Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition
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Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast by a man who is preparing for the entrance of the new regime, the need to go underground. So I'm in my chud block today. You know, if you're a tall white man and you wear a hoodie with a deer head on it, you're effectively invisible. So I'm prepared for the new world. Are you?

You look great. Thank you, Sophie. I love my chud sweater. It's actually incredibly comfortable. I know. Every year after deer season, this exact hoodie comes on for sale at a store near me. And so I can get like three for five bucks each or some shit like that. And they're crazy comfortable. And per usual, I spent the last hour trying to make myself look nice enough for the camera so people aren't mean to me on the Internet.

Yep, yep. Very different, very unequal situation, but I'm also not going to spend any more time caring about my appearance. Fair enough. What are we doing today, Robert?

Uh, well, Sophie, the same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world of podcasting. Oh, wait, we already did that. I guess let's answer some Q&As from our fans. Yeah, so we put out a post on our Instagram, at BastardsPod, and many of you sent in questions, and so we're going to try to answer a lot of them. Yeah, yeah, the gist of the situation is, folks, it's the end of the year, and we're

This is when all of the companies that buy ads are really buying ads.

And it's, you know, when everybody wants to get as many people listening as possible, and we decided rather than doing something that's zero effort and like, you know, running more episodes, which we do when we take a break, we wanted to give you guys a chance to ask us some questions and also make sure that we're providing you with new stuff because you crave new stuff. You won't stop demanding it. Every instant of our lives, Sophie and I think of nothing but pleasing your insatiable appetites.

So Sophie went on Instagram and asked if you guys had any questions. Robert. Yes? What was your least favorite episode to do and why? Least favorite to do. I assume they're asking ever. I hate, I really, unless it's a place where I have a specific interest, I really hate the foreign leader episode.

Like, obviously, Stalin's a foreign leader, but I've been reading about Stalin my whole life. Hitler's a foreign leader. I've read more books about Hitler than anybody who's not a Hitler scholar. But, like, Jair Bolsonaro, right? Like, I don't know much about Brazilian politics coming in. Netanyahu, I don't know much about, you know, politics over there. So, like, getting up to speed, not just because you can't, it's not just enough to, like, learn what was Netanyahu's childhood like. You also have to know, like, the dynamics of politics, right?

prior to him coming into power and like the part like and catching up on all of that in a way that you don't totally embarrass yourself is a is a lot of work. And it's also nerve wracking because like especially again, to go back to Netanyahu, this is a guy who is

I mean, who had been involved in genocidal activity prior to where we are right now? But like, certainly, like, it was the kind of thing where like, because of how high the stakes are and how bad the things he was up to were, like, oh my God, the anxiety about fucking that up. The same with Bolsonaro, right? This guy who's fucking around the Amazon with indigenous people.

this dude who is a very important part of this authoritarian trend, but also me, a guy who doesn't know much about Brazil. I'm always very anxious about those episodes. They're important to do. We'll be doing more of them next year. I just, I always like stress out over, because there's no not getting some stuff wrong, right? Of course. Especially with history, because it's so subjective. Yeah. For sure. I really fucking hate when we do the like,

uh wilderness camp school things and i love that shit like horrific shit up horrific uh kids i love suffering children think they're in a safe place and then they get you know insert horrible thing here those those episodes i really really fucking hate those um i'll eat them up all day we did get this question quite a bit and people want to know how you celebrated the passing of uh henry kissinger

You know, to be honest, that was a pretty normal day for me. Like, there's not a lot. I'm glad he's dead. But he lived an incredibly long life and got to do most of the things he wanted and never really suffered. So it's like how much like let's let's say I had a beer, you know, let's say I had a beer. Let's say I had a beer. So cryptic. What the fuck? You sound so unwell. Robert.

Is there an episode, topic, or individual that you have covered that has left you shaken up or angry long after you completed the episode? Everything we do on healthcare. Yeah. Like, every time we have done a healthcare... I know this is the week that it is. Every time we talk about the U.S. healthcare system, I'm fucking livid. Industrial... The Hawksnest Tunnel disaster, Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, as well. Like, both of those are Union Carbide-affiliated disasters. Those...

drive me fucking insane. Like to some extent, I find those guys more offensive than a guy like Hitler, which is not saying that they're worse than Hitler because Hitler did kill more people than like Yudhoy Karabayev. But Hitler was like a guy who very honestly was about murdering people. Whereas these guys are all pretending to be decent men, family men, you know, just, you know, all I'm doing is trying to make jobs and provide a valuable part of the economy. And they are just killing people by fucking the city full.

So, yeah, those make me very angry. I'm going to ask you one that won't make you very angry. Robert, what is your opinion on modern Star Trek? I love most of it. That's what they say. Okay. Lower Decks is my favorite Star Trek thing since DS9. Sure. I've seen some episodes of Strange New Worlds, and I can see why people like it a lot, but

I'm kind of exhausted with that time period in the Star Trek timeline. Like, I want new stuff. I want fucking a like do one where Riker's like an old admiral and we're fucking dealing with Starfleet politics back on Earth in San Francisco. Give me anything where we're moving forward on the timeline, but we're not leaping into like weird future war shit like Starfleet.

I'm not mostly interested in that stuff. I'm mostly interested with actually part of why I love DS. I love TNG because it's really looking at like, what is, what a utopia be in a sense that's actually imaginable as something real that like something that could exist in some ways. And then deep space nine is asking, what would the dark sides of that utopia be in particular, not even the dark sides, because it's less that and more,

Kind of like what the Culture series, you know, dealt with. Like, what happens when this utopia and the people in it inevitably make contact or collide with reality? Or not reality, because they live in reality, but with places that are not utopia, with places that are different, that are worse, that have different values. Like, what are those clashes like? And that's what I love in my Star Trek. I don't...

Star Trek's never had good space battles. I'll say that right. I mean, every now and then you get like a Wolf 359 or something. There's some pretty cool shit there, but like fucking A, there's that one scene in Serenity is a better space battle in terms of like an interesting, cool looking space battle than ever got shot in Star Trek. But I don't watch Star Trek for space battles. I've got other shit for space battles. That was very thorough. Thank you. I like this question. Who is your fantasy guest? Fantasy guest? Uh,

Marissa Tomei during the My Cousin Vinny. What are we talking about? What do we mean by fantasy here? I think they... Wow, very specific. I think they mean if you could have anybody come and guest on the podcast, who would your dream person be?

I would love to have, I don't even know if I'd do an episode. I would just love to talk with either Alan Moore or Werner Herzog. Like specifically, if I had Herzog, the thing I'd most want to do with Herzog, I guess we could record it, but I don't really care if we do, is I'd like to cook a meal with Werner Herzog. Sure. But I think, yeah, in terms of funny people, I think Will Ferrell would probably be a really good guest. He's far too famous for us, but...

He seems like he's got a good sense of humor about these kinds of things. Can you guess who mine is? Who's yours? Can you guess? Yours is Harry Styles? Nope. Okay.

There's only one obvious answer. Because it would be, it would be like really funny to bring Harry Styles on and just do like unit 731, just like nonstop four hours of the most nightmarish stories of torture. And you just be like, treat people with kindness. What are you talking about? No, that's not who it is. Uh-huh. There's only one person it could be. Okay. Who? I'm waiting to see if you know. No, I don't. I gave you my guess. The listeners are disappointed. Yeah.

Okay. They're list-appointed. It's LeBron James. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, we could talk about basketball. Two experts like us. I mean, I think a lot of people would enjoy hearing our different feelings on ball handling, on three-pointers, other basketball stuff. Those aren't the only two basketball-related terms I know, guys. I think a lot of people would want to hear your opinion on ball handling, Robert. Anyways, it's time for an ad break. Oh, wow, Sophie. Yeah. The subreddit's going to be very uncomfortable today.

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We are back. Robert, this question was asked 552,000 times. When can we expect a sequel to After the Revolution? Well, the book's done, basically. I'm almost, I finished the rough draft. I'm almost through with the first draft, which is when I read through the rough draft chapter by chapter and make the edits that occur to me to make it make sense.

I think probably in January, I'll put out the first three chapters just as kind of a teaser, but I'll be working with my editor to get it in the shape. But very soon, very soon. It's taken much longer than I had hoped it would. In my defense, both my parents died since publishing the first one, so, you know...

That's not really an excuse, but it's going to make you feel bad. And so you're not going to like follow up with complaining that the book's not out yet. I'm manipulating you. You know, I'm a monster. I know it, but I'm good at it. You're allowed. Thank you.

You've referenced that there are people who start to look into but ultimately find that there isn't really enough there for an episode. Who came the closest to being worthy of doing a whole episode about, but who was the most disappointing person that you weren't able to do an episode about?

I know that's happened. It has. There's been, and usually when that happens, it's not that there's not enough. It's that there's just like not enough information about what they did. You'll hear like a reference to like some CEO who did this like really fucked up thing. He was like fucking eating poor people or whatever shit. But it's like, well, all I've got is like three sentences from an old newspaper. I can't really get an article out on that.

Honestly names aren't coming to mind the closest I can come in terms of what I remember is like I almost didn't get to do the Bo Brummel episodes after hours of research because I I did kind of come to the conclusion You know, there's some bad Side effects as a result of what he did But that's nothing like not that morally reflects on him in a negative way like he wasn't trying to make Generations of men more limited in their fashion choices. He just like liked what he liked and

And likewise, I guess there's a handful of people where you've been like where people are like, it's not a say that you've looked into them. People are like, why don't you do an episode on so and so? And you're like, because they're fucking boring. Like Ben Shapiro. What am I going to say? What are you going to say? What is that? What is there really to say about Ben? You know, I have looked into him. I did think about it. And like at this point, he does have a negative impact. He's just boring.

And like, that's a big, I will say when it comes to if your question is ever, why haven't you done so and so? The answer is usually either I think they're boring. And if it's someone where that you're like, well, there's no way he thinks this guy's boring. This guy's objectively interesting. It's because boring.

That's going to be a shitload of work. And like, I'm always triaging the, like the Lawrence of Arabia episodes, which seemed to have gotten a good reaction. I think I had to read like five books for you. I was, I was working in the background, slowly getting through material for, yeah. Starting in like January. Yeah. Um,

And not everything is like, but like Kissinger was like that. Kissinger was like a year of background work. And the current big one that I'm very slowly working on is doing another Nixon, doing a Nixon, probably six-parter, because it's fucking Nixon, but at least a four-parter. And that's going to take me a while, because I really don't, there's so many, because you could put that much effort into everybody, right?

But it's a lot of folks you would just be reading stuff that's largely repeating similar bits with slightly different takes. Whereas with Nixon, everyone who digs into him, there's so many stories. There's so many people who know crazy shit about Nixon. You really almost can't come to an end of collecting fucked up Dick Nixon stories. Like it's almost like our most renewable resource on planet Earth is stories of Richard Nixon being a freaking weirdo. So it takes some time.

Which episode received the most backlash from fans? Backlash. I, you know, I had some, there was some frustration over an episode we did that was, I think it was mixed. It's always really mixed, even when there is, like, about that doctor who was, like, doing really bad surgeries for trans people. There were some folks who had some specific frustrations with that, and then some folks who didn't. And, you know, ultimately, it's one of those things where, like,

When you're dealing with stuff like that, there are probably multiple right ways to do it. But, you know, it's tough. I think like the biggest thing that I the biggest thing that frustrates me in terms of like feedback from listeners is when people will be like, obviously figure this person out.

Has autism. Why didn't you bring that up? Or that's an explanation for this behavior. Why didn't you bring that up? And the answer in every case is that person has not been diagnosed with anything. All I have is the behavior. Multiple other things could explain the behavior. I am not going to just declare Jeffrey Bezos to have autism based on my zero experience as a diagnostician because he didn't like music.

Right. Like there are other reasons people might not like music. And it's just kind of an interesting detail about how he's sort of disconnected from a lot of the people around him that can be explained by many different things. But it's not my job to be like, this is what I believe is going on with Jeffrey Bezos. And now we all have to act like it's true because it's probably not. Hey, Robert. Uh-huh. We're going to read up on Robert's war zone journalism or whatever older pieces may be out there.

Man, there's I mean, most of it was on cracked.com. Some of it found its way into it could happen here, at least my conclusions based on it. There was a a video that you could view in VR that was like a 360 video documentary of some of my time in Mosul that was published through the EW scripts network. I think that one was called 24 hours in Mosul or something like that.

Um, they was broadcast also on a bunch of TV networks. I don't actually know if the link is up a decent number of things that I wrote back then for like local news have become lost media. Cause that's how that should be. Yep. Um, but you could, you should still be able to find some of the stuff on cracked, uh, that I did. So yeah, I would say check that out there. Let's go. Let's do a fun one before the next ad break. Robert, if you were a spice girl, what would be your spice girl name?

If I were a Spice Girl, my Spice Girl name would be...

Doesn't want to say anything mean about the Spice Girls because I am close to several women who grew up in love with the Spice Girls. Yes, but what would your... So your Spice Girl... That was my name, yes. I gave my name. Your Spice Girl name is Afraid of Women Spice? Specifically afraid of the women that I like, Spice, yes. Afraid of women I like, Spice. Got it. Afraid of offending them based on having a bad take about the Spice Girls. Spice. I think I would be Producer Spice.

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Robert, we're back. Can you believe it? No. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. When did you decide BTB was going to be your next thing? Was it something you've been building towards in your life? Was it becoming a pod, a major goal, or did it just sort of happen?

I'm going to explain this to you in a way that also explains some questions that we can't answer directly about why do you guys work for X or are involved in such company. We can kind of answer that. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Sure. Yeah. So I...

When I was late into my time at Cracked, I was getting bored of writing, doing the kind of articles I'd been doing for years there, these personal experience pieces where I'd interview someone and then turn their life experiences or the reporting that I'd done into like a listicle. And podcasts were starting to blow up. I was interested in the medium. I'd done one through Cracked and found aspects of it pleasant.

And the thing I had pitched was something based on my special interest, which is the Nazis. You know, I had done an article that had done very well on things you don't know about the Nazis that had delved into things we've touched on in some episodes of the podcast. You know, all of these these very weird things we talked. I talked about Carl May, you know, and Hitler's obsession with these cowboy novels and how that impacted the Third Reich. And so that sort of stuff. And I was like, I want to do this.

a series where every season I talk about a different dictatorial regime and all of the crazy weird facts about it. So season one would be 10 episodes on like these weird fat things you don't know about the Nazis. Maybe we'd move on to Saddam Hussein or Stalin. And then we all got shit canned. And I remember, you know, you know, you have good friends among your coworkers when like, as we're all getting drunk, one of the people who hadn't, uh, gotten laid off was Alex Schmidt, good old Schmitty. And, uh, Schmitty, uh,

and I are talking and I'm like, oh, so I had this great, and Schmitty's running podcasts at Cracked and still employed. And I'm like, I have this great idea for a show. And Schmitty being a very good friend is like, don't tell it to me. Uh, so I didn't. And, you know, I spent the next couple of weeks getting fucked up, uh,

like you do when you get laid off and then had a call with Jack O'Brien. And Sophie was on that call because Jack had left a few months earlier to work at Stuff Media, which is the company that was producing shows like, you know, Stuff You Should Know, Stuff You Don't Want You To Know, all that stuff. Stuff They Missed in History Class. It's the How Stuff Works team that was originally out of Atlanta. Yeah.

Yeah, and our boss is actually the guy who started Mental Floss. So like this is these are all one of the guys. Yeah. Yeah. One of the guys. These are all folks who came out of the same era of digital media as me who are all pivoted had pivoted to podcasting a little earlier. So I had my meeting with my old boss, Jack, and I tell him my idea for this dictator show that I want to do. Let's pause for five seconds. Uh huh.

When Robert says, I've mentioned this previously before, but when Robert says he tells his idea for a dictator show, first of all, this is my first interaction with Robert, is he's like running through a wind tunnel. I was jogging in San Francisco underneath a bridge, as I'm often doing, near Dogpatch, if you're curious. And he, I could hear, you know, half the words, and it was like, bad guys, history, worst. And I was like, yep.

I would like to produce that. Thank you so much. And unhinged, unhinged. Good old Jack O'Brien was like,

Yeah. Because Jack actually had stolen me. Jack-tually. Jack-tually. Jack actually stole me. I can't even say that. No, nobody can. It's a terrible word. So I worked at a company that bought How Stuff Works. And I was working at that company doing project management stuff, which is kind of why it makes sense, why I'm so able to control the amount of shows we have, because a lot of my background was in that. And Jack...

When Jack came on to run the LA version of, and it was originally just comedy of the HowStuffWorks team, he stole me from that other company. Thank you, Jack. Yeah. And soon after that, I got to meet Robert and changed my life. Yeah.

So yeah, that's, uh, that's the, well, and, and during that meeting, again, my show had been, my idea had been seasons about like each season about a different dictatorship. Um, and Jack was like, what if every episode you just switch and give a different, you know, a couple of episodes about a different monster and you can go back and forth and revisit different aspects of topics, which is a much better idea. It would not, the show would not have worked as a, in a seasonal format, the way that it does, uh,

as a weekly, um, even though making a, this into a weekly show has destroyed my life, uh, but in a good way. Well, it's not even just that it, cause it started as a weekly then, and then you're like, man, would it make sense if we like split things into parts? So now it's, now it's a twice weekly show at least. But yeah.

Oh, our origin. That's so cute. But yeah, anyways, we worked at this company called HowStuffWorks and or Stuff Media, whatever, whatever. They went publicly by HowStuffWorks and then the company was called Stuff Media. And then all of a sudden one day they were like, oh, hey, by the way, we just got bought by iHeartRadio. You work for them now. And we were like, yep. Cool. Well, cool.

I don't know. Nothing to do here. And that's how life is when you're in media. When you're in media. And like, you know, I really like our team. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Yeah. Robert, can you give us a cat update? Cat update? I mean, they're cats. So very little changes in their day-to-day life if things are doing well. There's many questions about your cat. Then just, you know, anything interesting?

I mean, Saddam Hussein had a problem two years ago. Are you telling this story? Yeah, he tried to have, there's a blanket he likes to have sex with that's usually on my couch. I mean, he's been neutered, but he still tries to have sex with it. Oh.

And that blanket got a seed that's like a sharp seed. It's one of those seeds that's like sticks to your pants in it. And he managed to get it wedged inside his urethra and it nearly killed him. But he's fine now. He's fine now. And there haven't been reoccurrences of any urinary issues, which are very serious in male cats. If your male cat isn't peeing, get it to the vet immediately. Hours matter. Hours matter. Yeah.

The most amazing thing about that story is I once made Robert, during this time, shortly after we knew Saddam Hussein was going to be okay, join a call with a, well, let's just call him an entertainment person that was not being a chill guy. Okay. And do you remember this story?

On a project we ultimately decided not to work on. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. On a project we ultimately decided not to work on. Yes, yes. But it was like, it was going to be a very unpleasant phone call. And Robert gets on and Robert has maybe spoken to this man for 10 seconds once. And he's like, how's it going, Robert? And Robert's like, my cat got a seed stuck up his urethra. And I really treasured that moment.

Yeah, so do I. That was beautiful for me. Let's do one more. Okay. I love questions. I love answers. I love answering questions. I love questioning answers. You know, all of those things. A good time. Robert. Sophie. I don't know why I say your name. Like, who else would I be asking? I mean, besides Anderson. Anderson. No. Yeah.

What activities do you... Oh, this is for both of us. What activities do you all do to ease your mental health after researching and hearing about awful things? That's an option?

This is mine. This is my answer right here. This beautiful dog I'm holding. And for the audio only people, I'm holding up Anderson and she looks quite beautiful. Yes, you do. Unfortunately, tragically, I've been sober for a while and will be staying sober. Uh, so I just get depressed and then get better and better at shooting a gun. Uh,

Uh, that's how I spend my free time. Jesus Christ. Do you want that on the internet? Why not? I don't know. You could have, you could have said, I go for runs most days. I go for runs most days. I lift weights. I push a heavy sled while wearing my body armor and dry firing a handgun. Yes, I do all these things. You have farm animals that are wonderfully magical. I do have farm animals. Uh,

You also have friends. I go hunting, in which I train at hitting moving targets in the woods. You have wonderful friends. Yeah, sometimes I train shooting stuff in the woods with them. Your business partner is a very supportive person. Sure, yeah, lots of that. I miss drugs, Sophie. I hate being sober. But it's okay. I've been doing it for years. I'll keep it up. You're doing great. It's just miserable. You're doing great, buddy. Well...

Give the people a Boston Rob, and then we'll be on our way. And we'll... Oi! I knew it! You're... Boston Monkey! Is that good enough for you people? Does that make you happy? Is that what you want? No one's ever happy when they get what they want. We'll be back on Thursday with another round of questions. Questions! That's how they say it in Boston! At this point, Robert, what percentage of them do you love? That number went down from 40, that's for fucking sure. Uh... No! No!

That's probably still about right. That's close. Close enough for government work. For me, 32%.

32%. Wow. You guys really got to pump your Sophie numbers up. I don't know. I feel, I feel fine about our fans. You know, look, there's a lot of them. And so some chunk of them are always going to be doing something weird and off putting, but usually when I encounter our fans, it's in the context of them, like doing something nice. That's helpful to people out in the world, like run into a lot of fans, handing out food, run into a lot of fans, be in street medics, run into a lot of fans, um,

Bye.

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.

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