There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.
Thu, 03 Sep 2020 10:00
Ben Shapiro's Unreadable Book is Still the Best Thing About 2020
Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture, and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know, because after listening to stuff you should know. You will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's how we start the podcast. Or you already recording, that's how. Yeah. Yeah, I am now. I am now recording as you were screaming. Well, I was recording when I started making the noise. That's the state that the podcast would start with. That's the beauty of how is that professional race? I'm rob. I'm Robert Evans. Welcome. No, I don't like it. I'm not. I'm not doing it. No one else is. Robert Evans, because nobody else gets to introduce my show atonally and wordlessly. Uh, we have started then we have started. Yeah. Show is. That's correct. Robert Evans. Hi, everyone. Hello, America and parts of Canada and the UK, New Zealand. No, we don't let them on here. Yes, we do. They. Well, I love you guys. There are some real strict geotags. Australia, I'm. I'm keeping my eye on you. If you're good on the list. Should be ************* is what I think. Hello, America. Except the Celtics fans in Boston. I don't say hi to you. This has been quite the introduction. It's the last day of August as we record this in August is a month we did it. Kind of. Maybe. I mean, we'll see. The missiles could all start firing anytime in the next several hours. Yeah, we got like 9 hours left to. Yeah, we got like 9 hours. Sit in it. But I did say, I don't know. I started saying a few months back that August was going to be a really ******* horrible month, and it's been a really ******* horrible month. Because I like like this Saturday like 2 days ago, I guess less than two days ago. The guy got shot dead in the streets of Portland. That that was not good. Uh, looks like people are going to be escalating a series of heavily armed rallies between left wing and right wing demonstrators that are likely to degenerate in the gunfight. So September might be even worse. Probably is going to be. So that's good. I'm really tired of you being right, Robert. Too much time until November. So, folks. When things like this happen. And when I say things like this, I mean the complete collapse of democratic society into an authoritarian, blood soaked nightmare. When things like this happen, we hear it behind the ******** know of only one way to try to keep people spirits up, try to maintain, you know, that, that fighting spirit that we're all going to need to get through this and that way is, of course, reading excerpts from Ben Shapiro's unbelievably terrible novel true allegiance. Ohh yeah, beautiful prose. Gosh, describe it correctly. My goodness. Did I introduce the show or Katie and Cody? Or did I just start shouting atonally? Yeah, I can do it. OK, what is this show, Sophie? This show is behind the ******** and it's hosted by you, Robert Evans. I am, it seems. I am your executive producer. Sophie Lichterman Anderson. Scanning is the is the is our CEO. OK, and then we're joined today by Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston of some more news. Even more news. Worst year ever. And just epicness. That's good. OK. Well, everybody's great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much on the horse. The horse, everyone is, has, has boarded the horse. So, folks, I thought you were going to say the horses in the back, and I got really scared that you knew a pop culture reference at the horse in a bag. No, I don't know any of that. What I do know is that we just finished. We just finished when we last left off, and I recommend there's been like, what now? Three episodes of this just going through, and we're just skimming Ben's novel and reading chunks of it because it's very funny. The last chapter was Brett Hawthorne, Combat General and prisoner of terrorist man in the city of Tehran, Iran, which, yeah, attacked by short terrorists attacked by the bear of a man kidnapped by short terrorists. So yeah, Brett Hawthorne, kidnapped by terrorists. He just had gotten thrown into the cell after having his big meeting with the bad terrorist guy. The evil terrorist drifted off to sleep, thinking of his wife Ellen or the TV show Ellen. That's unclear. At this point, it's unclear. I choose. I mean, I'm praying for Ellen, too, Brett. We all are. We all. We all are. OK, so the next chapter is a President Prescott chapter, which is again Barack Obama, but White. Yes, Barack Obama, but white and mixed with a little bit of FDR. And Hitler and Hitler, like, let's not forget the Hitler parts. OK, well, were you asking Katie, I was going to say, did we decide like a prototype for him, like a like a Kevin Costner? I don't know if that's, you know, it seems like Ben is patterning the president in this off of the kind of person who has not gotten elected ever in democratic politics. But Republicans believe is like, yeah, he's like the fantasy Republican Democratic president, right. So he's like a little bit of. Bill Clinton. Yeah. OK. Mixed in with a little bit of Hitler. That's that's what we get with President Prescott. Yeah. President Prescott always felt a surge of power through his body when he set in the situation room. This is where they had made all their biggest decisions. It's where Kennedy read teletype during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's where President Barack Obama had set watching seal team six take out Osama bin Laden. And this is where press got new he'd be sitting at the head of the table while American special operations troops dispatched Ibrahim Ashame. It is kind of unclear in this. Up until now. I think this is the first Barack Obama reference we get. Yeah, very unfair for Barack Obama. What the timing has been of, like American history in Ben Shapiro's alternate timeline. Is this is this just the President right after Obama? Yeah, I think this is the guy. This is like, what if a random Democrat who was also Hitler? Who got elected instead of Trump? That's that's I mean you could make a case that that is Trump in some capacities. But yeah, yeah. Except for Trump I don't think has ever been awed by the the weight of a historical anything because he's not really capable of feeling the emotion of awe. But anyway, yeah. So they intelligence figured out General Hawthorne signal. If you remember, he was like being he was on one of those terrorist videos and he'd like, blinked. The coordinates of where he was? Heck yeah, he did. Yeah, that's good. So, yeah, Umm Hawthorne had spoken the prewritten message from Miami just as a Shami had written it, prompting a national debate on whether Hawthorne had should have complied with the propaganda requirements of the world's leading terrorist. But intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied under their hat. While the West rest of the world had watched Hawthorne's mouth, intelligence had watched his eyes. Which is very funny to me, because, like every time, anything vaguely like that's that's any that's vaguely a mystery occurs that involves. Take a video clip. That's, you know, anytime something like that goes viral, whether it's a murder or whatever, the entire Internet sets to trying to solve it. And if this guy had been blinking in Morse code while delivering like, like, there's a 0% chance that everything he had been saying wouldn't have already been like my 17 year old for sure we have 4 Chan would have figured it out. Yeah, my favorite food, or would have figured it out, was that one sentence that you just read. But intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied under the. Oh, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a few sentences. That's OK. That's OK. Yeah. OK. Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Improvement. Improvement. Ben. He had a copy editor for this chapter. Yeah. He must have. So, yeah, this. He talked been talks about how Hawthorne had taken the trick of blinking in Morse code from a Vietnam era POW who blinked out torture. Which is maybe a little bit easier than blinking out the coordinates. Air strike now and then. Geographical coordinates, but. Yeah, it's very funny. And also just that they would know, like that that would be what the that the government would instantly agree, yes, this captured person has called for an air strike on the capital of a sovereign nation. That's got to be what we do, surely. Well, not only do we know that that's what he's calling for, we're going to do it. Yeah. We're going to launch. Yeah. Well, no, he doesn't know. Ben does note the message prompted a full scale debate inside the White House. It raised too many questions. First was Hawthorne location correct. How would he know where he was given that? Prisoners were typically blindfolded and kept in windowless rooms before their executions. If Hawthorne was wrong about the location and a heavily populated area of Tehran, the United States could end up with the blood of dozens on its hands and an international mess almost impossible to clean up. They could blame it all on Iranian nuclear weapons, but after Iraq, the public wouldn't be buying. That's not a that's not the reason. Yeah. That's not the reason not to kill dozens of innocent people. Yeah, that the public might not buy it, right? I guess it yeah, maybe we can't get away with killing the civilians. Although to be fair, he has written articles about how he doesn't care about civilian casualties, so sure did isn't very surprising. You know, it just occurs to me, Cody, because that article he wrote about how he thinks it's he thought it was stupid whenever people complained about civilian casualties in Afghanistan and it's fine to kill civilians in Afghanistan. He was 17 when he wrote that article. He was. And there's probably a pretty good essay to be written by someone smarter than me about Ben Shapiro, age 17, urging the nation to mass murder strangers in Afghanistan, and Kyle Rittenhouse, aged 17, taking his AR15. Across state lines, illegally to shoot strangers in another city? Yeah, probably something there. Something going on there, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Second, even if Hawthorne was right, could the American aircraft breach Iranian airspace to take out a Shami? A strike in a populated area would require too much pinpoint accuracy for a missile. Military aircraft would have to be utilized. Such an attack would surely have grave ramifications for international politics, including ongoing nuclear negotiations with the Iranian. Yeah. I think you're not gonna keep negotiating with them if you bomb their capital right now, but I do suspect that would have an impact like. Love. It's it's logic and reason. It's using logic and reason. Yeah. This is also, like, incredibly boring. It is really, it is really boring. It's like basic stuff like, oh, they might shoot the plane down and that would be a problem. Like, he's he's tried to, like, portray this dude is like this feckless and wildly responsible president, but then everything is going through his head is like, yes, these are all things you'd have to consider if you were going to bomb the capital of Iraq, right? Like, it's like, what are we what are we spending our time on here? Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. So and then he has this thought go through the heads of this, presumably, like supposedly progressive Democratic candidate, the Israelis were sitting around waiting to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. With the Americans taking action on Iranian soil, they could take advantage of the situation to double up with a brief bombing campaign sinking any possibility of a nuclear deal. So, like, I don't know, just very. Very boring. Boring, yeah. Boring, yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. It's not like he's not doing like, a a very legitimate, like, thought process, but also it's boring. Like, I don't need any of this. I don't need to hear this internal debate. Or if you're going to. Write a scene where they talk about these things and you have characters giving you viewpoints and then arguing. Like show me two more long paragraphs where he just goes back and forth about like, this would be a good foreign policy triumph and it'll people won't call me a coward, but you know, we could also just do it later and it's just, it's, it's it's again like you said, have people converse, reveal things about the characters of the individuals in this administration by how they react and discuss the different. Possibilities like chances are everyone would have a different viewpoint and then I would learn something about each one of them based on their viewpoint. Yeah, yeah, do the thing. Like watch a single episode. I normally wouldn't say this, but watch a single episode of The West Wing, a show that has characters that argue about things like what to do and do that instead of this. Yeah, that would be my thought. Never thought, thought like watch The West Wing would be like, great advice, but just watch The West Wing. He wants to write television, so he should know that dialogue is an option. He does, and it is. It's one of the best options. Yeah, you could have dialogue in this moment, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's very. It keeps just keeps on going. In fact, Prescott had been leaning and leave it leaning in the direction of leaving things be. But two factors had decided him on action. First, Prescott wanted a taste of glory. Just Prescott. Prescott. Prescott. Like, Ben shell. Write a book. Write a book. Yeah. Like, have him be a character that does things. Don't just, like, tell us. Yeah, have him like, like, Prescott, like, proposes to do that. And then one of the characters says, like, you just want, you just want it for the glory or like, what? Like, obviously not that exactly. That's bad. But, like, have people challenge him or something, and then he explains why they're wrong. Or he wavers because maybe they're right or something he has to leave, nor good advice, and you, like, see him make a choice to like, yeah. Yeah, no. Instead, uh, that sounds like a lot more work. Yeah, or he could write an essay. A really long, boring essay about it, like, all the options. And it turns out the president decides to bomb a sovereign nation because that would make it difficult for Congress to turn him down about his his work Freedom program. The everybody gets a job program that he wants to to ram through. Yes. That one, yeah. Congress famously is a huge fan of the United States, randomly bombing the capitals of sovereign nations. And so you get whatever you want as president if you are like, hey, guys. I just bombed Iran for no good reason. What Ben is doing here is showing us a stunning understanding of our government and how it works. Umm, what are you doing? Is showing us a stunt. Like he's just showing us a window into what he thinks the government should operate like, what he thinks people should do in order to get what they want? Yes, that's what I actually mean. Yeah, that really is what's going on here. Yeah. It's so the president, uh, who again only cares about his his. Like signature piece of social welfare legislation that's clearly meant to frame him as a Nazi because the work freedom program are bite mocked fry, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, he already had his. So while he's, like, getting his final briefings for the bombing of the capital of a sovereign nation, he's daydreaming about the work freedom program. And he he writes a slogan on his hand. This is what Ben calls a slogan protecting America from those who would harm it abroad in at home. It's a lot for a hand, that is. That is a lot for a hand and a lot for a slogan. That's a lot for a slogan. It's it's that Simpsons giant hand character. Tired of all these jokes on my giant hand. If Trump had hired Ben to to run his campaign, it would be making America a country that used to be better, better than it is currently because it's not good enough right now. Would be good for us. Yeah, America, put that on a ******* hat. Second, some right wing bloggers had caught onto Hawthorne signal. Mostly they were kooky. Survive caught on to Hawthorne. So, OK, a bunch of right wing bloggers had had found out that he was signing. OK, so Ben does include the Internet. Cracking the code. That's good. That is good. That's good. Yeah, I got to be fair to talking about kooky right wing bloggers, so that's good, too. Yeah, mostly they were the kooky survivalist types, the kind of folks who posted conspiracy theories on message boards. But the CIA informed Prescott that such information, once you get out, could jeopardize any sort of attack. So that's that. OK. I'll give Ben credit for that one. That that was been, that was been understanding a reality of the world around him and then using it to predict something in a a fictional scenario. Good job, man. Did he did that. All right. So that's good. Good sentence, then. Yeah. Already some of those nuts on Fox News had been making oblique references to the rumors. Be nice to, like, hear what that was like. How do you make an oblique reference to people online? Believing that a US general is calling for air strikes on Tehran using Morse code, blinking like how do you like? How do you slightly reference that? I guess I'd like to know, yeah. Right. Like that's another thing we're like. Show me that, yeah, yeah, show me the tell. Show me these things instead of just telling me them in the least interesting way possible. So, yada yada yada, we talk about how he decides not to do an air strike and the CIA has its own thing that they tell him to do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, now he's in the situation room, we're back around to where we were at the start of this chapter. He's sort of explained. He didn't really. Yeah. It's just wait. So, like, we're it's still, we're still in the situation room and nothing has really happened. They've just described, like, they just explained why we're here, OK, as opposed to weeks of debate or days of debate had ended with like, you know, he knew that it was time for action. You know, sometimes you just can't listen to other people's arguments. You have to make it because also like you just in terms of storytelling, that's the chapter that you write, right? Like you. Here's this, yeah, about the debate like, it's here. All the things that are happening on television is the debate cryptographer, whoever who figures it out and informs the government. And then you have like, the meeting and like, now this is, again, if President Prescott and his administration are characters, if there's characters in here that we like, we can engage with and be interested by, even if they're the bad guys or if they're incompetent. If they're characters, but they're not characters, they're yeah, they're they're just like there. We've been to. Yeah. They're little wax sculptures. They're a little action figures for him to play with. Yeah, they're little action figures. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. So he sends in, I guess, a wetwork team to go get this guy out somehow. With the CIA. OK, so that's great. So he's he's told that the CIA success odds are less than 25%, but he sends them to CIA team anyway. I bet they're successful. Thanks for the let's see here now the now the CIA operatives, dressed in local garb, set a quick burning charge on the outside of the iron work door. It flared brightly, but the alleyway that in the alleyway there was nobody to see it. One of the operatives gently nudged the door open with its foot for her. For him spread a dark hallway. No lights came in order. Check, whispered one of the men. They crept down the hallway, visibility no greater than 10 feet ahead to the sides. Ran door after. Yeah, OK, so. Trying to write an action scene, the guy identifies himself as police. Yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda just a bunch of guys doing a doing a boring special forces type raid thing. You don't need to the team. The team finds Brett and he's. Blinking wildly. Well, kind of, yeah, so the correct cement Toronto. The souls of Brett's feet gashing them, but Brett hardly felt it. He hadn't moved this fast since high school football. Get the **** out of here, he screamed at the American standing 20 yards above him on the stairs. They know you're here. Get out. He heard the sound of a couple of safeties being switched off, and then he saw the guns pointed directly at him. Run, you moron, from head to toe. He didn't have time to explain the blood, however, he didn't have time to explain the bodies of Yusef and his fellow thought, so we don't get any explanation as to he's killed. Bunch of people. Brett has and I guess freed himself. I'm like what the what what happened? We haven't had another chapter of him. So this is just, yeah they're just letting us know that like without. Yeah he he's he's already been working to get out. Here we go. The next page or two is him explaining again. But he's doing this thing where like he's trying to he's, he'll have an action scene and they'll spend 2 pages explaining all the things that happened before that action scene that he was just at. And he keeps doing it this way instead of just telling a story. Like, I hate when people do that. Not just because Ben Shapiro does it, but I hate in general scripts or stories and stuff where you're like, you have to stop and be like, did I miss something? I don't like that. I don't like it. Yeah, because he wanted. He didn't. He didn't want to, like, write a complicated scene where, like, this team breaks in and Brett has to, like, free himself, like, as they're sort of coming in and, like, clearing the building and it's tense. So instead, like, he has them just greet him. Brett's already freed himself. They meet him having freed himself. He warns them that it's a trap. And then we go back for two pages and explain how he freed himself before this all happened so that we can return to the present. Unbelievable. And if you're OK, so if you're going to do that, fine, don't go back and explain it. Just keep moving forward. Like if if if you want to do the thing, we're like, oh, he was already breaking out and that's that's OK. Move on. Yeah. In the last chapter on a night where like and then you know, Brett began to, you know. Hallway at like his his cuffs or something like as the guard walked away or something. And then like, ohh, and then we see him, he's freed himself. Clearly this was set up before. I don't need you to go back to pages and disrupt the flow of the narrative to explain it all in detail, in boring detail, very boring detail of him killing these two Pakistani teenagers or Iranian teenagers. Yeah, also just the phrase standing there idiotically. Just right. And they were just standing there. Sure, he can infer that they shouldn't be standing there like that doing nothing. You don't need to tell us that they're being idiotic about it. Yeah, yeah, it's. And also, I should note here that Brett Hawthorne stabs the teenage boy, guarding him through the eye when he is on the ground. Where did he get a knife? Ohh, I don't know. It happens. I'm not gonna read through this whole stupid fight, but he stabs a teenage boy to death in the eye. That's important for Ben to have happen. You know who won't stop a teenage boy in the eye? Your mom in these in America's current president political climate, I can imagine almost anyone stabbing a teenage boy in the eye. And the right circumstances actually wait to make it real. Yeah, well, that's fair. Works, but it's it's time for it's time for an ad break. Not politics, Robert. It is time for an ad break. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about, or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We're back, Oh my God, I, for 1:00 AM excited about the next chapter, which is going to come after this. So yeah, we also, during the president's chapter, we we went back to. So we cut to the CIA team freeing him like that was us. So we start with the perspective of the President. We moved to the perspective of the CIA team and we immediately go from that to the perspective of Brett Hawthorne, which is how we end the episode without any sort of like. Your break. It's bad. It's horrible. If you're gonna divide your chapters up into characters, stick, carry that. Do the thing that you set up the book to do you, and you don't have to do that. You don't have to say you're going to do that. You have to keep doing that. Otherwise it's very confusing and awkward. Yeah, so I OK, but we know we do get back to. We do get out of. So Brett tells the operatives to run. Run, you morons, he shouted when the operatives finally recognized General Brett Hawthorne, dressed in orange, covered with blood, they turned and ran. They just run like he tells them to run. And these trained CIA operatives just run? Yeah, they smashed their way down the hallway. No time for discretion now. No time for discrete. You're the as the. They smashed their way down the hallway. The basement exploded, rocking the ground beneath them. Two of the men fell. Brett vaulted them, yelling at them to get up, grabbing one, but good God, what a sentence. Two of the men fell; Brett vaulted them, yelling at them to get up, grabbing one by his bulletproof vest and virtually throwing him down the hallway with his good hand. That might be the worst sentence yet. I don't know. That is a real how do you virtually throw? Someone he if he either. No, but I'd like to find out because there's a lot of people I'd like to virtually throw. Yeah, I am. Very upset about that dude. It's been has no idea how to use the active or passive voice. So the very next sentence is civilians heads popped out into the hallway as the explosion registered; They popped out. They bombed out. They pop out. They pop their heads out. Ben, maybe Brett looked over his shoulder to see them engulfed in the flame that poured down the hallway like water through a flooding pipeline. You know, maybe there's another piece of secret Ben Shapiro's understanding and the fact that the civilians. Don't take an action. Their heads just pop out and then they die. But it's not their action. Their heads just pop out into the hallway, whereas Brett gets to have a direct action. He looks over his shoulder because he is is a is a human being. Everyone else is just putting pieces. They probably just pop out their head. Their heads pop out. No, they don't pop out their heads, Cody. Their heads popped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I guess, yes. A blast of heat rocketed him through the door. At the end of the hallway, the other operatives sprinted ahead. One man behind him screamed inhumanly as the fire caught him. In you know, but I'll bet it was. It turned back, pushed the man down into the dust, smelling his sizzling flesh as he tried to put out the flames. The man screams, finally stopped as he fell unconscious. One of the other operatives grabbed the Burning Man by one arm. Brett grabbed the other. Together they ran down the alleyway into the darkness. And then we're back into the situation room. This is the president's chapter, after all. Yes, this is the president. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs turns back to the president and says they knew we were coming, Mr. President, they knew we were coming. What do you mean? Prescott asked. You were just watching the explosion. And then how do you think our guys got out of there so easily? Afterwards? The Iranians must have known as Shami was there. They've been housing them. They just didn't want to fight us directly, that's all. They were expecting a shami's thugs to take our guys out, and when that didn't happen, they backed off. That's a lot of conclusions to draw. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Based on a chaotic video. Seems like it's your job to not do that, but seems like it. Ben needs to inform the audience very directly of what just happened, rather than yeah, because he's not sure that his prose is clear. I gotta clarify a bunch. Yeah, sure. So, but of course the the President thinks the general silly for being disturbed by this and tells him to just take the night off because they rescued Brett Hawthorne, so everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. All the people are stabbed and burned. Everything's fine. So this is Ellen's chapter starts in Austin, TX. She's obviously happy that her husband isn't home. Is coming home. Yeah, he's on. He's on his way back. He Prescott, the president has just called her to tell her that her husband's coming home. She she she she notes that he expected praise from her, and she had to do to fully give it to him. I just given where we are. Yeah. Because he's he's he's he's like Barack Obama. Barack Obama, yeah. He requires the praise. Yeah. Yeah, uh, so she's very happy that her husband's coming home. She hasn't seen him for a year. Prescott's doing a big old victory lap, yadda, yadda, yadda. It wasn't enough for the president to make political hay off of her husband's rescue after abandoning him in Afghanistan. And now he turned Brett's homecoming into a case for widespread troop withdrawals. She should have figured that would have been the next shoe to drop. Really? A deep understanding of America that, like, that's how this country works? Yeah. Yeah, you gotta love that Ben is so disconnected from the basic reality of the things that he gets angry about that he thinks the Democrats have ever supported troop withdrawal in any meaningful way from Afghanistan, as opposed to what happened under Barack Obama, the guy who was president not all that long ago, whose record in Afghanistan you can read about, the guy he's lampooning, the guy he's trying to make a point about? Yes, who massively surged US troop presence in Afghanistan for years. Yeah. Cool. I'm. Yeah. Take your word for it, Ben. Yeah. Good work, Ben. Yeah. So. Prescott talks. Yeah, we're just going through her being disgusted that Prescott wants to take bring American troops home from others. And again, like, this is all just like I and I I don't have the book in front of me, thank God. But I imagine that what you're reading right now is just. Ben describing her thoughts and feelings generally, like over a vaguely time along along with describing what the president is doing and like yeah, I don't know, like write a scene. Write a ******* scene, Ben. Yes, have her like reaction between them, you know, write her, write her sitting and watching TV with her family around her and they all react differently and that gives her something to actually interact with as a person. And we can see her mental state. What do that'd be great between them. He write her watching television when news is announced. Yeah, she's watching it with like her mom and her dad or her uncle, aunts or cousins or whatever. And like, some of them are like, oh the. That's such a nice thing for the president to say. She gets angry and she snaps at them and screams at them and reveals her feelings and also the fact that she's on the ******* razor's edge. And then you have a character like a like a scene in a thing that people might want to read. Robert, just a suggestion. The book. And it's bad, which is why I didn't publish it. There you go. Yes, but like, it's just like, so much of this reads like him summarizing what he wants to happen. It's his summary of a book. Like, you think your book was bad? The one that I read? Yeah, that was a bad. OK, well, I read something nobody else did. It is good. I feel special. I feel special. I feel it's not the topic of discussion now. The topic phenomenal writer Robert Evans, Ben Shapiro's terrible book. You also have a published book that everybody should buy instead of published nonfiction book. But it's very different nonfiction and fiction. , you all should buy it. But so big fan, yeah, Bubba gave gives Ellen the morning off because her husband's getting back from Afghanistan, which the morning like a lot of time to give to give her up. How generous. Yeah, just in the morning they don't even, like. Won't even let him have a nooner like, yeah, I might give him, you know, what? If I'm the boss? You might get a weekend for that. Like, yeah. Breakfast with your husband your your husband was kidnapped and tortured in Iran. Take a 3 day, you know? There's a couple of you go down to Galveston, catch a flesh eating virus. The only thing to do in Galveston, by the way. Monday, though, you're back in this seat or I swear to God, I will fire you and your family will starve on this. And you're going to actually have to stay late on Monday to make up for the time that you took off. Yeah, I'm gonna need like a couple of double shifts Monday, let's say, Monday through Thursday next week to make up for the weekend. Yeah, there we go. I think we figured it out. The phone rang. Ellen hastily checked her bedside clock. It read. 7:56 AM she'd overslept. She'd taken a sleeping pill to calm herself down after the president's speech. Bubba had given slept. She'd taken a sleeping pill to calm herself down after the president's speech. Bubba had given him money. Yadda, yadda, yadda. They terminated the determinant. The Determinately cheery ring continued. She leaned over. Picked up Ellen Hawthorne, she said groggily into the phone. It's me, baby. We get it. You're tired. Yeah, it's me, baby. Involuntarily, tears sprang to her eye. Hearing Lee listened like we could just say. Tears sprang to her eyes and said like like, what are what is the other option here, Ben? She forced tears to her eyes during the phone call at 756 in the morning. Whatever. Oh, God. You're all right, Brett. We don't have time, baby. I'm here. I'm fine. I can't tell you where I am right now. For security reasons, we're not in American airspace yet, but I need you to call Bill. She immediately snapped to attention. Brett didn't need the loving wife right now. He needed the partner. She'd put on that hat. So many times it spring to her without delay. What's going on? I need you to conference in, Bill. He'll know. Why can't you call him directly? I can't explain. I'm your only call. They're monitoring it. You got it. So I guess, like, if you're a general who gets kidnapped and tortured in Iran, like somebody who gets arrested by the cops, you get one phone call. Yep, Yep. Also I just like. In such a short paragraph, so many times, he indicated that she was acting hastily and immediately snapping to attention very quickly. Like, yeah, that's the phrase we get. It doesn't matter. So the bill that they're talking about is some general named Bill Collier that we haven't met before, I don't believe. But yeah, so and again, her husband uses his first and only phone call, presumably to have his wife call another man to deal with problems for him, which I do. Funny. Bill, this is Ellen. I've got bread on the other line. I need to conference you in. Do it. Which is again. Now this is the stuff then you don't need to write out. You can just say she added him to the conversation you like, click the thing on her smartphone like, we don't. We don't need to hear her conference in this other guy into the conversation. Like, yeah, the most unnecessary dialogue juxtaposed with like, no dialogue that we desperately want. Yes. So there's some stupid movie greetings between this old grizzled general who I think is the mentor to Brett and Brett, and then, uh, yeah, Bill, I need you to get your boys on something. I need them to find a known associate of a shamis named Mohammed. Narrow it down, man. Uh-huh. I need you guys. I need your boys to find a guy. He has the most common name on planet Earth. Did you find John yet? I don't know what you're talking about, but you don't have his last name. His name? Joe. Well, why don't you give me something tougher to do? Like find a specific Mexican named Juan. He's coming here to the United States. He's about 5 foot 9140 skinny, maybe 17 years old. Another 17 year old. You just stabbed one to death bin. What is wrong with you? When he was 1717 year olds. It is weird. I don't like it. Skinny, maybe 17 years old. Blue eyes, angular face, sharp big nose. Get your boys out if there's not much time. So we're looking for a big nose boy named Mohammed. I can't. Get Me Out of the mohammads with all the noses you can find. Give me every nose you see. Uh, God. Then he hangs up. That's all the info he gets on. OK? He could have said I love you to his wife. Uh, no, no, he's still on the line with with Ellen. They they just this was a conference call. Right. He wants, he wants, he wants General Brett Hawthorne to only have one phone call for story reasons that are unclear as of yet. But he also needs him to talk to multiple people. So we're doing this awkward ********. Hung up. You met Brett Hawthorne. Hung up. All right, he's still on the line. He also. I think he also wants Ellen and Brett to be like a ****** patriot team, but the only thing he can think of her to do is to act as the center of a of a 3 way phone call. So that's worth noting. Like, it's like we're talking like it's some Star Trek 1960 ******** right? Right before, before, you know. Anyway, I'm sure Ben thinks it's a big deal. Are you OK, honey? Ellen asked after she knew Collier had clicked off the line. She could hear him sigh audibly if she could hear him sigh, Ben. Then by definition, it was audibly so if you could, she could hear him sigh. There's the sentence you could OK, I don't know. Sweet side, yeah, he said. He said. He sides so many ways to cut words out of this. Yeah, that don't help. Yeah. I don't know. Well, it's like they say, brevity is the soul of like, you gotta use the words, right? Yeah. Ohrady is the soul of all the words: the words that you gotta use, you gotta use them so that people understand what you're saying. The words that is the words that you use. Brevity airily. I love that. That Shakespeare quote. Yep. Yep. Alright, so so ** *** hears him sigh audibly. Alright, she hears him say audibly. I don't know, sweetheart. I don't know what I'm doing here, why I'm doing it, what they did to my guys in Afghanistan. I know, sweetheart. I know that's not a conversation. Ellen, I wasn't supposed to live. That wasn't the message I gave. I blinked. Air strike. Not tactical mission. Not rescue air strike. Are you bummed that they used a surgical method that rescued you and didn't kill dozens of people? Also, like, a Shami was gone. The bad guy was gone. The air strike would not have. OK, like, also he's he's like, mad. He's like, I shouldn't be alive. I said air strike you and whatever. I wanted him to bomb Tehran. But you escaped. You did the escaping. Yeah, yeah. You were also like, you stepped that 17 year old boy to death, right? Like you saved those CIA agents. Unbelievable, yes. But, sweetheart, you're alive. You're coming home. I know you feel guilty. I know you never meant to leave your men behind. But you alive is better than you dead. Me alive is better than a Shami dead. He was there, Ellen. He was there. I gave him the location. I knew they'd have time to take the shot, but there's no explanation as to why. Because they've like, film and edit a video and then put it out. And he's a terrorist. Whatever the press got. Damn him. Didn't have the balls. He just didn't. And that was shamis out there planning. He's smart, Ellen. Smart as hell. And he steps ahead of us. We were lucky to get out of there alive. If it hadn't been for a stupid thug named Yusuf, we'd all be. 17 year old thug. We'd all be dead and Prescott wouldn't have an international incident. Would have an incident, international incident on his hand anyway. Dead Americans and their body parts spread all over Tehran. Damn the man. Damn him. Again, like the the reason to hate this President is that he didn't do an air strike. He didn't immediately jump to an air strike based on a man blinking. Very cool. Yeah, so. So she's happy that her husband's coming home. Oh, God, I have to read this part, even though I think it might actually kill me to say ohh. No, like, I don't know that I'm going to live through this. She found tears in her eyes again. Her man's her strong, unwavering man is so ready to die. That's not a sentence. Not a sentence, bin. But you're coming home, sweetheart. You're coming home. On the other end of the phone, she could hear her husband exhale. You're right, he said slowly. I'm coming home. Take a bullet for you, babe. She said. Take a bullet for you, sweetheart. The Lion kicked, clicked dead. What? Yeah, that's how they end all their phone calls. I know, I know. It makes it. It's the worst thing I've ever seen on paper. With authority, I can say this. With conviction. If I made it this far, I would slam the book down here. If I made it this far, you wouldn't have. No, but oof. Yeah, I've read just straight up Nazi propaganda that was less pain inducing in its prose than that sentence. Like, Jesus. It's real slog, Ben. We have to take another break, don't we? Yeah. Yeah. And in case you're listening, I am comparing this unfavorably to the Turner Diaries. Like the Turner Diaries too, so he sure has. Yeah. Ohh. But you know what doesn't read? Like the Turner Diaries? The products and services that support this podcast. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy. At Mint mobilcom slash behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy. And better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try. Better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey. And if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behindbetter. Com behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We are. We are back. We are back in reading Ben Ship Heroes Roll roll roll book. I don't know. I do want to thank let's let's take a moment before we dive back into this story to think about the fact that Herman Cain died from COVID-19 after attending a Trump rally, and now the people who run the social media accounts he used to tweet from when he was alive are tweeting that it's not a real virus. And that's that's pretty great. That's a hard pivot, but I'm here for it. Yeah, it's wild. Not not that convincing, but it is art. It is art. It's it's it says literally everything that matters about the time we're in right now. No one, no one even really cares. Like it's it's not it's not something people give a **** about. Yeah, it's gone. It's it's it's it's seven done and gone. It's one of those stories that takes my already full cup a little bit over the edge in such a way that you're like, I'm mad about it. I have to let it spill. I have to let it roll down the side this container and evaporate. Yeah, that was a little bit of a poetic metaphor. A poeta for a poet before, huh? Let's get back to this bad ******* joy, Katie. Let's let's let's let's get back. I keep yawning and it's not because of you guys. Ohh no, it's because I didn't sleep well. No, it's the book. Are we still in the Ellen chapter? It's like, God, yeah, we're. I think we're yeah, we are still OK yeah, because they're still on the phone or like, they just hung up. They just hung up. Cutest way possible. Soups, adorbs. And then and then the next paragraph just lets us know that Bill Collier got a call from his wife a minute and 29 seconds later and he let it go to voicemail because he was tracking down the man named Mohammed. How does Ellen? And then we're back to, I don't know that that paragraph just happens with no understanding of like, how we're aware of that, how our anyway, it just is there. And then we're back to Ellen in a separate pair. Like he's writing SparkNotes for his book. He doesn't just like that. Unbelievable. Yeah. The first phone call Ellen received came from Bubba, which it didn't. She he told her to turn on the television. When she did, she saw the George Washington Bridge tilting and low motion. Oh, so there's been a terrorist attack. On the bridge. Yeah. So, wow. And this just is all one paragraph that the George Washington Bridge has been blown up and the president vowed to take care of the perpetrators. One single paragraph and that he's mobilizing National Guard troops to go to New York City. One paragraph. We we learn all of that information after. Yeah. Just, just. But then standing, if I'm reading this book, I'm skipping a lot of paragraphs. So I might have skipped that one. Yeah. Yeah. Then you'd go right to. Then she heard a knock at her door. Then, being after realizing that another 911 had just occurred and the president had already reacted to it and the National Guard had been mobilized. Then she heard a knock at her door. When she opened it, Bubba was standing there. His face looked gaunt, ashen. She ushered him into the living room, where he settled his bulk into her leather couch. I got a call from Prescott. He wants our boys out here there ASAP. I know. I saw it on the news. I won't send them, Ellen. She shuddered involuntarily. You know by law that you have to. The National Guard can be mobilized by the president once a national emergency. Been declared under the Under Posse Comitatus. That isn't totally clear, but this ain't about law anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. We pull our troops off that border and I'll have more dead ranchers on my hands, more children floating in that river. I don't have the stomach for that. I do believe there might be enough National Guardsmen to both clean up from a bridge being bombed in New York and to do whatever ******** they're doing on the border. We kind of have a lot of them. Is the whole National Guard on the border? Just all of them, huh? Every hand. Unbelievable. Not perfectly believable. I misspoke. Very believable. Yeah. So, OK. So it's just, it's OK. So yeah. So OK. So it's just, it's OK. So it's the governor of Texas is not sending his states National Guard to help New York because they're needed at the border. That makes more sense. OK like, yeah, use other people. Yeah. They're the only thing standing between US and a full scale invasion. The invasion is in slow motion. Invasion. Yeah. The invasion, yeah. Yeah. And and the response to that is the invasion is slow motion. That situation in New York. Isn't which I guess is just been doing some straight up ******* white supremacist **** right there. Wow. Yeah, it does slow motion invasion. They're going to infect us. Yeah, that's good. She glances at the television. The rescue pool was. Crew was pulling another body from the water, a young girl wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt. It was footage Ellen knew from 911 that they'd only showed a day during live coverage. Then the psychiatrist would explain to the network. Brett. Jesus. Yeah. What's going on? Sentence. So Ellen is, you know, guilt ridden because she cares about what's happening in New York City, and she watched 911 happen in person, I think. And she's horrified that her boss. Isn't going to send troops to help with the explosion that just happened in New York, and so she turns back to the TV, and I'm going to read the sentence here. The rescue crew crew was pulling another body from the water dash, a young girl wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt. It was footage, Ellen knew from 911, that they'd only show today, during live coverage dash. Then the psychiatrist would explain to the network brass that showing such images was triggering, and the pictures would disappear to spare the sensitivities of the American viewer. It's not God that's a sentence. That is. How did she know also what she knew from 911 cause in 911? They showed horrible bloody footage and then they stopped showing horrible bloody footage all the time. News agencies show things that are not footage from 911 of dead people, and that's bad. A. A really dumb question of mine, but did people end up in the river in 911? Umm. I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think the river was a big part of 911. This is, I mean, it's just like, I don't know, there more. Yeah. It's badly blocked. The whole thing is the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. I think I know what he's saying, but not because of his writing. That's fine. We don't need to understand it. Let's give it like, it's it's it's like the nine, like 911 happened. They showed footage, and that was damaging psychologically. And and and she knows that. And so when she sees this new footage of this new terrorist attack, it makes her think, like, oh, they shouldn't be showing this footage, right. Is that what he's saying? I think that they know she's saying that there's footage from 911 of somebody being pulled from a river. And they're playing. No, she that's not. She's just saying that the footage from 911 that was very gory didn't get played enough after 911 because psychiatrists explained that that's triggering and they wanted to spare people sensitivities. And the idea is that, no, we should always be aware of how bloody 911 was and never stop showing people horrible footage from it. That's that's what is happening there. That's what shouldn't have had to think about this sentence so much anyway. It's a bad sentence, which is why we're trying to figure it out. Yeah. So at the end of this bubbas like, you know, look, I'm not going to send the National Guard. And Ellen's like, what's the president going to do if you turn him down and bubbles, like, well, he's not going to send the National Guard after me because they're all in New York. And that's basically where this ends. So next is a chapter we have learned nothing about Ellen. Very little, very little about anyone, pretty cool wife. I don't know. Everything in that chapter that happened just happened to Ellen. How many chapters are there left? Enough for a few more episodes. That's for darn sure we're about. We're, we're about to be. We're about like 40% of the way through Part 2 collapse. And I don't know what this book is about, of the book is the end of the beginning. I don't know either, Kate. With the end of the beginning, didn't he? Yeah, yeah. Ben wanted to write this into a series, but then it was unreadable. But then it was. Yeah, it was bad. Yeah, it was a horrible book. Don't call your shot like that, buddy. No, don't call your shot like that, buddy. So Soledad chapter, she's in Minot, ND, now from South. Southern California, which is quite a trek. They're not close, not close places to one another. Yeah, they made their way to the farm gradually. They may. They'd made their way to the farm gradually. At first, there were only a few friends and family of the militia members and agglomeration of survivalists and nuts. I don't belong here, Soledad thought. Then she realized that they were here because of her. Minot, ND, lay near the banks of the Souris River, a mid size town of 40,000 just South of the Canadian border. It was truly the middle of nowhere, Soledad thought. They'd move north and north, the north, some more out of the populated areas, out where it would take a lot of manpower to track them down. They're newly been tracked down in California. The authorities still thought they were there, having originally believed mistakenly. That they've been burnt, that they've been burned during the fire at the ranch. By the time investigators caught on to the fact that they were still alive, they were in Idaho. Every few days they moved until they reached Mineau in Mineau. Aiden had allies and friends. His parents had come from there before moving S and he still had a pack of relatives tell you summarize an exciting journey across the country while being tracked by federal agencies in a couple of paragraphs. Because, like, we don't have time to who cares? **** this **** yeah? Why would we want scenes in a book? He should just write blah blah, blah, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, yeah, we just wound up there. So, OK, they they're hunkering down with Aiden's family along with a bunch of an in an undetermined number of bikers and survivalists and militia members. Who? Whatever. You could be the guys that decoded Brett's message. Probably right. We're probably gonna learn that. Yeah, they're they're yeah, they've got a plan. They start recruiting people, local boys who didn't want to be sent. Oh, boy. Yeah, they're all 17. Yeah, yeah. People who didn't want to get called up to the National Guard. But I guess legally we're supposed to get called up and instead join a militia, which I believe is treason. I I I suspect you could. That's at least like modest treason. Yeah, this is mild treason. Mild treason. So yeah, she starts recruiting people and building a base in North Dakota and builds up eventually a small force of nearly 40. Soledad knows all of them. She had a gift for connecting with people. It was the same gift that made her the staple of the Evening News coverage, and she was truly interested in all of them. It flattered most of them. All of them were grateful for a place to go again. We just hear this. We don't meet any of these people, obviously. Yeah, yeah. No, we're we're reading a a constant montage. Yeah, he's riding a great epic. We don't have time for the nitty gritty or for pleasantries. Yep. So we learned about her little little posse. They're starting to run short on money. Yadda yadda. Yeah, it's it's pretty boring stuff. Uh, we're just talking about, like, how she's just gonna say how Aiden, like, goes to a bar after buying groceries to to sit and, like, watch the news sometimes. God, I'm so glad I know that detail. Yeah. What? Great. So he learns. So I know nothing about this person from that. So, and again, Ben uses this detail of of this Aiden's the Secret Service man who shot down the helicopter. OK. Right, right, right. So he goes to a bar. After buying groceries to have a beer and, like, watch TV and and and catch up on the news coverage, because they're not, they don't have any Internet access or television like where they're all hiding out. And this is mainly an opportunity for Ben to spend several more paragraphs talking about the foreign policy impacts of the the the raid on Tehran and Ibrahim Rashami's attack and all of that stuff. And his victory speech is a terrorist. So it's all just more like. News dumping **** as opposed to. I mean, I guess this is a little bit of something, right? This is actually, this is actually an improvement for Ben. I'll give him that, because normally Ben just tells us where a character is, spends several pages talking about things that just happened that we don't see off screen, and then moves on to like, the narrative. And in this case, he's attempted to weave this info dump, which we get every chapter one of these infodumps. He's attempted to weave it into the narrative because at least here Aiden sitting at a bar, getting angrier and he like. Shatters the bottle in his hand, cutting it because he's so angry at the news. This is. This at least does build something of a character and shows him like it. It it's it's a little bit better than just giving it a dump of things that happened. Yes, yeah, it illustrates a viewpoint and like an emotion and a reaction from a character. It is still a montage though. Yeah, it is still a montage. And then Aiden's flipping channels after breaking the beer and cutting his hand, and he comes across MSNBC covering the streets of Detroit and our our friend Levon. You remember Levon, the crack dealer who's friends with oh boy, do I whatever, yeah, yeah, things could get this could get out of control, the reporter said, a hopeful gleam unmistakably shining in his eye. This morning, a leader of the Uprising 1, Levon Williams, posted a list of. Demands on the website of the fight against injustice and racism movement. That's what they're calling the fair movement. Here's what we know about Levon Williams. He's a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in African American studies, no police record model. Citizen, by all accounts, owns a barbershop on eight Mile Rd. According to public interviews he's done. He came back to the community in an effort to bring prosperity home. The shooting of Kendrick Malone. So, yeah, we just have this other character who hasn't had any direct connection to Detroit, learning about the things happening with one of the other characters in Detroit. Through the news at a bar, because that's how you write a thrilling novel. So now we're just, we're just playing an interview with one of the other characters that a character who has not met that character is watching on TV in a completely different location that has nothing to do with great, incredible writing. Whose chapter is this? This is this is soledad's chapter also. That's what I thought. That is exactly yeah, we're, we're, we've moved on to someone completely different listening. To an extended interview with someone else completely different. Because this is a well written book, yeah. Again, like pages go by and we're talking about levon's theories for how the police force should be redone and like, it's just. Amazing. Yeah. Soledad, sitting on the porch of a cabin. We're back to her. That's good. Yeah. OK. Yeah, yeah, she's she's sipping tea. An old, grizzled old recruit named Ezekiel Pope, who's black and comes from Los Angeles, comes up to talk to her. I'm sure he's got some wisdom here. Can't wait. Yeah. Yeah. He was a Lieutenant Colonel, and he had been pulled into his superior's office just after the New York attack, told to round up his men and get ready to ship out to New York. For some reason, he'd come to Soledad instead. So just again, another dude committing some treason to go hang out in North Dakota with an unclear goal again, like, for some reason he did this. Talk about it. Just, like, have her, like, show me. I can't even explain. Have him explain, like, why he's doing like, she's. She's, you know, having a long, dark tea time of the soul because she's brought all these people out here and everything's getting worse. And she doesn't know what to do. And this guy says, you know, I followed you for this reason or, you know, here's what happened to me. And like, I decided, like, wherever you were going to go, that's where I was going to go to. And, like, then she knows she has the confidence to do the thing that's necessary next or whatever, like *******. And we, the reader, understand and are slightly more engaged with what's going on. Yeah. But instead, like, we make, it's made. They're reclear by Ben. That Soledad actually has no controller agency in in this situation, Aiden said. Aiden said he hadn't given reason for the for deserting, but that he's but he. But he said that Ezekiel was trustworthy. Soledad had no option but to trust Aiden's judgment. Ezekiel looked over the snow, falling silently into itself. He wore heavy work gloves on his hand and an M4 slung over his shoulder, a maroon scarf around his neck. Soledad gestured at the gun. What's that for? We're gearing up. Gearing up for what? Well, you tell us. After all, you're the terrorist. , that's what we're calling you now. You know, ever since the escape, she felt sick to her. So they're just, like, picking up guns for no reason and saying, like, OK, we're all gonna go do something. You have to tell us what? Like? But it's not up to you to tell us to get armed in the 1st place. We're just all going to get armed. And then to tell you it's time to figure out something random to do. I don't know. None of this makes any sense. Unclear isn't how people act. Yeah. That's how they act in bread and breads, Ben's brain. Yeah, I hate this book. Yeah. So this guy tells her that the best defense is a good offense, and when you're forced to small concentrate it and hit them well, they're weak. And she asks who are they? And he says the same people who shut down your farm, the people who attacked you, which are back in California and they're in North Dakota. And he tells her that they have to move or die now. And it's very unclear as to who he wants her to shoot or why or who they could shoot that would improve their situation or how it would be related to her farm being destroyed in South in Southern California. But but that's where this ends. Yeah. Is him saying we've got to move or die and we have to hurt the people who hurt you? Who are thousands of miles away. It's great chapter, Ben. It is a great chapter. And you know what? I think it's about time that we call this one a day at the beach. Yeah, I think so. Our next chapters are leave on chapter. I'm sure that's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to that. We'll get back to this. Don't worry, friends. By the time we get to this next, uh, it might just be a full on civil war like the one been perfectly predicted here and once. What a nice escape this has been. It is a nice escape. It's a nice escape. Into a world of people being very wrong. Yeah, on purpose, seemingly. Yeah. Katie Cody, would you like to plug your plug cables? Ohh, you know it more than anything. You guys can check out our other stuff. Over at some more news, which Cody hosts night produce, we have a podcast called even more news. And we also cohost worst year ever with Robert. We sure do. Cody, give some yeah, we got a patreon.com/somemore news. You can follow me on the social medias Dr Mr Cody and Katy Stoll at Katie Stoll. Yeah, yeah, those are the things Robert is eye right. OK, on Twitter, we have social media at ******** spot on Twitter and Instagram. We have a tea public store. And that is all book is draining. Yeah, I don't have energy. I feel like I just died. Could be everything, but I think it's it's also one day. It's ******* Monday on the unnecessarily long month of August. So long podcast over. Love you all. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Bye. End of the beginning. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break her handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.