Behind the Bastards New Year Q&A Part Two
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Hey, Robert. Hey, Sophistopheles. Sophterdammerung. The ring of the Sophterlungan. I was trying to do like the ring of the Nibblungan, but Sophie, I don't actually know how to make that work. Also, not really a joke. Just me putting your name into things. How are you doing? Are you good? I was doing well.

Okay, that's good. I was doing well. Anyways, we're back with another Q&A episode. Thank you to those who asked questions on the Instagram.

Robert, can you start the folks out with a nice kratom lemonade recipe? People want to know. I don't have a nice kratom lemonade recipe. I have been doing kratom so long that I don't give a shit. I just pour it in water. I pour it in soda. I mix it. I don't give a fuck. Don't do that. It's gross. Literally any liquid substance at the airport. I'll say this. Here's what I'll say. I'm going to give you first the responsible advice, and then I'm going to give you the

the person who uses Kratom advice, right? The responsible advice is that Kratom is something that can and that in the vast majority of cases will be used responsibly. It is not easy to become problematically addictive to for most people. If you are someone who is inclined to abuse painkillers, it is very easy to develop a dependency on Kratom.

Now, a dependency on kratom is not nearly the monster that a dependency on opiates, especially heroin, is. And if you are dependent on opiates or heroin, kratom can allow you to get off of that. Because if you stop taking heroin, you get horribly dope sick. Kratom stops you from being dope sick. And it is, I think, critical to remain widely available, largely as a result of that.

However, if you start taking Kratom and you take it every day, you will need to take more and you will notice potentially this has never really been my case because I take breaks regularly. I've never had any issue going overseas for a couple of weeks and not taking it, you know, taking three or four days off every week or two.

Some people do. You should be aware that that's a thing and that it is a capital D drug. I would say it's not as safe as marijuana. Although if you have a family history of like schizophrenia, it certainly does not seem to have any of the kind of like

ability to incite psychotic breaks that that does. But it's harder on your body, you know, than particularly like consuming marijuana in a way that doesn't involve smoking. But it's not as hard on your body based on all of the evidence that exists is, for example, drinking, particularly like if you're talking about someone who's using kratom daily versus drinking daily, you're almost certainly better off using kratom daily.

I think that's a generally responsible way to categorize it. The ways that you can do it is you take a powder that is just the ground up flour. It is very hard to hurt yourself with just the powder. You would have to take such a massive quantity of it. However, just like with marijuana, people now make extracts and those extracts are extremely concentrated. It is much easier to harm yourself if you are using an extract or to take much more than you want.

Kratom, an overdose, does not tend to, like, if you take far too much kratom, it doesn't do what, like, heroin does and cause central nervous system depression that'll stop you from breathing, at least not in any of the quantities that, you know, I've seen documentation on. But it can be really bad and unpleasant. So I would say if you're going to do it, do something like get a tea, stay away from the extracts. Once you start going down that road, it's very easy to develop much more of a dependency on it. That's my kratom speech, okay? Robert? Mm-hmm?

What's one episode you really want to do but would require a fuckload of research and four million episodes to cover? The Bush administration and the war on Iraq. And part of why I haven't is just like it's been covered. And I do think maybe now because there's a lot of like Gen Z people who listen, who maybe weren't around for that. I'm probably overestimating how familiar people are with the shit around that. So maybe that is the kind of thing to get onto now. There's just so much stuff.

to talk about in so many bastards. But it's one of those things I've gone back and forth. Should I just do a John Ashcroft episode? Should I just do a Dick Cheney episode? Well, how do you do that episode? And then like,

not cover the rest of it. I just haven't yet. I just haven't yet. Like Nixon is the same way. And this was, that's not really an excuse what I just said, because the same is true when talking about like Kissinger's crimes. Cause those Kissinger episodes were also like partly Nixon episodes. Cause you can't talk about what Kissinger did. That's was evil without talking about a number of other evil guys. So I will and should do that. It's just all episodes like that are always so much work. And I've picked my battles, uh,

Usually, every now and then I will based on like, oh, I think this is really important for a specific reason to get it at this time, right? Like a lot of the fascism focused ones we've done. But usually it's more like, what do I want to read about right now? What am I interested in? Because if I don't do it that way, if I don't let the primary thing that drives me week to week be what do I want to read about and write about, then I will burn out. Sure. What episode are you most proud of from this year?

probably the Lawrence of Arabia episodes. Really good. I'm deeply proud of James Stout's series on It Could Happen Here. Oh, I thought you were talking about my episodes. No, we are, but I'm just saying I'm deeply proud of James' series that he did reporting from the Darien Gap. From the Darien Gap. Excellent stuff. Yeah. Yeah, some of the best work anyone's done for us. I love those apps.

Yeah, I also, they were the hardest for me, but your episodes on troubled teen wilderness camps were... Yeah, love me some troubled teen wilderness camps. How did you get from being a Texas ROTC kid to an active war zone journalist to a gas station drug reviewer and avid podcaster? Wow. Wow. People say...

love that. I guess there's a few ways to talk about that. So like the first thing I'll just note on the war zone stuff, people make a much bigger deal of that. Like it comes up because war comes up and particularly some of the wars that I've covered come up. So I bring it up when I think it's relevant. But like becoming a war zone journalist, no one paid me. I just bought plane tickets to places and reached out to people who lived in the area on the internet before I landed and

Like, that's all. It was not like a I think people talk about it as if there's some like special forces training you've got to do. And no, I was just like a guy who landed with his girlfriend and a camera. And that's how we did most of it until like, you know, outside of like Syria and Myanmar. That's how I did most of my war zone reporting.

In terms of like how I stopped being a conservative kid from North Texas who wanted to be in the military, I mean, a lot of it was encountering drugs at age 19 and then also starting to make friends with young women my age and slightly older than me who I realized were much more fun to spend time around than the army. Sure.

And yeah, all of that kind of collaborated in a radicalization process. Not even much of a – just like stopped me from being like a proto-fascist little kid. I was mostly just sort of like –

In terms of temperament, a libertarian, but I would always vote Democrat because the Republicans were obviously maniacs. And I was just like, I don't agree with the Democrats about everything, but I guess I'll vote for them because these other people are crazy. And I didn't really think a lot about politics until, I mean, it was Ukraine.

And following the Syrian refugee trail in 2015, and then Iraq in 2016, and Standing Rock in 2016, you know, I'd been at Occupy in New York in 2011 for a little while, but it was really, I mean, Standing Rock was kind of one of the most radicalizing single things I experienced where I started being like, yeah, I'm generally a progressive, I guess, with some libertarian tendencies to, you

And I wouldn't say I was an anarchist at that, but I started reading more and thinking more and recognizing, well, I agree with a lot of this analysis more. Sure. It was still years before I really identified strongly in that direction. Yeah. A couple people kind of asked me with my upbringing how somebody said like,

Basically, how did I become in charge of cool zone media and like leftist podcasts? And, you know, the short of it is I grew up with a Republican dad, a moderate Democrat mom. And I grew up in an area where most of the people were your standard libs with a lot of a lot of Zionism, honestly. And I think what radicalized me was my.

insane empathy. I'm like a very, very empathetic person. And so consuming content and reading history and meeting people, it just, the more that I consumed and the more people I got to meet, the more left I became. And I feel like we approach a lot of our content from a place of empathy and

That's the kind of things I want to put out in the world. I got deep. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I got deep.

Yeah, I just, obviously the people with the most money in the world are the kind of folks who volunteer at Food Not Bombs and, you know, for their local libraries. So I decided I wanted to really cash in on that demo, you know? Yeah, for sure. Those idiots like Ben Shapiro trying to get money from broke oil billionaires. You know, it's the librarians who really have walking around money. That's how you get rich. And speaking of getting rich, it's time for AdBrain. Yeah.

And we're back. Robert. Sophie. How you doing? Oh, you know, pretty good. Cool. Do you think that most of the USA's divisive issues and over-manipulated economy would be solved by breaking up into smaller individual countries by region? Example, North-South? No. Yeah. No, it sounds like a fucking disaster. Look up the partitioning of India.

Just look up the partitioning of India and then think about the fact that India was not a massive part of the global economy, as opposed to something going the way the partition of India went in terms of the violence, the death, the political upheaval, and also it being the entire center of the world's economy and a significant amount of it's like food and medicine. And yeah, seems like it would be bad. Robert.

Mm-hmm. Favorite Warhammer Legion, Legion's characters? Okay, so if we're talking about, like, they use the term Legion, so I assume they're talking about, like, Great Crusade through Horus Heresy era. Yeah.

Let's see. I really like the paint scheme and the look of like the Legion era Iron Warriors a lot. So I would have to say from aesthetics then, but I don't really find any of like the fiction that focuses on them particularly interesting. And I guess then I'd have to go with like Dark Angels or the Space Wolves. Yeah.

Someone asked, the same person asked my current favorite hobby that is just for fun. Well, it happens to be the NBA season and I play fantasy basketball and I take it very seriously. Warhammer for nerds, as I call it. Sure. And I take it very seriously and I love it. I fucking love it. It's amazing. She does. She's unhinged about it. It frightens me. It does frighten him. And I got LeBron on my team this year as he gets older. It's just I needed him on my team one more time.

Um, Robert, what's a journalism story that if you didn't have to do your day job that you would love to cover? If tomorrow aliens came down and said, we're getting rid of all of the fascism and authoritarianism and giving you all free energy, fixing the climate, making sure every refugee has food and water, there are no more problems. I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to kill Bigfoot. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

This is not a question, but I've seen this a couple times. People want to know if you're going to do any Australian bastards. I don't think anyone in Australia has ever done anything bad. Yeah. Seems like an island that never made a bad person. So not worth looking into probably.

Yeah, yeah, I assume we will. It's just like there's a lot of countries we haven't done bastards on. Sure. But definitely we will get an Aussie. Don't worry, folks. Part of why I haven't is the dollop guys do such a good job of hitting Australian weird pieces of shit. So I do think like there's a good place for people who like the kind of thing I do to find that the dollop has a lot of great fucked up Australia stories. Any plans to do an Oprah series or episodes? Yeah, working on them now.

Yep, that was asked a couple times. Robert, what's your favorite firearm? I don't know. Like, they all do such different things. Like, in terms of the one I own, I guess the one that I shoot deer with, in terms of, like, from a, I guess, emotional standpoint, the very first gun I ever bought was a 1917 Lee-Enfield Mark III. Beautiful, old World War I era bolt-action rifle, just like an actually attractive rifle.

like piece of history. I have a Mauser C96 that is enjoyable for the same reason, although not a gun that can safely be used unless you are directly on a range because sometimes when you attempt to take it off safety, it fires. So it is not allowed to be in the same room as bullets unless we are at a gun range, but is a very fun piece of history as well.

I really like the gun that I carry, a P365XL Sig Sauer. Great handgun, super comfortable, super easy to conceal. I shoot it almost every week and feel very comfortable with it. You know, I think I could...

handle most of its basic functions in the dark with my eyes closed aside from aiming. I feel good about that. In terms of like what I enjoy shooting most recreationally, nothing beats an AK-74. I've got an AK-74 with a wooden foregrip and a wire folding stock. That thing is a hoot. The people want to know, how did we start Cool Zone Media?

What's the Cool Zone Media story? Just kind of us constantly being behind on everything and then it happened by accident. That's not true. I resent that.

Part of the genesis of it would be that when 2020 was going on, you and I had not really envisioned much beyond, you know, we've got Worst Year Ever. That's doing well. We've got Bastards. That's doing well. We had finished the Women's War. Yeah, we're going to keep doing probably every year. We'll do one or two. Robert will go travel somewhere or two places, do one or two limited 10 episode series, and we'll keep doing Bastards.

And, you know, that'll be it. That'll be good. Then the riots happened and...

One of the things that occurred with that is, you know, I covered that very heavily, both in terms of articles that I wrote for a variety of publications in terms of stuff for, you know, what was at the time our regular news show and in bastards. And by the end of the year, I was absolutely burnt out. And to the extent that I became aware of, like, I won't be able to do this the next time something big happens, like enough of me has been spent on

And also it shouldn't be me. Like I'll go crazy. I'll develop even worse takes. Like it's just bad. Like one of the things I have an issue with, and I'm not going to like bring up names or critique people, but I think it's always a mistake when you build a news network that

centered or like a news platform centered around a guy. Yeah. So what we were started talking, you know, late in 2020, early 2021. And like, we need to bring in other people and develop them and give them platforms so that, um,

Whatever the next big things are, we have people who are able to cover them with the dedication they deserve without just burning me or another individual person out by putting, you know, too much on their shoulders at once. So that was kind of the thinking that led us there. Yeah, and iHeartRadio asked us if we wanted to have our own imprint, remember? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, and then the company was like, hey, we'll offer you more money if you do this thing that sounds like a nightmare and have a daily news show. Hey, you want to make a daily show? And we said, I would rather kill myself. And then they said, but you can hire your friends. And then we said, well, actually, that sounds a lot better. They were like, hey, you've been pumping out content multiple times a day for the last year. This is like end of 2020, early 2021. They're like, hey, you've been doing this thing. Want to do it?

Times a million? Yeah. That seems healthy. We did, but we got to hire a bunch of our friends. And that's nice. And, you know, a lot of the people we love have salaries and health insurance. So a win is a fucking win. It's time for fucking ads, okay? We're back. Got a lot of people asking how you approach research and how you format your episodes if you have a...

template, if you put something into, I know the answer to this, which is why you're half smiling. If you make some kind of a guide for your episodes or what's your process? The gist of it is I have a doc. I read through. So first, if there's a book and there usually is, or more than one book, I read through the book or relevant portions of the book. Sometimes you don't have to read the whole book because, you know, it just deals with your guy for a couple of chapters. And then I read through the book.

And I highlight shit. I copy and paste the highlighted shit. And I organize it by generally, if I have my shit together, and I will have like a childhood, you know, young adulthood, early career, major crimes, yada, yada, yada. And I'll paste in the different parts, you know, with a list of like which source it's from. And I do the same thing with like,

and cut and pasted portions of articles. And I organize that by timeframe. And then I have that doc in one window and I have a word doc in the other. And I go through it and I like write it. I look through like, okay, it's early life. Here's all the different sources on his early life. Here are all. And I look through them and I'm like, these are the different things that I find most interesting from every source. And I just kind of write them out in a way that makes sense.

I try to make sure I quote every source that gives me a significant amount of info one or more times so that I'm making it very clear. This is where the original info came from because I'm very rarely doing all of the original research on these guys. So I want to make it clear that like, you know, if I'm, you know, this portion where I'm talking about this part of his life, it, you know, generally came mostly from this source or for this source and this source, right? You know, that's how I try to do it. Robert.

What's your favorite animal and or dinosaur? My favorite dinosaur was always an iguanodon. Big iguanodon guy. Huge iguanodon fan. Love him.

Love them because like it's the dinosaur equivalent of like a fucking Guido pulling a switchblade in a New York alley like that's just cool that there were dinosaurs who had that vibe where they're just like hey motherfucker I'm just gonna cut your ass you know I love a fucking iguana Don look them up big sharp knife thumbs cool dinosaur

Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie? Is it okay for me to say Guido? I'm a Guido. I think I'm allowed to say Guido. Yeah. I have no idea. I'm allowed to say Guido. Robert. Look at how Italian I am. Look at how much of a unibrow I grow if I don't shave for a day and a half. Look, I get to say Guido, okay? I have to deal with all this grease in my hair. I get to say Guido. I'm allowed. You don't know me. I have no say in this. Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie? That is an actual question.

Oh, you're my favorite part. I guess that you know what you're doing and handle all of the things that I would never be able to handle that. Yeah. Is that a sensible thing to say? So I have no idea. I don't know the answer to that question. I only know how to do the one thing.

So I get asked all the time by people what it's like working with you. And I say you are the best business partner that anybody could ever ask for. Oh, that's nice. That's what you were supposed to say, by the way, that I'm a perfect angel baby. I was just trying to be specific about the nature of our working relationship, which is that I do one thing and you do many things. So true. So true.

Robert, would you consider doing more South Africa episodes? Yes. I mean, definitely. Sure. Yeah, we'll do more. I need to actually do probably before the next South Africa episode. I need to do like maybe Ian Banks, like a more dedicated Rhodesia episode. Like Rhodesia comes up a lot, but I haven't just done a I mean, we did Cecil Rhodes episode.

But I haven't just done like, I think Ian Banks was his name, the last president dude of, or Ian Smith. Sorry, Ian Smith. I always say Ian Banks. Yeah, Ian Smith. The fucking, yeah.

of Rhodesia. We'll do him soon. Yeah. We'll do another South African guy too, but I think we're going to do Rhodesia next first. We got asked if there was a guest we've had on that we'd love to have on again, Paul F. Tompkins. Paul F. Tompkins. We'd love to have Paul back on. Would be happy to have Ed Helms back on for one that's a little bit more fun. I'd love to have Lacey Mosley back on too. She's so funny.

I want to say something about Ed, because we get offers from famous people a lot, and without naming any names, sometimes we make attempts that don't wind up as episodes, because when they realize what the show is and how-

different this is that they need to sit here for two or three hours that we're going to be really going into detail that often we're talking about things from like a more radical political lens they get uncomfortable because it's you know maybe something they view as dangerous for their career or whatever and Ed Helms who I don't think really knew much about us coming into the show he sat down he said he

listen to a couple episodes listen to an episode maybe but he sat down and I come in with fucking a harder episode to be a fun guest on Curtis Yarvin and it is immediately down to clown so I was you know I have respect for that absolutely yeah Robert what are your thoughts on the developments in Rojava

It's too early to tell where things are going to end, but obviously, I mean, it looks like the Turks are going to be allowed to continue to bomb as Israel has been bombing Rojava and the United States isn't going to do anything. It's unclear if the U.S. is going to even stand up for Kobani in any meaningful way. But it's also I don't really want to say too much because all of this is happening right now. I'm very concerned. You know, obviously, there's no chance of things getting better in Syria, period, but

without Assad gone, so I'm glad that he's gone, but what that means for Rojava is still very much unclear to this point. It's a scary time. I would say the one thing that I can say that is comforting to those of you who are likewise scared is that it's really always been a very scary time. There hasn't been an easy or very safe period of the revolution, and they've continued holding on, so...

What are some of the most impactful books that you've read that you think listeners should read? The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. If you also haven't read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which is a short story, read that. Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by, oh God, I'm spacing on a name right now.

This is nothing against Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler. Sorry, I'm just bad with names, folks. I love Octavia Butler. I want to recommend Mia from Where It Could Happen Here show. She recommended reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano. And oh, my God, it's an incredible book. Yeah.

Also, we both read this book. Who's the I'm forgetting the author's name. Cultish by Amanda Montel. Cultish was quite good. Cultish was quite good. Anything written by Margaret Killjoy ever heard of her?

Oh my God. Oh, and you know what? Why are there so many feet questions, people? Here's one I haven't brought up in terms of books. Read The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm saying his name wrong, I know, but The Water Knife is just excellent. Excellent book.

I just want to say there is an absurd amount of feet questions in here. Why do you want to know my foot size, you fucking weirdos? Don't answer those. Nobody who asks you questions about feet on the Internet has a good reason for doing it. What is wrong with you? Don't. Do better. Jesus Christ. Come on. Just go to WikiFeet like the rest of the freaks. I will say I do think WikiFeet is one of the last bastions of like intellectual honesty left on the Internet.

Robert, how did you get into Ska? And what's your favorite Ska band? That was asked a couple times. You don't get into Ska. Ska finds you, baby. And Ska found me one beautiful day when I was 19 years, well, 17 years old, something like that. When somebody posted, I had become a fan of the band Real Big Fish because of the movie Basketball, which I enjoyed as a kid. And I posted about it online and someone said, kid, let me show you something better.

And they sent me a link to where there was a torrent for Somewhere in the Between. I think it was Somewhere in the Between. Might have been Keys B. Nights that was my first Streetlight Manifesto album. I don't know. It was one of the two. But Streetlight Manifesto is my favorite band, probably.

Thomas Kalnacki is probably my favorite songwriter. It goes back and forth between him and Warren Zevon. And in terms of bands, it goes back and forth between Streetlight and the Cat Empire. I don't know. It kind of depends on my mood sometimes. What are the best non-mainstream news sources, free or otherwise?

Non-mainstream news sources for your other. I mean, it depends on kind of like what you're looking for. I always recommend J.K. and Rohan's Popular Front. Yeah, of course.

Of course. Jan Rahan's Popular Front. If you want to keep up with the conspiracy right, you can't do better than Knowledge Fight. The QAnon Anonymous people are good. Outside of obviously Ed Zitron's great tech journalism, the guys at 404 Media do really good stuff. The Defector I like. I'm interested in a lot of these newer outlets. Yeah.

That's some of what I'd suggest. Obviously, you know, there's certain things that like the BBC, there's certain things they do very well. War crimes in Africa, you can often find some really good coverage first. And like BBC's Africa Eye, there's certain things Al Jazeera does very well and obviously like certain things that they don't. So there's no like this is the best one place to go for all of the news in the world because that really doesn't exist. Sure.

It's more a matter of like coming to an understanding of like the shortcomings of and also coming to an appreciation of like which specific journalists are worth following from place to place, you know? Yeah. And finally, Robert, what's cracking my peppers? I don't have an answer to that. It's just a thing I said once on a podcast for reasons that elude me. It was one of your best. I have to say. Thank you. I really enjoyed that one. Last question. Chapel Roan or Sabrina Carpenter?

Do you know who either of those people are? I've heard of Chapel Rowan. Rowan. People are angry at her for some reason. She didn't endorse Kamala Harris.

OK, because, OK, she did. Are we are we reliant upon Chapel Rowan to fix American politics? Because I don't know her, but that seems like an unfair burden to place upon someone who I'm going to assume is mostly known for singing and dancing. Yeah. And my more or less what she does. I'm not saying that to be mean. My answer to that question is, Robert, do you remember the concert I said I went to by myself like two days after the election results?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Sabrina Carpenter and that... Where you got sick. Yeah, I got sick after going because, you know, too many people crowd even with masks. That was Sabrina Carpenter and she was great and it restored my faith in girlhood. So... Okay. We'll take that. Well, that's good. Yeah. I guess I'll say Sabrina Carpenter too then. Sure. Any final thoughts or should we get the fuck out of here? Yeah, let's fucking bounce, motherfuckers.

Okay. Bye, friends. Robert loves 40% of you. I love 32% of you. Can't prove either of those things. Nope.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.