgium later you're Talkin, millions and millions of people dying right. So why I told my lad the infringes, you would be better off forming an alliance with people who feel exactly like you do and who have just as much skin in the game, because I guarantee you Latvia's invaded in Poland is an ally of Latvia in regional alliance. They're going to come, Latvia's aid, because the poles are right. There too, so this not an attempt when you said NATO should expand toward Russia's borders too. nigh those people away to deter russian aggression. It was to take the easiest path off the table, but also the path it was, probably going to serve those people least well if you know that you know what hit the fan yeah. I guess it comes back to mutually assured, destroy action. It sounds like you're saying that, back in the day, the Brits had no idea really about mustard gas. They had no idea about the way

a trench war could know how do you do all that? No, I write all new deal had they known. Maybe they go a different way, but your point is this: is a nuclear world and everybody got the memo everybody knows, and so, when we look at these pictures coming out of Ukraine, your heart breaks- and I get, angry, then you see these people, hand cow and there should be repercussions. Yes, there should be repercussions but Somebody pulled me aside and somehow or other I'm in the White House, and they say, Mr President years, the situation in a way leads on to way. I think token said where the tale grew in the telling. Frost said: Wally is on the way, whatever it is, you're going down a road and you're doing it at a time when we know everybody's armed to the teeth with tactical nukes. The Brits didn't know that one hundred years ago, and so is their hope, is there hope

in that, I always try to look at the worst case scenario than ask yourself. If that happened, how would you feel about what you're doing now the nuclear worst case scenarios so much worse than almost anything in a man, made sense that you can think about that really makes almost nothing worth it, and this is unknown problem by the way in things like nuclear brinkmanship and blackmail. This is the stuff. The guys at the rand operation used to try to work out because We one understands that nothing is worth a full on nuclear exchange, so that allows bad actors to get away with stuff right. I can take this Larry a casual, never incinerate. Three hundred million people for this body. Three hundred million people died in a nuclear war. You have to ask yourself what on gods greed earth? Would you be able to say to the survivors made that worth it, and this becomes the problem so, and I think there are wonderful conversation to be had here when we talk about what might we

get out of this whole situation is something it's a lesson many people knew already, but this is perhaps the danger of having single individuals in control of countries and especially in control of countries, nuclear stockpiles, and the reason is an important conversation to have is because our own country has been evolving more and more in that direction, for both good and bad reasons. Since the the Second World WAR also, so this is come on. Let's pretending we did this in, I did we called it an emergency I'm in censure recently does everyone's yelling at me, but with the question of whether or not me what if this guy sick, you know everything Portraying was a three dimensional chest by what, if he's sick, I always did the same thing, and I hear it from our government too. Will don't worry? You may not know what they are, because we can't tell you for obvious reasons, but there are controls put into place really so I don't know, but I'm thinking right now, you're looking at this and going one guy, I mean this is going to sound, terrible craniums, and I apologise in advance. But if you know my work- and this is how I function I'm watching-

his videos, because I'm a war guy and I'm watching these videos showing these attacks by you Iranians on these Russians and convoys no one, then you'll notice, if you ve seen him, is, of course you to the minute a tank or in our vehicles hit everybody gets out of it. Start running and then they start killing the people that are running and I'm looking at this thinking to myself. These are the hi guys in this story, but I feel terrible for these nineteen year old kids. They don't want to be there either the person that wants them to be. There is one guy. As far as we know, and there somethin wrong about that and here in our country too, I mean you know we were talking about the political situation and we didn't even get into a key question, but it's in play in this situation to oversight the idea that there are corrective measures that come into place to say this went wrong here, whether it's in a political situation or a military situation or even in the way we fix the lead pipes in Flint, Michigan right and you say, ok

next time? Let's not do this or, let's make sure someone's watching the watchers right, and this dovetails with another political point which the whole question about holding our own side to a different standard than we hold the other side to this dovetails into the oversight. Question right. If you can't call your own site out to something you would, all the other side out for that's a broken oversight point in the bar politic right, not even in the structural thing where you have Congress watching them This is Joe Schmo. You know now watching his own political belief system compared to his neighbor. If you held your own party to the same standards, you hold the other party to would be in a different world yeah we would and in the list of landing. This play, let me try and combined two worlds play my crash, Michael issues to deal with the reality of it may have crashed hours ago. This maybe a twilight Zone episode. This may be the

This episode that we actually cut in had this major part. Two I was more than a beheading floors. Staff is what I was thinking violating all your principle sake. I want the hard core cutting room floor showed. Take all that crap, you think's, no good put it together, get it advertiser. Forget sakes, put it out there, it already done your fans will love. We call I do not happy with the old shows and we sell them on the website. Ok, here's my boy, I think- we're talking around the notion of the benevolent dictator and most people seem to agree that if you got one person in charge who happens to be benevolent and smart and wise and prudent. That's the quickest way to something like peace, you're, saying the stakes so high people are so armed that it's not fair, smart, prudent or eyes or otherwise sensible to put all that on one person who could easily get sector become a bad actor but

going back to entertainment, this crime. the industry that wherein right now. Why is it so bad wise, most content? So bad? you hit the nail on the head before because there's a committee there's a bunch of peace, Born they all went away in and they all want to have a say so Getting a racehorse you wind up with a camel this weird thing, with two arms and jacked up legs and walks bunny, and yeah doesn't need a lot of water, but Jesus hideous to look at. Nobody really wants a camel, but you get one when you have a committee or a consortium or a star chamber, whatever

it is. It seems, like there's. A thing to unpack are you're better off with a group of people calling the shots or one woman or one man, and is the answer different in entertainment, then in geopolitics, in world affairs in history I dont know, but that seems to be the thing that we keep circling back to. How do we get a better podcast? How do we get a better tv show? How do you get a more just democracy? How do you get a more functional republic, a committee, a commissar, a king, the elected official, please summoned up for me in ways that night slobbering. You have said that we had said something that recent emergency common sense show about put when we were discussing all the various things that might be involved, including sickness or anything like that, the more obvious answer, and I think this is a problem with any single person. Authoritarian type system is that his interests may have at some point diverge

from the interests of his country, and so the things that we look at present look at the situation from a clause which even standpoint right ends and means of war, is just politics or policies by other means. If you buy what Putin is saying about things like part of this? is because Ukraine was getting closer to NATO and all this kind of stuff and having armed enemies on our border. Will this entire, A has just made that situation nine thousand times worse. This. weeds are offering their defense budget. I mean. How far do you have to go for Sweden to go? You know we need more tanks. We just need more tanks. My point is: is that from as we see in standpoint. This would appear to be a monumental error, because he's gonna have now trust on a personal level ever again for that guy, but he's also going I have all these places close to the russian border, going see it wasn't PTSD, we told you this was going to happen and the arms industry is going to funnel tons of weapons he's going to have exactly what he said he didn't want, but here's the thing: what Putin

interests are in this case may not be the same thing as what's good for Russia and its difficult for us to disentangle, those two things, but dictators especially run into these. Situations where what keeps the dictator in power might be something that cost the lives of thousands of poor, tribal farmers or for who just these nineteen year old kids that are being killed in this war and there the bad guys and they are but those nineteen year old, kids in personally, do much to you know and the way they end up. Is it possible, if he's not crazy, is it possible that the thing he actually wants is the eastern part of the kind three, the Crimea, the oil rich parts of the country- is it possible that yesterday intentional chest then again now we're looking at this? Is somebody who's, irrational actor? Who is doing this? for reasons of strengthening its country, long term, that's absolutely possible, and that would be devolving toward the human

you mean when it comes to national actors, and you know the Assyrians would understand that that sort of a need one of the things we wrote in the book that I did I didn't know in advance, was how much the modern historians have been able to figure out, like Indonesia rural areas that had tons of the ancient equivalent of oil right, whatever it might have been, and that they will. seize these areas, the same way that Saddam Hussein would try to seize kuwaiti oil, I mean the way that the rational actors involving with nation states are kingdoms have been operating, is a pretty I'd and true method, and if this is what prudent was doing, somebody Macchiavelli or I Bonnie Paul or sire. The great of Persia would be able to look at it and go to smart move right there, we'll shore in human resources. You made the point that we don't think much about sugar these days, except for the fact that it rots our teeth and that's ubiquitous gaps everywhere, but boy there was a time

when sugar was oil, there was a time when salt was sugar, and so isn't it interesting how those commodities come and go, but how the need for them will always allow us to justify damage anything. My stepfather said you could actually you know, there's lots of lenses through which to view com events in modern times he said he had found that the most useful and the most predictive was money. I mean I hate to break it down the something that so basic and he wasn't I about modern times. You get home at all times, whatever passed for wealth, which should people do who want to get their head around your body of work? Where should they begin? What should they read

I'm asking two different things because the guy on my mind, right now, was George Mcdonald. Frazier, have you read any the flash men chronicles? No, what is it about? Oh, my god our I want to change your life. We can look forward to our right. Ok, the flashlights chronicles basically look at a hundred year period of victorian dominance through the eyes of a famous general name, Harry, Flashman Flashman, his entire life story was found by an editor name, William Padgett Morrison, in a sea chest in Leicester and by putting together this incredibly dense series of journals from this old soldier Frazier Rights, the series of books. Now the construct is Harry, Fleischmann isn't real. He is the only thing in the books that never

existed. He becomes your reliable narrator because he is a coward. He is a pole. Troon he is a liar. he always takes the easy way out, but as always confused with the hero and therefore promoted through the ranks, so it sort of like selling meets forest Gump, and so the guy who made history fun for me, aside from my dad and the guy that really answered Clark, bunting challenge was George Mcdonald Frazier. That's why I know a little bit about luck now and con poor. I know more about clusters last stand that I otherwise would have, because somehow Harry Fleischmann is there and it's all such a believable construct and that the first book flash meant in the great game which talks about? Of course, the great retreat sharing Tiber right right, Russia in Britain, yes, oh and also Balaklava, and

brigade and light right, the Crimean WAR, the Crimean WAR, it's all there did it's all, there and it was so believable, the construct was so believable that Mcdonald's first Flashman book was reviewed by somebody for the sun times, I think and the London Times, as a serious work of nonfiction, because the end notes are so dense and every page has a footnote and you go to it- and here you Frazier saying Fleischmann may have been wrong about this, because everything is told through the eyes of Flashman, but Flashman is the only thing in the books that isn't real

Frazier real historian, who tried to make history accessible for people by creating a fictitious character whose only virtue whose only virtue was an inability at the end of his long life to lie, and so you have this remarkably craven fallen old man who has no choice but to tell you the truth about the Borneo, pirate and so you get these stories through this avatar, you need to read em just because you'll love it. Why, like the concept of good, it's so good, but anyway, that's my giant parent federal, my recommendation to you, one of my favorite books. Ever I forgot what the big point.

Was committee's camels, I'm just so glad that that happens to you too. I find it astounding, as the older I get, and you know it'll happen during interviews like the one we were having, where you're going really and when you give long answers. This argues for just saying yes and no to the questions more or less yeah back here right now, looking for one of those books, I got all these Travis Mcgee books. I think the question was: where can people stop? to take a dive with you. I believe the answer is Damn Carlin dot com. So we know what role Europe playing in this whole conversation right. Here's the thing with what we do and you'll see the differences in the download numbers to its based on your interests, so go find one of the shells. Usually we keep the last year, for years free on our website enemy, migrate them to the archives, but go for in one of the free shows that speaks to use, subject wise and see what you think and you'll get it. I think you'll get a pretty good idea

our approach, I was you say within the first hour, but that's a whole show for most people. For us, I'm just gettin warmed up. That's a breathing exercise for me, unfortunately, to rule you wore remains, that's it Kansas City at the National World WAR, one museum and memorial, and I don't know how long it's going to stay there. But it's there right now, your favorite history book of all time. Oh god, you can't do that to me Mcdonald ain't even recommend books to people because of it. No, I don't know I mean I go about it and around it answers I use. I wonder you wrote Dan The lesson of Helsinki will solve all my brow of sorry guys. Never the same on versus hold work needs to be revised. Sorry, Jesus man, what a pleasure with we have anybody on for more than an hour, and this has all been somewhat indulgent. But for me anyhow really a treat tat. I was enjoying myself to thank you. Guys were taken the time now here, of course, chuck you got anything else, because I know your attention

Thank you for being. Here too, we are standing here a little bit more from John Morton. What you wish format I want to here at the end of the show you're, the one that has to deal with the long term effects pay about what day? Is it right? That's right! That's what's really pleasure. We wanted to have you on for a long time. We ve been fans for a long time and just really appreciate the way that you bring history to life. The way you humanize, because I know you ve, said this- a lot that every body in history is a person just like us who has loves hates, is trying to do the right thing in most cases, but you put it through. A human voice. You never lose sight of the humanity in the history. It really draws me in. Can I just tell you how weird it is, though, how weird is it that that's become, that that's become I mean it's novel men. We talk

cycles earlier. The idea that just trying to see things from the viewpoint of the people in the story is somehow the novel approach strikes me as a little weird you guys don't even say by the college- from somebody who does such a good job of what he does, which is what we discussed you're a tour guide for it sperience is that most of us would never get near for any number of reasons, including financial means and everything else, and yet, when her dumb with it. You get the feeling that you got a wider variety of experiences on which to call from, and yet you know like the old joke about you can learn. by putting your hand on the hot stove or you can learn and by reading about somebody else who put their hand and the hot stove you consistent, We put your hand on the hot stove and, and I feel like we come out of it better people because of it. Well, one thing for sure: Nonfiction is a fascinating genre and reality when it lives up to its name is a great way to make tv but the real stories, the best stories they have already been written and already sad.

Been forgotten by so many, but your keeping them alive, man you're making them relevant. You also know how to wear ball cap in ways that very few do we ve hardly scratched the ball cap surface So that's it to our show. If you open to cycle through my available options, you guys are wonderful. Thank you. Thanks Stan if your format ever expands to include a guest, it goes without saying, I'd be honored, and I'm serious about that edited footage. I guarantee your fans would absolutely slobber for the chance to listen to stuff that you either deemed irrelevant or indulgent or two down. The rattle. All I had to know was that you were available for guest appearances and will make that happen. So don't try to keep but far enough away. So we don't impact, we don't cannibalize the audience permission or will do that. Thank you, for the offer is the other side of the fourth wall. There you go wait that should have been the name, it shall be the others

you know- I know it's a longer- show we ve ever done and the furthest we ve ever gotten before really landing on a title. But I think that's probably a perfect. That's where you live, my friend there you go. Thank you guys, you're the best. I appreciate it. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile sorry. It went on so body if it makes you smile and share your satisfaction in the way that people do leave guys, a vague idea be and urge but

where are the advertisers really like to judge your own age or higher bonds? Just an honor to all you got to do is leave a quick five star review you got to do is leave a quick five star review and I got to do is real quick you've got to do is leave a quick. Classical review need to do is leave a query. Even if you have HIV sauce Thank you. One in twenty Americans will be diagnosed with colon cancer during their lifetime. The expert: that empty Anderson Cancer Centre at Cooper remind you to get a colonoscopy screening new guidelines now recommend you begin screening an aged forty, five caught early color to Cancer- is treatable em,

Anderson Cooper offer screenings at three South Jersey locations, Camden Mount Laurel and willing borough schedule. Your colonoscopy screening today go to Cooper, health, dot, Org slashed screenings, I might lean back with my feet on the desk to look calm. But in my head I'm wondering how do I deal with the business side of my new sneaker business? Hey. It's me your voice of reason telling you to get Quickbooks something's telling me I should get Quickbooks, so you can get paid, run payroll and know where your business stands from the start. So I can paid run payroll and normal business stands from the start now focus on anniversary, which is tomorrow, new business. No problem success starts with into a good books. We put sparrow cookbooks payments inputs, I'm on account required.