BONUS: Forgotten History with Rachel Maddow
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Welcome back, Snafu listeners. We're back to discuss a dicey subject, a far-right coup, an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States of America. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. Thank you.

Nope, not that one. In the United States District Court, Washington, D.C., Chief Justice Edward C. Eicher presides at the trial of 30 alleged seditionists. There we go. That's the one. That's right, my friends. Back in 1944, the Nazis tried to overthrow the U.S. government with the help of some U.S. congressmen, no less.

I'm talking about the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, which is the subject of a history podcast hosted by Rachel Maddow called Ultra. Now, Ultra and Snafu have a lot in common. Both podcasts are deep dives into important moments in American history, which are largely forgotten. And yet they feel oddly prescient to our world today.

So naturally, I wanted to sit down and talk with Ultra's creator. So today I'm coming into your feed with a treat, my conversation with Rachel Maddow about Ultra and Snafu. We talk about these two extraordinary stories, forgotten history in general, the roots of authoritarianism, and how it all weaves into current events.

Rachel is well known for being a rigorous on-air journalist, author, and podcaster. She's curious, a deep thinker, profoundly insightful, and pretty damn funny, all of which makes her a hell of a lot of fun to talk to. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot, and I think you will too. So here it is, my chat with Rachel Maddow. Hello?

Hi, it's Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow. It's so cool to meet you. This is awesome. Nice to meet you too. It's great. This is very exciting. Uh,

Indeed. I agree. Thanks so much for jumping into our snafu universe. So what's happening? Where are you? I'm in rural Dirt Road, Western Massachusetts. Dirt Road. I don't know that town. It's kind of the ambient vibe of where I am. We're really out in the middle of nowhere. It's fantastic. What are you hiding from, Rachel? What's going on? You've...

Humans? Yeah. Okay. That's fair. Are you in a bunker? What's weird, actually, and this is true, the cottage that I'm in right now, this little house in which we built this audio studio and stuff so I can do my TV show from here, has a legit nuclear bomb shelter. Yeah.

in the basement. Because you built it or because it was already there? No, it was there. It was built by whoever had this house in the 50s. And it's got concrete like this and triple rebar. And when we came in to like flatten out the floor and make everything normal, the contractor was like, we have to leave the basement. Can I tell you something? I'm not like a crazy prepper kind of doomsday person, but like

I would like to have a bunker. It just seems like a nice option. Yeah. All right. Well, this is fun. I would love to go deeper into apocalypse preparation, but we have some really fun stuff to talk about. First of all, your podcast, Ultra, is

was the number one podcast on Apple for what, like five weeks, a bunch of weeks. A bunch of weeks. It was number one and then it was less than number one and then it was back up to number one again. So it was really a surprise and very exciting. Yeah. And very well-deserved. I listened to it twice.

I just had it was so fun. I listened to it all the way through. And then I was like, I got to hear that again, but I don't have as much time. So I listened to it at like one point eight speed. And and it's funny when you listen to something sped up like that.

Everyone sounds unbelievably intelligent. I had the opposite problem, which is that my doctor, who is, you know, my doctor, like kind of my friend, but my doctor, texted me all concerned that there was something wrong with me because he had listened to Ultra and he was like, you really, I know you've had issues with depression and stuff in the past and you really, turns out he was listening to it on 0.75 speed. Oh my God. And he thought I,

I was really down. That's amazing. He thought he had special medical insight into what was going on with this podcast. Yeah, it's amazing. Great. Ultra, it is an extraordinary story. It is extremely well told. It's incredibly engaging and really, really fun. And I would love to, just for our snafu listeners, if you haven't heard Ultra, it's

Can you break it down? Just like what's the basic story? The basic story is in the lead up to World War II, there was a really, really big national

Nazi, and I mean that specifically. I don't mean like Nazis. I mean the Nazis. Big Nazi effort to try to exploit what the Germans called kernels of disturbance in the United States. And so they were trying to propagandize us really heavily. They supported a bunch of American native fascist movements that were way scarier than we remember them in history. And they

paid a bunch of members of Congress and senators to be on their side for this effort. And it all sort of culminated in the great sedition trial of 1944, when nearly 30 of the folks who were involved with the Nazis in these various plots got put on trial and they got off. There was a mistrial and they were all let go. It's so profound, this story. It is so intense. And it's

Totally mind blowing. In your description just now, you said the trial was the great sedition trial of what, 1940? 44. 44. That implies that this was like a landmark event that we all know and understand. What's so incredible about this story to me among there's lots of things incredible about it, but one of the most incredible things is how forgotten it is.

And it's something that I think our podcasts share, which is the sort of forgotten history stories that are insanely important. And one of the historians in your podcast actually says at one point, I'm a PhD in history and most of my colleagues who are PhDs in history have never heard of this. And so then, of course, the general public has no idea.

And I wonder why is it forgotten? Well, you know, I was thinking about the parallels with that and with Abel Archer with what you cover in Snafu. And I think there is something that's, like, important for us to reflect on as people who tell stories and who are interested in history, which is that sometimes the reason something is forgotten—

is because of who won and who lost, right? Right, of course. The good news— History is told by the winners. History is told by the winners, and sometimes what the winners most want is for us to forget that the thing happened. Right.

And that's definitely, I feel like that's a little bit of the story that you unfold in Snafu. Like with the CIA doing its assessment of what happened with Abel Archer and whether it was a close call, they're like, no, no, no, it was fine. It was no big deal. Yeah.

Right. And that's part of the history that you uncover and that you tell in the story. But it's also important that the CIA wants it to be minimized, wants it not to be remembered as a significant thing. Right. And a sort of different version of that happens in my story where –

The good news ending, to the extent that there is one, is that all of the elected officials who were part of this plot, who were the real bad guys here, the public knew enough, they found out enough about what those guys were up to that they voted them all out of office. Right. Like, all but one of them got voted out of office. And so even though a lot of them were...

Household names, really influential members of the House and the Senate at the time, once they got turfed out by voters who were disgusted by their behavior, they went from being big deals to being losers, and the losers get forgotten. And so part of the history that we have to contend with is how much are the players here minimized in history, either because it's convenient for somebody or because the good guys won, and how much does that affect voters?

whether this story is easy to find or easy to be told. So I find that dynamic interesting because you have to put yourself then in the story in terms of how hard it is for you to find these things. Well, it's a little bit of a scary reality when you think the forgotten stories of history

are very often some of the most important because the reason that they're forgotten is that they were either painful or embarrassing or extremely problematic. And yet those are the things that we do have the potential to learn the most from. And the other circumstance in which that happens is because

It was a really scary thing, and some Americans or some characters in the story rose up and did the right thing and neutralized the danger. Right. And that's great. Yeah. But that's also – those heroes, we also need to learn that story. Yeah. So it can be like a deliberate shunt this way. Let's not think about it. But it can also be a like, whew.

Close call. Let's forget about it. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Okay. So how the hell did you find it? Like with Snafu, we knew we wanted to do a podcast and we wanted to do something kind of history and irreverent.

and we set about looking for the thing. Did you know you wanted to do a podcast and look for something exciting and meaningful, or did you just dig up this story or stumble on it and then say, this has to be told? So I was, I sort of feel like all the best stories that I've ever been involved in telling

come out of ignorance, like come out of legitimate curiosity. Like, I don't understand where this came from or this thing that everybody thinks makes sense to them doesn't make sense to me. And I was going through that sort of train of thought just as part of my news, you know, my day job at MSNBC, thinking about Holocaust denial. So we're having this big upsurge in anti-Semitism and kind of

anti-Semitism wedded to political power, which is a very dangerous thing. And at the core of all of it is this sort of burbling thing where people say the Holocaust didn't happen. And I've always felt like it's not obvious to me

how that can exist intellectually. Sure. Like, it's one thing to be prejudiced. It's another thing to say this obvious thing in history of which we have all this proof, I choose to contend that it didn't happen. And so I was interested in where that came from, and particularly where it came from in the first instance. Like, how early on did people start denying it? And what I found, to my surprise, is that Holocaust denial really came from the United States. It didn't come from Germany. Right.

And it happened really early on. It happened in the 40s. Wow. Which is nuts because there's all these American GIs. Yeah. And...

And refugees from Europe, including refugees from Germany, coming here who are eyewitnesses, who are survivors, who had family members killed or who were liberating the concentration camps. I mean, it's all this irrefutable evidence. And yet, this thing emerges in the late 40s in the United States and then starts pinging around the world where we're going to say that didn't happen. So, I was interested in where the hell did that come from and why? And who were the characters who drew this up, knowing that it was false but concocting it for a political reason? Yeah.

And in trying to figure that out, which is a story I'm still going to tell, but I haven't gotten there yet, I realized that actually those folks came out of this milieu during World War II in the United States that we've forgotten about. And they all went on trial. And, oh, my God, the judge died in the middle of the trial and they were all set free. And then what happened to them? So it ended up being kind of the prequel.

to the story that I wanted to tell, but I realized there was enough there that I should probably tell it. That is fascinating. I feel like that's

Kind of how some of the best stories do come about. Can I ask you a snafu question about that? Please. Yeah. I thought the thing that I most admired about the storytelling in snafu was your sort of fearlessness about casting doubt on the story. So obviously there's, I mean, for everybody's listened to it, like there's lots of twists and lots of, you know, backing up and reconsidering stuff that's earlier been presented. And I wondered when you constructed the story and when you decided to do it,

Did you know about the doubt and uncertainty and sort of wooliness of the bottom line of that story when you started? Or did you think it was a more certain story when you started and you only got to that, you know, more mature, complex bottom line once you were into it in the middle of the research? Yeah, it was the latter. Like everything you read about Abel Archer in the sort of

to the extent that it's in the zeitgeist, just little blips and blurbs. It sounds like a very cut and dry thing. But like anything, the more you dig, the more nuanced it becomes. And then it became for us as storytellers, just feeling a kind of responsibility to reflect that nuance and the complexity. You know, even historians have some different perspectives on it that are

that are very meaningful. I don't know, we really wanted to lean into the integrity of it and that made it a little bit messier of a story. But ultimately, the messiness kind of gave rise to some really exciting questions and kind of pontifications. And that's really where we wound up kind of putting the focus in that last episode.

Well, it makes it more profound and more real. It also makes it more of a contribution to the history of it, right? To have all the interviews that you do and to have an honest reflection of –

the real, you know, the legitimate contention with the various facts and the various perspectives on it, it's, A, it's a real work of history with all the jokes included, but also it does get you to a more profound place in terms of getting, I think, encouraging critical thinking about seemingly cut and dry episodes. I thought, I just thought that was really, like I said, mature and complex and cool. Yeah.

Go on. Also, you guys, you're just so handsome. No, I'm literally like getting chills. That means so much to hear from you, Rachel. I really, really appreciate that. And yeah, we really put a ton of work into it. And so that means a lot.

For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.

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I think you had it harder than I did because in my case, the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 is forgotten. The only histories of it have been written by people who sympathized with the fascist defendants. And so all the histories of it have all been about how they were railroaded and it was terrible that these people were put on trial and how ridiculous this contention that the Nazis were working with any Americans. Do you believe how prejudiced the Department of Justice is against good American conservatives?

And so all the history, all the history of it was really biased and all in the same direction. And nobody had ever revisited that history looking at it from a more balanced perspective. And so I didn't have to contend with

sort of, you know, great, nuanced, honest broker perspectives on both sides. There was just a bunch of claptrap written about it. And nobody had ever done a broader, less, I think, in my, from my perspective, less biased look at the evidence. Wasn't, I thought Raghi wrote a book, but were you able to dig that up? Is that, is that findable? Yeah.

Ish. Yeah. I mean, if you want to get a copy of it, I can maybe give you a deal. I think I own all the copies of it. It never had like a second printing. It never went anywhere. So tell us who Raggi is because I just brought him up out of the blue. So Raggi is O. John Raggi, who is a German-American, interestingly enough. He grows up in the United States, son of German immigrants, speaking German at home. And he's this wunderkind of...

lawyer and prosecutor and Justice Department official, and he ends up being the crusading prosecutor who tries to bring the sedition trial home, who tries to finish it, who fights against the mistrial. And the great twist in my story, in Ultra, is when, as the trial is falling apart, Raghi gets leave to go to Germany, and...

He gets to try to prove his contention that these weren't just conservative Americans who had their own anti-Semitic fascist ideas. They were actually working with the Nazi government. They were being paid by the Germans in many instances. He gets to prove that from the German side, and he interviews all these Nazi prisoners. And they, in fact, give him all the dirt on all the Americans they were working with. And so he's able to prove the collusion, if you will, from the other side. Yeah.

And by the time he brings those findings home to the United States, we have won the war. Everybody wants to move on. Raggi has become a political figure in a way that he is very much demonized by one side and then ultimately by the other side.

And nobody really wants to hear it. And so he does create this really valuable historical record. But by the time it lands, he finally gets it published. He has to fight with the Justice Department to get it declassified and all this stuff. By the time it finally lands in the public record, it's 1961. And this is ancient history. And nobody buys the book. And nobody reviews it. And nobody stocks it in their archives. And it just disappears until—

You know, all these decades later, that story ends up being of interest to me because of its resonance with our current situation. And it's and thank God he did it because the records there, even though nobody cared about it in his lifetime and he died in obscurity. It just raises so many fascinating questions and issues. OK, so anti-Semitism or racism in all its forms, these are things that

Most people agree are bad, right? They're just bad. Bad and gone. Yeah, you're right. They also seem embedded in most modern emergences of fascism. Yeah. I know throughout history, totalitarianism pops up in many different forms all over the political spectrum. But fascism, and I ask this not as any kind of indictment of conservatism, but...

Fascism in particular seems to bubble up from the right. Why do you think that is? Well, I mean, I do think that there's

There's different types of authoritarianism, right? And there's definitely left-wing authoritarianism as well. Of course. And when you're talking about tyrannical forms of government, right-wing authoritarianism, which in some instances is fascism, not always, but in some instances is fascism, ends up having a recurrent appeal in our country and in other Western democracies that

I think because people don't like democracy. I mean, the basic idea of democracy is that everybody gets a say. And if you think that democracy

You and people like you should get a say, but other people shouldn't. That's an instinct that people have. And there can be left-wing authoritarianism, which is a different drive and comes from a different place and leads to mass murder. Just as much mayhem, of course. Just as much mayhem. But on the right, the way it works is—

Me and my people, we're the only people who should count as citizens. The other people who are technically, you're telling me I ought to be part of this democracy, are lesser than or evil or they're interlopers. And we not only need to exclude them from the decision-making process, but we need to blame them for all the things that are going wrong here. And we need to exclude them from the decision-making process and punish them for all the terrible things they've done because if it was just us in charge, everything would be fine. And that's the basic idea. And that's why—

authoritarianism on the right almost always comes with anti-Semitism. It's either going to be anti-Semitism or it's going to be some other

Thing that looks like anti-Semitism that is directed towards some other minority group because you need some out group to define as the source of all the problems because you, the in group, are perfect. And if you were just given full control, everything would be fine. Right. And it's just – it's dumb and it's simple and it's recurrent. Yeah. And – Well, humans, we're dumb. Yeah. Humans are dumb. We do dumb things.

And we don't remember what the old dumb things were. So the new dumb things come around and we're like, whoa, wait, you're telling me it's the Jews?

Yeah. Shocker. There's that great Hegel quote. The only thing we've learned from history is that we learn nothing from history. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on how we can do better. It feels like in with modern technology, we should be able to be better at learning from from history. But maybe we're just not wired for it in our DNA.

I think that, you know, fart jokes helps. Uh-huh. Okay. You know, like when, you know, you did that whole riff on like the Valentine's, like I have so many treasons that I love you, like Valentine's for spies. Uh-huh. And, you know, like the little fake game show that you inserted into like, like the, it's storytelling skill and upping the entertainment quotient in direct ratio with the complexity of the story that you're telling. Yeah.

That helps. Like, I don't know that that's technological innovation, but it's an evolution of our sort of ambition to make these stories understandable, memorable, repeatable, you know, both on TV and in this kind of podcast and book world that I'm in, too. I try to tell stories in such a way that

that they stick. And so even if you can't persuade somebody else to listen to Ultra, or you can't persuade somebody else to read my book about Spiro Agnew, if you listen to the podcast, or if you read that book, you will have absorbed the story well enough that you can give somebody the gist of it and pass it on. And that's what you're doing in Snafu. That's the whole idea of doing real history that's rigorous,

And honest and intellectually engaged with the ambiguities and all those things. But it's also fun. And it's also not homework. It's just, it's something that's a pleasure. And I think that's, you know, if you've got those skills, that's a mitzvah. That's a service to humanity and to our country to use them that way.

Yeah, you got to give people some candy with the vegetables, right? You got to do your Nancy Astrologer stuff. It turns out to be important. It is. It's crazy how important astrology was in the Reagan administration. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Growing up in the 80s in San Francisco, I have to tell you, the fact that Nancy's astrologer was in San Francisco, I remember being like kind of proud. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that's funny. This idea that like the Rasputin pulling the strings in the Reagan White House might be this lady in Nob Hill. It's actually like a source of regional pride for me. Oh, that's great. I think the thing that I feel like is missing is and maybe this is a maybe Rachel, maybe this is a book pitch for us. Maybe we do a book together and it's basically like the lessons of history. These are the lessons.

And then here are the events that teach us those lessons. So you can no longer say like, well, I don't know how to interpret that or I don't know what to learn from that. Like we need a compendium of the lessons. Lesson 17, stop blaming the Jews. Yeah. Okay. Now here's one. That's one. Right. Here's one. This is a book we need to write. Have a phone that connects between Washington and Moscow. How about that? Yeah. Have that phone. Yeah. And use it occasionally.

But I think that...

It's interesting to me that there really is a lot of interest in documentary and history stuff. That's a surprise to me. Like seeing like how popular documentaries are on Netflix when Netflix offers you with literally equal effort, like clicking on one side of the screen versus the other. You can watch anything. So many people opt for documentaries. Sure. There's something – there is a rational and –

constructive human hunger to learn stuff. And that's, that to me is very heartening. You know, I feel like that's room to run. I agree. I agree with that. And I actually, I think the success of your podcast to me was very reassuring. Just the, you know, I think the lessons baked into your podcast are so important and meaningful and prescient. And I loved, I was just so thrilled that, that so many people were, were getting that. Thank you.

For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.

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Both of these stories, Able Archer or Snafu, I should say, and Ultra are podcasts. You have an incredible career as a broadcaster, legendary broadcaster for many, many years. How has this kind of segue back into audio gone and how did it affect how you consider telling this story?

It's a good question because definitely sort of falling in love with the story and doing the research and realizing like kind of where it was going and what the bottom line of it was going to be and everything. It was definitely an open question as to how to produce it. Like I know that I could write a book about it because I'm almost done with the book about it now. Or I could try to produce it for TV or try to make it into a movie or do some other thing and –

Ultimately, I decided to do it as a podcast because I'm kind of just in love with audio. I think that my background in radio was...

I don't know if it stamped a love for audio on me or if I was just wired that way anyway. But even when I do TV shows and stuff, I don't really think about what stuff looks like. I think of the visual presentation of whatever's going on as just kind of decoration for the words. And when you do audio, there's this, I don't know, level of, I don't want to say like

I don't want to be too sappy about it, but there's a sort of level of intensity. Like you're kind of speaking into somebody's ear rather than sitting in front of them talking. And it can be intense and it's also unforgiving. I think you have to be more precise in an audio environment than you do when you have the help of visuals to...

distract people. So I find it to be more challenging and more rewarding. It's also kind of more the way that I like to absorb information. I don't like to watch stuff as much as I like to listen to it.

That's interesting. I feel similarly. I found myself just devouring podcasts and audio books in a way that I never really consumed television. I mean, I watch TV, of course, but I was never like addicted to shows or anything. But then podcasts would just suck me in. And I realized like this is this incredibly powerful thing.

vehicle and the way that we work with a microphone, it's incredibly intimate. And I love that. I'm pregnant. Oh, God, I'm pregnant. Oh, Jesus. I'm very powerful. My voice is very powerful. No, but I feel when I watch a documentary, especially something historical, a lot of times you can feel the sweatiness of

visuals there they clearly had to dig for something to put here like okay we're panning over photographs here we're you know we've got some weird visual metaphor happening or we're looking at uh like reenactment footage sometimes it just feels like okay we get it like you had to put something there and you didn't have something

But with audio, there's no cheating. It's all there. It's all meaningful. Speaking right into the person's ear, which is inside their head, which is right next to their brain. It's like a laser. And I found that in an interesting way when we put out the first couple episodes of Ultra, right?

We didn't make up any of the sound. All the sound that we used was real tape. But a lot of people thought that we had faked the news broadcasts, that we had found actors who were going to speak in weird old transatlantic accents. It is hard to believe that broadcasters spoke in this heightened –

tone like that. Yeah. It's kind of wild, but they really did. We told ourselves that old timey news was all very objective and staid and there wasn't any opinion or emotion in it. Yeah. No, but they really did talk like this. And they threw all sorts of shade and they were snide and they were, you know, and lots of asides and lots of opinion. And that's what it sounded like. Well, so tell us what's happening next with Ultra because there's a very exciting sort of next step.

Yeah, this is, I kind of can't believe it, but Steven Spielberg optioned Ultra to make a movie out of it. Who's that? And so he's this, you know, he's an up-and-comer. Yeah. He's the one that's sort of one to watch. First of all, huge congratulations. Thank you. And it's a no-brainer. This makes perfect sense. The story is so riveting. It is.

But go on. I hope that that is true. I mean, what I am learning is, as I am sort of tiptoeing into this side of the world where I have never been before, is that a movie is going to be made is, you know. Yeah. You're like, oh, we're going to ruin it with visuals. Well, no, but like isn't.

to be made? Like, until someone is buying a ticket, receiving their change, and walking into a dark room where a projector is running, I don't believe the movie exists. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot that goes in between optioning a movie and then it actually coming into the world. And so, I believe

that it's going to be a movie, but we'll see. I know, I mean, you know, I did this, my previous podcast was called Bagman, was about Spiro Agnew. And that's also in the movie making process. That's going to be a focus features film. But it just takes a long time and there's all sorts of things that happen. And I mean, I'm used to a daily production cable news world where you think of something in the morning and it's on TV at night. And then you have to stop thinking about it because you got to do something else the next day. And the time horizon- That ain't how we make movies, Rachel. No, no.

I know. There's a whole rigmarole. And you're very wise to kind of hold off on the excitement of having a movie until you're walking in the door. But just having a movie optioned by someone like Spock.

Spielberg is so thrilling or focus features for the Agnew story. Those are just such credible storytellers and you can sort of feel confident that these stories will be handled very well. I feel like this would be such a cool movie.

Both of them feel like movies to me, too. Like, you know, I watch as much, you know, streaming television and miniseries and all that stuff as anybody else. But I do feel like both of these stories, like, seem like, you know, sit down for two hours and watch a single arc in the movie theater. Amen. And I just love for it to work in both cases. I also think I should play Ojon Raggi. Okay. Yeah. I think I should be Raggi in this movie, right? I mean, that just feels obvious. Obvious. Yeah. Obvious. For sure. Yeah.

Okay. So both of our podcasts have a lot of present day relevance and prescience. And yours, I think, is really, really intensely relevant to right now. So at what stage in your process did the events of January 6th

Was that were you already working on this podcast? No, I wasn't working on the sedition trial by that point. What was weird is that the resonance stuff like I felt like I got a little kick in the teeth from the universe because when the first episode of Ultra came out.

was posted when we published was the day that the Oath Keepers sedition trial started. So that was weird. And then it was eight episodes. And by the time we got to episode eight was when we were waiting for the verdict. So it was really just, that was uncanny. I just felt like that was unsettling almost. But, you know, it also, I feel like you do, in trying to pick the right story to tell, right?

You have to believe in the story on its own terms sort of regardless of the resonance. Like, yes, there is going to be resonance and there are lessons to be learned and things to be gleaned from the past that could help us in our current contention. But I don't feel like you can – you can't let that drive. That has to – a little bit of that is just going to be stuff that you can't see along the way. I was thinking about it with Abel Archer and Snafu with the –

Before the Korean airliner was shot down, you highlight how the Russians were essentially paying, were giving bounties to their own side for people who were spotting incursions on the radar. And so you were essentially saying like that's bad news in terms of what eventually happens with this civilian airliner being shot down after being misidentified as a military threat in Russian airspace.

Well, you know, just within the past week, Russia just gave medals to the fighter pilots who dumped all that fuel on the U.S. Reaper drone over the Black Sea. I mean, it's the same—I mean, I'm sure you weren't thinking about that when you did Abel Archer and Safu.

And with military awards rewarding people for doing incredibly reckless things that threaten conflict between the East and West. Sure. Well, one of the things that I think was really profound in ULTRA was what this idea that emerged that there was no legal remedy for violence.

All of this horrible behavior, the legal remedies failed. There was a mistrial and then the government basically just gave up on prosecuting these misdeeds and because they didn't want the headache. And so Raghi sort of makes the case in that meet the press interview that the remedy then must be just legal.

transparency and information, getting it out there, educating the public. That's all you can do. When this bad behavior can't be actually meaningfully reprimanded in some way, all you can do is expose it. And I think that's very powerful. It's also—

a little bit terrifying and disheartening. And I wonder if you feel like the January 6th trials have, they've obviously gone a lot smoother than the great sedition trial, but, but is that evidence of progress? Do you think we're doing better? It's, it's interesting because it really does. I think it cuts both ways. I think there is a case to be made by looking back at,

at the fascist movements in this country that were supported by Nazi Germany, including an element of that that operated inside the Congress.

And there's ways to look back at that, all that story that I tell in Ultra and say, you know, some of these things were legit crimes and people should have gone to jail. And that like crimes were committed here and crime should have been prosecuted as such, including by some members of Congress where that escaped punishment, I think largely because they bullied the Justice Department into not –

into not coming after them. And we're seeing a little bit of that happening. We're seeing some resonance with some of the stuff that's happening right now in our news cycle. But the other, the sort of good news side of what Raghi was preaching on Meet the Press that day

is that the people need to know this information. The legal remedy isn't there. The legal remedy is that the legal solution has failed. The legal remedy cannot be used as the sum total of our response here. What has to happen is that the people need to know. And obviously, people knowing isn't an end in itself. That doesn't fix it. What he means, what goes unsaid, is that when the people know, they will act.

And you can trust Americans to defend our democracy and to stand up against tyranny and to reject authoritarianism and anti-Semitism and all the other things that go with it. But they need to know that it's happening.

And so that calls on all of us. Yeah. I mean, it calls on journalists. It calls on activists. It calls on everybody who can contribute to the public record, including, you know, dorks making podcasts down the road. But hopefully it means that a well-informed public will make righteous decisions. And I want to believe that. I do, too. And I think that's a good note to end on.

Rachel, thank you so, so very much for jumping in the booth here and having this chat with us. It's just really, really fun. And I wish you the best of luck with the movie adaptation. Thanks, Ed. Thanks. This has been super fun. I appreciate it.

Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Pipelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer, Tori Smith. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis. Olivia Canney is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. In association with Gilded Audio,

Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Special thanks to Allison Cohen and Matt Eisenstadt.

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Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Old Man. The hit show returns starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow. The former CIA agent sets off on his most important mission to date, to recover his daughter after she's kidnapped. The stakes get higher and more secrets are uncovered. FX's The Old Man premieres September 12th on FX. Stream on Hulu.