A Geek History of Time - Episode 168 - The Popes, Walter White, and John Cena Walk Into a Bar Part III

Episode Date: July 23, 2022

So thank you all for coming to Cocktalk. He has trouble counting change, which is what the hands think. Wait, wait, stop. Yes, but I don't think that Dana Carvey's movie, um, coming out at that same time, was really that big a problem for our country. I still don't know why you're making such a big deal about September 11th, 2001. Fucking hate you. Well, you know, they don need to be anathema, but they are definitely on different aspects.

Oh boy, I have a genetic predisposition against redheads, so. Because? Yeah, because you are one. Right. Yeah, combustion, yeah, we've heard it before. The only time I change a setting is when I take the hair trimmer down to the nether reaches, like that's the only time. Other than that, it's all just a two

I'm joking I use feet after the four gospels what's the next book of the Bible? okay and after that it's Romans yeah okay and if you look at the 15th chapter of Romans, okay, you will find that it actually mentions the ability to arm yourself That's why worth it. This is a geek history of time. Well we connect your to real life. My name is Ed Lailock, I'm a world history teacher here in northern California, I'm called a side order of English. And my personal news is that earlier today, my wife and I had to deal with our first went bed by my son. He went down. Yeah, well, yeah, no, it's not the first for me by the long shot. That's like Saturday night, you know, too many, too

many beers. But I thought you were just bragging about. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's a reason we got the explicit rating. So like, wow, he's really putting that to use this time. That's awesome. We know enough to put towels down. That's, no, come on. Well done. I just thought you figured out how to use the electric toothbrush. That's good. Well, you know, I mean, yeah, who hasn't? But so anyway, he went down for his nap and stayed down for his nap for a while, which was a little surprising because he didn't do much in the morning. And then when he woke up, he came into the bedroom or my wife and I were working on getting stuff done on the house.

And he came in and because of the way all of our furniture was moved around, I couldn't see him at first. And he came in and he was crying. And he said, oh, baby, you have an accident. And I, you know, the first thing I thought was like, did he, you know, do something? And then I come around. The first thing I thought was like, did he, you know, start his talk and do something, you know, and then I come around, yeah, I come around the corner

and his shorts are a darker shade of blue. Did it go up the belly too? So he had like, it looks like somebody took a circle stamp and just hit him with it. No, no, in this case, it went for whatever reason it went downward. Okay. It always traveled up like past the naval for me.

Oh, wow. Into the thighs. And, oh, wow. Okay. Senior year of high school was awful. It was, yeah, no, that had suck. Yeah. Yeah, no, my first year in the dorm, it was humiliating.

But yeah. So anyway, and, you know, and my wife handled it like a champ. She said, maybe that's okay. You know, actually, it's happened. It's all right. Let's go clean you up. You know? And that was basically it.

So yeah, but it's a little bit of a milestone because for the longest time before he went down for a nap, we'd put a pull up on him. Oh, okay. And so he has been without a pull-up at nap time for a while, and this is the first time that we've had that happen. So anyway, you know, parenting, parenting level-up occurred earlier today. So that's my news, which, you know, if you're not a parent, you're like, oh my god, why are you telling people about that? But if you are, but if you are a parent,

you're like, oh yeah, I know I'm there. I totally know that. You know, so yeah, so that's me. Okay. How about you? Who are you and what's going on? I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin and drama and history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California, all around Union Thug, that kind of stuff. Hell yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't have anything as a milestoney

as you do, but I will say this, we do reading assignments in my house, because my kids are both double digits at least. And so I always say, the first two books I choose, and then after that, you choose, I don't care what it is, but it's, make it something you enjoy, because we're gonna read for an hour a day every day.

Yeah. And so they got to choose from different comics, essentially graphic novels. So my son never finished March last year. So this year he's starting with March and it's a three volume. And then he's, so he's doing that one. My daughter read the jungle, the, the adaptation. Yeah, and so she and I have been talking about Yurgis all day long today. So it's been pretty cool And she's like really like she's like it's it's awful that they're competing for 14 cents an hour and that that's considered good and and on and you know She's like really getting into it. I'm like it's only it's as if the workers need to band together and that's their only chance She's like, I wonder why you think that. To work together or, you know, yeah. Yeah.

So it's cool. And I told her straight up, I'm like, I am trying to radicalize you. Like there is no agenda. The agenda is on the refrigerator. The agenda is overt. Yeah. So, but you know, OK. So hit the grocery store.

Item two, laundry, item three, overthrow three over throw capitalism right item four cake. So I will tell you this though your story of your son wedding bed. Anybody who doesn't want to hear this fast forward five about three minutes. So okay, starting now. Okay. Okay. So now that they're gone, I was a sleep walker through essentially the time that I got adopted by my dad. That's about eight years old. And I was a sleep walker

for about that year. Actually, for a couple of years, come to think of it. And I would sleepwalk to pee. And it was fine when I sleepwalked to the shower and peed into the shower. It was fine when I would sleepwalk to the toilet and make it there. That was rare. The shower was, oh, thank God, more often than not. It was on the front door. So I just walk up to the front door and let go. So I just walk up to the front door and let go. And I would, you know, eight year old man pull down my, you know, my drawers and just shoot a straight stream at the door. Or my favorite was when I would open up the cabinets

and pee into the cabinets. So never let it be said. My parents did not have a pot to piss in, but you imagine, well, they may not have had a pot. But can you imagine you made it one? Can you imagine finding said pots the next morning when you're going to make breakfast is a special kind of hell for my parents.

So they got very good at waking up. Well, there was a door that opened to the, this is in San Francisco. There's like a in-laws quarters down on the bottom floor of the house. This is a little house. And those stairs were covered in plastic, like Laura Palmer. And that stairway was right next to my parents' room.

So you're still on about the lower Palmer thing, aren't you? Yeah, I really am. Yeah, it's going to be hard to get to get past that one. But continue. So I open the door and it's right next to my parents bedroom. And apparently I woke them up by peeing down the stairs. And you know, you know, just like, and I guess I had to pee a lot back then. Um, I don't know because I was sleeping, but I do remember being awoken at the top of the stairs. And my mom is really mad because, you know, she's been awakened by someone pissing right next to their room and knowing the amount of work that it takes to clean anything liquid off of stairs, much less your son's urine, and she looks up at me and she's holding a paper towel and I had she like, look at this. And I'm barely coming to it this point.

Yeah. What? What? Just just go to bed. So I went to bed. After that, I never sleep walked again. Really? That's true. I began wetting the bed from that point forward. That's true. I began wetting the bed from that point forward. And that sucked. And so there was all kinds of stuff that they didn't realize that these two things were tied. Keep in mind who they were at that time. But more silently, we did get rubber sheets, which was good. And I learned to take a shower every morning. And I learned to do my own laundry every morning. And I was soaked from navel to thigh. Or good. I think until I was about 11. Really? Yeah. Well, because there were a lot of, you know, very often wedding bed is the same stressors and things like that. It's trumming anxiety. And you know, when your parents are like,

you know, in your waking hours saying, well, we're going to have to get the kind of sheets of electric shock you have to stop you from doing this, you know, I can't that that's a great way to, you know, you know, and again, I've been adopted. And then we moved to Florida and that was an awful culture shock. Like, I cannot intimate you how deeply different the culture was from San Francisco to Bronson, Florida, where best friends would start blood feuds at the drop of a hat for the next four years. And that would take care of their entire fifth grade. And then, and then after that

four years of fifth grade, they'd go on to sixth grade as again. Like, it was just such a cool, it was very stressful time, very cool. And it was very mean people. They were just very mean. And so yeah, I think that those things absolutely fed into me continuing to wet the bed. That will make sense. I eventually stopped. Don't know how, don't know why figured it out. I don't know.

But I've always been a morning shower or as a result. And so, you know, the less of a deal you can make of it, the better. So it sounds like your wife is on the right track. And overall though, it just, it tickles me still to know that my parents had to deal with all of that. All that pee in their cabinets. And that one especially, but also at the front door.

For some reason, the front door is funny to me too. Yeah. But it's a little weird. Yeah. So. All right. Anyway, my daughter actually was a sleep walker for a while. So like now, even now, like I'm like, I go to the bathroom before you go to bed and she

like, I don't really have to go. I'm like, how do you sleepwalk when you have to pee? And I have seen her turn on like when she wakes up. And it's just, I mean, she's, she's come out. I need to ask her what was the thing that she said? Cause I think she remembers it better now that more than I, but I think she was really upset or mad that the apples were in their refrigerator and they needed to be set free or something.

I don't exactly remember what, but she's a not she reads so much that like just a sentence will connect to another sentence, which will yeah. And when you're sleepwalking, it's just whatever comes to the front. So yeah. Yeah. So my daughter's a sleep walker as well. Oh, wow. So yeah, but not a bed wetter far as I know. So anyway, I think we should we should probably recap here. In 1999, 2002, 2004,

and 2005, each year started with TV shows on HBO or Showtime that followed a dark and gritty hidden underbelly style, morally ambiguous story and protagonist to boot, all of whom were capable of and had carried out either directly or by proxy horrific violence. Okay. Okay. Yes. Even Nancy Bocken from Weeds, people carried it out on her behalf. Yeah. She's not smashing people's heads to windows or anything like that, but she is engaging in an enterprise that does have

that violence and that threat of violence in it. Yeah. But Al Swear engine straight up. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I actually went and I looked at quotes from Al Swear engine. Oh, they're good. Yeah, and one of my favorites, and I can hear Ian machine saying it, and I can't come anywhere near impersonating him. But you know, you talk about him committing violence. He, one of his quotes was acts of bloodletting on my property that I have not,

that I have personally sanctioned, turn my stomach, that don't sit right with me. Right. And the thing is, each one of these characters does in fact have their own buggy moral code. Oh, yeah, blue and orange morality. Yeah. Yeah. So now in 2007, AMC stepped onto the gritty underbelly dark morally ambiguous

protagonist scene with madmen. Okay. Matthew Weiner wrote a draft Weiner, Weiner wrote a draft for the pilot back in 2000. And then he went to work on the sopranos under David Chase, who read the pilot in 2002. So David Chase, the showrunner and creator of sopranos, looks at this pilot for Mad Men, and he is Gaga for it. Now, we know wanted Chase to be the executive producer, and he wanted HBO to produce it. So once again, you have a pattern starting here, start with HBO, right? Yeah. Okay. So now which year was Mad Men again? Mad Men starts in 2007.

That's what it could be. It was written in 2000. And this is often how things happen. Oh, yeah. And then, you know, they get to expect and all kinds of stuff. But so he wants HBO to produce it. He wants Chase to executive produce it because he knows that Chase does good work. Chase actually declines. He's like, I got too much on my plate, but I absolutely support this to the hill. I will go to bat for you. And he does. Now HBO didn't take it up. So of course following Genji Cohen's path, he takes it to show time. But this time they pass on it too, because now sopranos is a net's final season and, you know, weeds is doing really well in show time. So, you know, they're like, oh, we don't need another one.

Which is a tremendous lack of foresight. But AMC is like, oh, hey, over here, over here. Hey. Because people are gonna, we know that the brand was on its last season. We know that people are mad that they had to wait almost a year and a half for the last season. So there's gonna be some drop off there. If it ends up being anticlimactic in some way,

then we really want people's anger to like guide them to something else. That is also a period piece of some sort. And so they're hopeful that people would turn over to AMC because they've got the buzz on Madman. So they picked it up. Now HBO CEO, too many damn letters. HBO CEO lamented AMC's picking up of Madman. This would be AMC's picking up of Madman. This would be AMC's first original series. Prior to that, it was a great movie.

It was a great movie. A whole lot of Westerns, a lot of Turner, well, no, Turner was TCM, Turner Classic movies. Now, it's 2007. Do you remember what was happening in the insurance world in 2007? Oh yeah, and we just talked about this. Yeah, it was a process of going tits up.

So why not have a TV series about the total alienation, ruthless, unstable capitalism, and a world on the brink of disaster? Okay, specifically focusing, specifically focusing on the people who are responsible for driving us all to consume. Yes. And there are white people in charge of telling lies. Oh. Well, at the same time, are lying to themselves and struggling to make any meaning out of

their lives that are increasingly dictated by said consumerism. Oh, yeah, no, there were some, there were some amazing moments in the show. That, uh, that showed the level of, wow, your characters are running so hard in the direction of self-understanding. Yeah. And then they just headbutted away. Which is the last instant. Oh, your character's Charlie Brown. There's self-reflection.

It's a football. Oh, what does he do? Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite moments from, I want to say it was the first season. Mm-hmm. As, of course, this was set in... I'm trying to remember what the first year of the series was.

It was at 60? Um, I think it is the 1960s. Well, it is the very early 60s. Right. I'm trying to remember specifically what year, because each, each season was, was very, very fixed in time and space. They've been specifically. No, it was, it was 1960, because it was during the election.

Right. Of 1960. So yeah, November of 1960, because you had the, the Kennedy and Nixon thing kind of in the background of the background. Yeah. And, and what I was first off, the very first episode, at the time I was living with a couple of friends, my best friend, his wife.

And we watched the first episode together, and I was mesmerized. But just absolutely, I could have, if Benjing had been a thing in 2007, I totally would have done it, like right there. Sure. And the two of them were completely turned off because the main character was this

shiftless amoral, you know, has a way out in the suburbs. And you don't really know about that. He's a dichotomy until the very end when he goes home. Yeah. Yeah. And he's not just a charming prick. He is a good man.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, they were both getting, it's funny, they never watched any of the, earlier series that we've referenced. They weren't sopranos, fans, or anything like that. But it was all floating in the culture, and they were both like, I don't wanna watch a show

about an asshole, like no. Yeah, it's all right. I get that too, because like, I, people like you should watch Parenthood, I'm like, no, I live it. Thank you. I get that too because like I I people like you should watch parrard hood I'm like no, I live it. Thank you. Thank you. No. Oh, you should watch Boston legal. No I yeah, I don't I don't want to see venal people in nice suits Or my other favorite was you should watch Boston public and I'm like no no teacher is that hot and And I don't want to watch these

hot teachers having their hot teacher problems. Yeah. No. Show me the episode where they're fucked up with the with the copier. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, but in the very first episode, you know, you you find out that number one, there's an awful lot about this guy. You don't know. Right. And he's this, he's this cipher, which for them was the turnoff. It was like, oh, no, see, I'm this, I'm hooked. You, you, you got me, like, I'm ready to watch all of this. But then the, the masterfulness in the pitch with the cigarette guys. Paul Ma, where, where, yeah, where they're lucky strike. I forget what they're standing. I think it was lucky strike.

Yeah, yeah, it was lucky strike, where, you know, the, you know, he asked him. So, you know, explain to me, you know, how do you make a cigarette? Because they're trying to come up with an angle. Right. Because the surgeon general report is now a thing. Right. And cancer is this deal. And he immediately latches on to you, wait, wait, wait, stop. What do you do to the tobacco? We toast it. And, and, and no, that's, that's the tagline. It's posted. Right. Because that's comfort. That's, that's home. That's, weren't literal warmth. That's all these things. And, and tobacco guys like, well, but yeah, that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter that it doesn't mean anything. It's to hit the button we need to hit. And the, the, the the the genius of that complete redirect was like you completely took the

took the rug out from under my feet right there. I'm like okay no this this guy's completely immoral and I want to see him work his hideous magic. Well, and you hit it on the head there. So each one of these characters that we've been talking about, we want to watch them work their hideous magic, whether it's at the point of a shotgun, whether it's with a boot knife, whether it's by ordering fat Italian guys to kill other fat Italian guys,

whether it's selling weed through your kids' school, whether, whether, whether it's work your wicked magic. It's we want to see bad people doing bad things and keep the veneer of good. And that's a real thing in 2007. It's wild. So Don Draper himself has lived a lie for much longer than the series had been going as well. If you look into his backstory, but he lied during the Korean War so that he could desert. Yep.

And his whole identity was based on that lie. Yeah. And so long as he keeps it going, he can outrun it and he can live his success and have his success, but he doesn't have meaning because he is because none of it is really right. Oh, yeah. No, it's incredibly like there's a level on which he's kind of a, kind of a we, or not a webel. What's where I'm looking for? Wubi. There's a level on which he's kind of a wubi because in, in those moments where he, he reflects on his emptiness, there is genuine paythos there. Mm-hmm. And then you watch him

and then he's got some, yeah. And then, and and well, like everybody did, you know, yeah, but that was a central feature to it. Yeah. Yeah. I say that Don Draper is the housing market. And because it's 2007, I mean, think about it. He is built on lies. As long as he can keep ahead of it, he's doing fine.

And everybody else's confidence in him makes it so that he's doing fine. And he's absolutely trying to just outlive his lie and doesn't really pay attention to when the bill comes due because he's trying to stay ahead of that bubble. Now, of course, being in 2007, a morality play is absolutely out of the question. So we followed this philanderer

through his charming sociopathic somewhat deliberately unaware life. And I do mean deliberately unaware. He tries to turn it off. And because it's 2007 and a war has been going on for four years by this point with no end in sight, America's psyche vis-a-vis its sense of masculinity was wildly damaged by, I think, 9-11. And so a TV series that highlights and reaffirms the most surface level. Visual only, toxic versions of that lost masculinity is going to be a big hit. So the drinking, the smoking, the sexual assault, the, the,

the casual sexual assault, the numbness that the women felt through a Betty Draper and the awful hole in his heart and entitlement, the Don Draper felt and embodied. Was central to people lost at a, at a major party performing in blackface without like realizing? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, yes, there's there's also that, but I'm talking about the actual like the heart wrenching parts that we go into. Yeah, don't get me wrong.

All of that's awful too. Yeah. But like that is central to people's interest in the reality of the show. I don't think the boss doing black, I know you're right. Here it was, that was a, that was a, hey, you know, look,

look what things were like back then. Right. And, oh my God, we've come so far. Yeah, and I think that's like a secondary rub. That's like good liberals comforted themselves watching the show. Oh yeah. Yeah, well, at least it's not like that anymore. Yeah. And, and you know, they, then they would maybe talk to their black friend about that scene. Now, once again, we have a show. What? Just don't keep your app shut. Yeah. Just don't. Good advice.

Yeah. Once again, we have a show about the dark underbelly of capitalism, but this time it's a white man's paradise too. It's back when America was great, which after 2009 was quite the juxtaposition with the realities that certain people were trying to deny at that time. So I'm going to recap. 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, all started with shows on HBO or showtime or AMC that had us following a dark, gritty hidden underbelly, morally ambiguous story and protagonist, all capable of and having carried out horribly narcissistic lives that were at once tremendous

exercises in lying to their loved ones and themselves, as well as carrying out very selfish behaviors. is in lying to their loved ones themselves, as well as carrying out very selfish behaviors. Okay. And that brings me to 2008. 2008 AMC ran yet another original content show, Breaking Bad, this time by Vince Gilligan, which is not the love child of the lead singer of Motley Crue and Bob Denver.

No. No. Good to know that because people would get confused. Exactly. Yeah. Now, originally, the idea came out of an ex-files episode. Vince Gilligan had written an episode called Drive, where in Brian Cranston's character is an anti-Semitic shitheele who's captured Mulder at gunpoint.

However, he's suffering from a real affliction, one that requires Mulder to take him to the West Coast or he'll die. Okay. And it has to do with radio waves and all kinds of things happening inside his head and stuff like that. So the question becomes literally, how far will you go to save an asshole's life? question becomes literally how far will you go to save an asshole's life. He's clearly a bad person. So why is Molder saving his life and Gilligan loved that juxtaposition. And he specifically wanted Cranston because quote, we had this villain and we needed the audience to feel bad for him when he died. Brian alone was the only actor who could do that who could pull off the trick. And it is a trick.

I have no idea how he does it." End quote. He also said that the episode wouldn't work unless it had such a talent because quote, it needed a guy who could be scary and kind of load some, but at the same time had a deep resounding humanity. End quote. OK.

Now he kept this idea for this and this actor in his pocket for later when he wrote the pilot to a TV series. He loved the idea of a protagonist turning antagonist and seeing how far he could drive you along the way, which to me feels really abusive. Yeah. And we were down for it. We were so fucking down for it.

And that's the thing. Like, I remember the walking dead because we did an episode a while back on zombies and how the walking dead. And I could have thrown that in here. And there's a bit of mention to it. But at one point, the show creator for walking dead, or maybe it was a show runner by that point, when they killed Glenn. Yeah. He straight up said, I wanted to see how far I could push the audience.

And it's like, bro, the goal isn't to get us to say the safe word. That's not how that works. Isn't it though? You sure? Or this fucker. He's the kind of guy that would make like your safe word has to be forcellable so you could get one more thrust in while you're trying to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but this this is kind of the same vibe though, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it's interesting. It feels very milgramy. You know, the milgram experiment. Yes. Yes, it does. That's a good that's a good analogy. Yeah. So, quote, television is historically good at keeping its characters in a Self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or even decades when I realize this the logical next step was to think how can I do a show in which the fundamental drive is toward change and quote now that philosophically I'm down for I think that's cool. Yeah, And yes, I think going from hero to villain absolutely

does work in that dynamic. And I think that that's that that is fascinating. That is interesting. Yeah. I think there are other changes you could have done, but okay, cool. Now we're arguing taste, but I would point out it's 2008 and we're seeing a very clear pattern. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, moral ambiguity at best and then straight up, well, we're going to take a good guy and turn him bad guy for you right in front of your eyes. Yeah. And really, that's the full explanation of TV in the 2000s, isn't it? Like we had a specifically anti-hero characters in the 1990s stretching into the 2000s. You have people who were on the side of good doing bad things for the sake of good. You, I mean, it culminates with Jack Bauer, where you can still fool yourself into thinking he's a good guy.

But you had the guy from the shield, you had the commit, you had all the cop procedural shit. Right? You had all those, those were anti-heroes. But those characters didn't really change either. Yes, they had character development. Don't get me wrong. But they really did the same. Yeah. Was was like straight up from from episode number one. Michael Chicholus's character was was a bad guy. Like he's he's he was over on. Yeah, that's what he does and what he does. What he does is nice.

But he is he's working for the right side of things. So Well, we think at the beginning of the series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and again, it's the 1990s. I'm not going to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

for the NYPD. Yeah, LAPD. LAPD is the shield. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Um, so yeah. And in the 80s and 90s, you had heroic characters. I mean, very really, were they bad guy bad guys in any way? You had Spencer for higher, the closest you came to having him be a bad person was that he had a black friend who rhymed all the time. Um, like,

and so, like, um, and so, uh, hawk, yeah, Avery Brooks. Yeah, yes, Avery Brooks, as a matter of fact. Uh, but you had the equalizer. Yeah, you had equalizer. You had, uh, you had, um, scarecrow and Mrs. King. You had Cackney and Lacey.

You had, yeah, you had my Giver. You have these heroes. Remington steel. There you go. You've got all these heroes. Yeah, you don't really have, I mean, fuck, even the 18. They were clearly good guys. Oh, yeah. You know, um, they didn't change either. But, but when you had characters who were fundamentally flawed, they could change. And we

would still go along with them, starting with Tony soprano.ano, look at him. Look at Omar, look at Al, look at Nancy, look at Don, all of them are people who contain multitudes and people who don't necessarily even see themselves as good. So why should we care? We care because we want to see them evolve and change, whether it's for good or ill. We want to see some change. Yes. We want to see where they take us because our life is constantly in turmoil and change since

9-11 since a little bit before that even. With breaking bad Vince Gilligan specifically said that he wanted to turn Mr. Chips in to Scarface and see if you'd come along. That's a great elevator pitch. Yeah. I mean, he is perfect. He is dined out on that phrase so many different interviews. Like it's clearly, you know, yeah, you know, was it, uh, we are creating an army of unforeseen power, you know, Kentucky Fried movie. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, he also said that without Tony soprano there would be no Walter White. Oh yeah definitely. He's drawing that straight line. Yeah. And it's this evolutionary soup that I'm most interested in for this podcast. So it's only taking me three episodes to get here. Okay. Um the early 2000s were a fertile ground for continually pushing the moral ambiguity to the

point where we actively were invested in seeing a good man turn truly evil villains succeed. Okay. If you didn't have everything that came before, we would not be on board for Walter White. Okay. Now, like most good shows, it was rejected by prior networks who already had something like that going on showtime, HBO, TNT, FX, all past on Breaking Bad. AMC who already had madmen and by this point the walking dead said yes and it was off. Vince Gilligan clearly loved pulling the audience in this direction

and at looking at our underlying assumptions about what is good and what is bad. And so to just give you just in case people haven't seen Breaking Bad, Walter White is our main character, it's Brian Carranson's character. He has cancer, we find this out in the first episode. His teaching job does not pay enough in a society where healthcare isn't free. So he has to die.

His teaching job actually doesn't even pay enough to tend to his own son with special needs. So he works a second job at a car wash where his students sometimes frequent and film him to embarrass him more. So he turns to making math because he's a chemist, which will pay for his cancer treatments if he does it well enough. And if not, then the money, you know, and if, and then he can live. If he doesn't live through the money from the math will set up his family after death, especially since his wife learned that

she was pregnant right around the same time that Walt learned that his lungs were riddled with cancer. And what I love about it is in the very first episode, you're watching his brother-in-law, who is a DEA agent to talk about the bust. And he, Walt says, how much do you think that was worth? He's like, oh, about, you know, this much million dollars. And he's like, wow, that's a lot. And so you're just planting that seed. Now, is meth illegal? Yes. Is making meth illegal? Also, yes. Does his brother-in-law specifically work for the DEA and bust meth laps? Also, yes. Does his brother-in-law also brew his own beer? Also, yes. Yes. Is that legal? Also, yes. So you're seeing this like accepted morality versus not, and what's the real difference? And where's the line, et cetera, et cetera. And since meth is illegal, look what it leads to. Whereas brewing your own

beer, you can make shrader brow and box it yourself. Well, Walter's success outstrips his cancer. He beats his cancer. It was stage three, and he actually beats it. And they gave him very, very poor prognosis. He actually beats it. But right as he beats it, his wife discovers a lot of what he's been doing and leaves with both the children. Yeah. Because at this point, his daughter's been born. And he's done some horrid shit at this point alone. Like, really, I never roughly wearing his moral degradation that that occurred by the time by the time she leaves him. I'm already saying no, I'm never following him. Like he's clearly a villain at that time. And I'll tell you why in a minute, there's a very specific scene. Okay. That leads to me saying that like it's like at that, like, no, sorry, you stole the droids. I don't know what to tell you. Now, this is also a regular theme right at the moment

of triumph. Walt suffers tremendous tragedy. And I'm sure there's a Walt Whitman poem that talks about that. But I don't know from poetry. So now over and over, we see Walt making decision based on his agreement at the injustice of his situation and his situation is not just. It's really not. And every single decision he makes takes him further and further away from the person that we would want to be. At what point is his breaking bad, our breaking point? Many, including myself, it was the moment where he allowed Jesse's girlfriend to drown in her own vomit.

Yeah, that was the moment for me, because he literally was reaching to stop and then he held his hands back and he just watched her die. Plenty of people recognized his steps earlier as points of no return. I don't want to say they're wrong for that. I totally understand that too, but this was a truly specific point in which he made a very clear decision when he could have chosen the other way. And it was a neither decision was any risk to him personally. Regardless, people still watch myself included not even hoping that he would get his come

up ends, but wondering how Walt will get out of this next hell of his own creation that he uses to corrupt and hurt all those around him. How far will he continue to let his pride lead him? And remember, it's not just him that's suffering from this. He corrupts Jesse even further. He corrupts his wife, brings her in on it, corrupts her even further. Everybody he touches becomes more and meshed into this world. And it's not just Walt that other people loved. Everybody loved Gus as well.

Gus was the owner of the, the Poe, Los Hermanos Poeos. Los Hermanos. Yeahos. Los Hermanos. Yeah. Chicken brothers. Yeah. Um, Gus was an eminently evil individual.

Saul was sleazy so much so that now he's got his own show. Mm hmm. Mike was ruthless. Old man, Mike. Yeah. He was ruthless as hell. And yet every one of them was someone that the audience was absolutely drawn to. Now Mike is the one who actually uses the title phrase, right? That was when I broke bad.

No, breaking bad happens in the first episode where, well, gets the money for the RV, because that was original plan. And Jesse asks, you know, like what caused you to break bad? Okay. Yeah. Now breaking bad has its own interesting linguistic components in the South. Yeah. You can mean any number of things. It can mean going ape shit. It could also mean just using bad language or it could mean manipulating people. Like it has a lot of derivations to it. And so it felt a bit like an empty vessel of a title,

to be honest. Now every season saw incredible growth. The first episode had 1.41 million viewers. The final season, the final episode, or no, I'm sorry, the first episode of the final season had 10.28 million of viewers. Holy cow. Yeah, that's almost 10 fold increase from January 2008.

I must say that again, from January 2008 until September 2013. Wow. Yeah, we follow a white barely holding on to the middle class middle age failed by the system he bought into man who's trying like hell to keep his pride in a system that's clearly grinding him down to nothing. And all of this lines up almost the day with Obama's candidacy and presidency. In January of 2008, he surprisingly beat out John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as the candidate in Iowa stating our time for change has come

While running against an establishment Democrat and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards who had been constructing the careful campaign Talking specifically about the two Americas, which was a quote that he borrowed from where phrase that he borrowed from Martin Luther King I don't I didn't see anywhere where he attributed it to him. Doesn't mean he didn't, but he probably only did it once or twice. Yeah. Because in 1967, here's what Martin Luther King said. He said, there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful.

And in a sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of our of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies and culture and education for their minds and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America, millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.

But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the abulancy, abulancy? Abulance. Abulance. But he says abulancy. Abulancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America, millions of work starved men walk the streets daily and search of

four jobs that do not exist. In this America, millions of people find themselves living in rat and festive vermin-filled slums. In this America, people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. Take that imagery and look at Tony soprano, look at Al Sweringen, look at Nancy Botkin, look at, I'm not going to say look at Don Draper because we only focused on that prosperity, but look at what white. Yeah.

All of them are absolutely showing us the two America's existing very often in the two different parts of their lives that they're playing. Yeah. So, headwords gave a speech at the two. That was by the way Martin Luther King in 1967. Yeah. I'm just glad we fixed everything by then. Yeah, no, isn't it wonderful that we're now living in the utopia that, you know, everybody

listened to him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, he never he was never vilified by anybody. Not in the slightest. You know, yeah. Now in 2004, at the Democratic National Convention, John Edwards, who was candidate for vice prince or vice principal for vice principal.

Jesus. Okay. You know, he was looking at Edwards. I can totally see him doing that job. Well, and his main principal was vice. So yeah, oh, oh, Edwards, did I ever tell you about there's a principal that we had at our school? I will not name her, but the kids called her Skeletor. But when she left, the paper ran a story, a front page story,

our school paper ran a front page story, principle heading off to whatever cool new thing she was doing. You know, congratulations to our principle, but they spelled it PR I and C I P L E. To which one of the English teachers says, well, that's the first time that word's been attached to her. Oh, shit. Yeah. Wow. As good times.

Yeah. Damn. But anyway, so in 2004, he is he is candidate for vice president under John Kerry. And are on the same ticket as John Kerry, which I've still gobsmacked that that they lost. But at but they did lose actually. Yeah. It's the only one in the last eight elections where the Democrats actually lost by way yeah by way popular vote yeah um it's good things good systems good times yeah yeah yeah so he's at the DNC wherein he says quote we can build one America where we no longer have two health

care systems one for families who get the best healthcare money can buy and then one for everyone else rationed out by insurance companies drug companies in HMOs millions of Americans have no health coverage at all. It doesn't have to be that way. And then four years later we start a three years later we started TV show. That is a teacher in New Mexico. Yep. Who is definitely in that second column. Yeah. So now, Edwards said, uh, and basically right after the election failed, he all but moved to Iowa and spent the next three years trying really hard to get people to, to be down for what he was doing. Yeah. And, uh, so he ran for president in the 2008 election for the primary.

His campaign failed against the hope and change that Obama offered and he dropped from the running in late January 2008. So you have Edwards. His he's the only white male in the running now. And it's late 2008, or it's early 2008, but it's right around the time that they get started on the show. So, in June of 2008, his personal life imploded taking all his credibility and attractiveness

to middle America with it, owing to an affair. Back when, you know, revelations like that could actually derail somebody's political career. I've only seen them derail Democrats. Gary Hart was a Democrat. Yeah. John Edward was a Democrat. Yeah. It's, you know, they actually will, they'll stop punching when the bell rings. Yeah. So this is true. Yeah. Now Obama and Clinton took center stage, meaning that there was a mathematical certainty that in the presidential election

in the fall of 2008, it would not be between two white men for the first time. As we know, Obama won handedly and for the rest of the show's run, Obama was president. Also for the duration of the run, there was the normalizing of a never-ending war, as well as the crash and recovery from the housing market collapse.

And while that was happening, folks were facing foreclosures at rates not seen in a long goddamn time. Here's some numbers for you. In 2008, there were 2.33 million foreclosures. In 2009, that number went up to 2.82 million, which you're still within the 2 million mark, but that's another 500,000 people. Yeah, another half a million. Yeah. In 2010, 2.87 million. So it's still going up by another 50,000. It's cresting though, because in 2011, it went down to 1.88 million. In 2012, it went

down to 1.83 million. So it's going slow. Yeah. And then 2013, it went down to 1.83 million so it's going slow. And then 2013 it went down to 1.36 million. Now to give you an idea, in 2007 or 2006, it was at only half a million. Oh wow. So even 2013 numbers is almost triple what it had been prior to the collapse. Yeah, but like I said, uh, yeah, this is still literally I said the thing that I actually just written. Uh, it was triple what they it was nearly triple what they'd been in

2005. And now a black guy was in charge. Right. And that's a problem for a large swath of the country. We're entirely too many people. Yeah. And less cosmetically, there was also a lot of money that was being pumped into banks and businesses and not as much at hitting as helping people in their pocketbooks. Okay. Yeah. So yeah. I mean mean, you, again, remember AIG with all the bonuses that they paid out.

Yeah. Now, you've got all that going on. Yeah. And before we dive back in and take a look at the heroes who got spurned because I haven't forgotten Pope Francis and John Cena, we need to talk about another hero who was brought low by his pride.

You want to take a guess? Brought low by his pride. We're talking this is specifically in the mid-2000s. Yeah, 2000s and early teens. Tony Stark? No, no, I like that though. This is a real person. Oh, oh, oh, a real hero real hero brought low by his pride. But right now I'm blanking, but I know when you say it, I'm going to kick myself because it was fucking obvious. So in 1992, Lansar Armstrong stepped on to the world stage

and was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Okay. He was with the Motorola team in 1992. Now from 93 to 96, he won world championships and two other big time tours. And then he made good showings in the Tour de France, especially in 1995. Yeah.

Okay. He seemed poised to be the next big thing until testicular cancer came along. At the age of 25, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer, and by this point, it had spread to multiple systems. And he had an almost nil chance of survival, to the point where the doctors lied to him because if he learned the odds, then he wouldn't have fought. Oh, wow. Okay. The doctors removed the offending testicle and he ended up getting the best treatment possible again to America's. Later, he had brain surgery to remove the necrotic lesions on his brain. Now, that was in 1996 that all of that started happening. The initial diagnosis, I want to say, was in October of 96, maybe September of 96.

That sounds about right, from what I recall, yeah. In February of 97, only four months after his initial diagnosis, he was declared cancer-free and joined his co-feetus team for training camp. Yep. So, hell of a turnaround from your, your gone, dude. You're a dead man walking. Yeah, cycle. And then suddenly he said, a training camp. Now, after a bit of negotiating, they didn't renew his contract and in 1998, Lance Armstrong joined the US Postal team in January of 98. Yep.

He came back to the United. Yep. He came back to and they that's I think the going Postal thing is why they they sponsored the the cycling team because hey, we want you to see speed. We want you to see athletes. We want to see well adjusted people. Yeah. So he comes back to the United States to train for the next

Tour de France in May of 1998. He trains in the Appalachian Mountains with former Tour de France teammates. He begins holding charity races, which through luminaries passed in present from the cycle of the world. He's doing all the right things. He is the most strong. He's starting to lose the world.

Not for a while. Oh, OK. Not for a while. But he's doing all these things and they're all the right things. I mean, talk about just the PR machine that this is, it is really, really smart. And he's he's very American. Like, I mean, he's from Texas, but he's not a good old boy from Texas. You know, he's kind of more of a Houston guy. But he's training in the Appalachians. Like he's doing all the American things in the late 1990s. Now, at this point, he is a persevering hero.

He's an American icon on some levels, and he is heading into being a world icon. He enters and wins several other tours in the next year. And in 1999, Lands Lance Armstrong, who has the world's average amount of testicles. Okay, yes, this is true. The average person has one. And who beat a pretty deadly case of cancer, he won the Tour de France in 1999. And while he did win, the main powerhouse in the cycling world at the time

Jan Ulrich was not in that race due to an injury so of course it was he won but could he have questions remain questions that would be answered in 2000 when Armstrong won again and Jan was there he won again in 2001 and in 2002 he won again but this time Ulrich wasn't there due to a suspension for drugs. Yeah. Now at this point, like, you know, that's, that's a big deal. I was like, oh, but he's an American and he's been doing it drug free. He wins again in 2003, but this time Ulrich came pretty close in 2004 Armstrong wins again. And despite losing a stage to another American in 2005, he wins again. So that's seven year winning streak for the Tour de France, the most challenging grueling. It's

the world series of cycling. Yeah. And he retired as the most dominant bike rider ever. And he was an American with an awesome fucking name. Yeah. Oh yeah.. No, you can't beat that. Yeah. Yeah. And his bracelets were everywhere at this point. Yellow live strong bracelets were everywhere from 2003 forward. Okay. That's really what he's going. Yeah. And some of them have to do with his relationship with Cheryl Crow. She also had cancer. But you know, he was also, I mean, the dude was a major spokesperson for like, hey, you can fucking beat cancer. And he absolutely went and cheered up a bunch of kids and a bunch of people. Oh, yeah.

He was an avatar of joyful defiance. Yeah, that's a really good way to face that disease. Yeah. Now, having said that, he maybe lived that gimmick a little bit much. Like, or he was an asshole, and this time he was pointing the right direction. Yeah. So, in the fall of 2008, he declared that he was coming back and wanted to participate in the Tour de France for 2009.

And I think he was successful because he got third place and his own teammate won. Yeah. I also think that this is very much Americans are like, if you ain't first your last kind of bullshit. Yeah. But Japanese wrestlers would be like, oh, he did a good job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

In 2009, he declared that he'd race again in 2010 announcing it this time on Twitter. And by the way, at this point, I think the Pope had his own Twitter as well. Yeah. I think it's at Pontifex. Yeah. I don't know if so. This time, he finished in 23rd place and this time, he would quit for good. And to me, I think that's a wonderful story. He came back and he left on his own terms. He's no longer able to hold the top spot

and he goes out having given it his all and failing. And I think that's a wonderful arc. It's a great narrative. He'd be cancer. He became the number one for an unprecedented seven years in a row, went away, came back to prove that he could still fucking go and then he finally quits. And that would be a great story except that this podcast never, let's story never ends on that kind of note. No, no. Throughout most of his career, Lance Armstrong had

been accused of doping and in cycling, doping is a pretty common problem. As far back as 1999, though, Armstrong was accused publicly of doping because of how well and effortlessly he had gone up the Alps during a stage in the Tour de France. He's accused by European newspapers and of course, he's at the beginning of his comeback from cancer and he vehemently denied doping. And the American press loved having him as a hero, so there was a lot more support in the US than there was suspicion. And the coverage in the US was not so much the controversy or the facts, but more over the way that the European press was dogging him. The coverage of the coverage. How suspicious and unfair

and envious they all are. Of the fact that, you know, this, you know, they're all just offended that this, you know, uh, uh, cardinal American, upstart American, you know, is, is showing up all of their, you know, elite euro athletes. Exactly. You know, yeah. So, and, and his rejoinders to the claims of his dope and we're always pretty common sensically dismissive. He would say, quote, why would I dope if I just beat cancer?

Why would I dope if I live in France, which is super anti-doping? That's a Damien phrasing, but that kind of stuff. And I mean, right on its surface, you're like, yeah, dude, just beat cancer. Why would he dope? I mean, that would threaten his life. Except, you know, I don't understand medicine and, you know, others would and they'd be like, yeah, it's no fucking problem. Um, and why would I dope if I live in France?

It's the most regulated place in the world. Yeah, but you could also bribe those regulators. Um, so you could hire Italians to do it for you. That's what he did. Uh, then he starts publicly throwing people under the bus when he did get proven to be doping or at least related to doping. That begins with Michelle Ferrari, the Italian doctor who was busted for connections to doping.

And he was one of the first people that Armstrong jettisoned. Armstrong said that he possessed, quote, zero tolerance for anyone convicted of using or facilitating use of performance enhancing drugs. Looking back, you're like that dust protest too much, but at the time, dude is consistent, stick into his story.

No matter how many people are throwing shit at him, he's got a repost. He was so clean that he wanted no relationship with such people. And so he severed professional ties with Ferrari. He did still hang out with the dude from time to time, but you know, friends. He sued the Sunday Times in 2004 for libel and they had to make a public apology after settling out of court with him. Other people continued to claim to claim allowed that he was doping and this included two

other journalists and his own personal assistant who was already in a legal fight over wrongful termination. See if you're going to dope take care of the people that work for you. Yeah, don't be a dick. But Armstrong did the most clever thing you could do when somebody accuses you of doing the thing that you're doing. What do you do? You countersuit. you of doing the thing that you're doing, what do you do? You counter Sue. So he counter sued his former personal assistant and the two reached a settlement out of court, which remains undisclosed. Armstrong continued to call this a witch hunt, which sound familiar. And he accused the press of tabloid journalism. So he's attacking the press. He kept things going despite a secret despite a secret meeting in Colorado where he'd accepted a one year ban. He had a I think it was like in the office

of the former governor of Colorado and he met with a bunch of people and they're like look just take the one year ban and he's like well I did and that that deal fell apart. people and they're like, look, just take the one-year ban. And he's like, well, I did, and that deal fell apart. In August of 2005, he said, quote, I will simply restate what I have said many times. I have never taken performance enhancing drugs. And then he went on to accuse the lab of spiking his urine samples. Wait. Uh-huh. I had forgotten that. He used the laboratory of spiking his ear. You're in samples.

Yeah. They're all out because that's a thing that happens for sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a double blind delivery system too. Like you piss into a cup. It's got a number on it. Yeah, you know,

that doesn't have your fucking name on it. Yeah. And then they just report on the number. They never actually know whose name it's attached to. So so far so good, right? The hero has won seven straight tours and he is squeaky clean. Who doesn't love a good story of a Texan boy done good in France? a good story of a Texan boy done good in France. Okay. Yeah. And then Frankie and Betsy Andrew reported in a deposition in a lawsuit case over a backer, specifically SCA promotions, who were refusing a $5 million bonus for arm strong winning his six tour de fronts.

So it's part of how he gets paid. And this, this company, um, SCA promotions, they said, oh yeah, you win and you get a $5 million bonus for your whole team. And they didn't want to pay that. And so there was a lawsuit. And they said, well, fucker cheated the whole way. We don't have to pay shit.

And it's like, well, how do you know we cheated? Well, Frankie and Betsy, why don't you two get the post? And so they got the post and they're like, yeah, dude, dude was dope and like crazy. Well, of course, they settled. They ended up paying one and a half times that amount to cover the interest in lawyer fees to Lance Armstrong. So instead of five million, he got seven point five million because his case was so he was so squeaky clean that he clearly wasn't doping. Wow. In that deposition, Betsy Andrew stated that Armstrong had used growth hormone, testosterone, steroids, and a lot of other stuff I don't understand.

Okay. Yeah. Armstrong started on started on a charm offensive, claiming that Betsy must have been confused at what his post operation treatments included. Again, I don't know medicine, that makes sense. I was taking these medicines because of my post chemo shit. And yes, they do sound like steroids, but actually they're approved and these aren't, and I'm gonna need an ninja powder run. Okay, yeah.

Spoke ball. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which were EPO and steroids to help with the problems that aggressive chemotherapy brings to the table. But there was also a text stream between Frankie and another mainly about blood doping. However, that other man, Jonathan Vaudeau's, Voiders Vaudeau's, it's Daughters with a V. I'm gonna say Vaudeau's. Signed in Affidavit that nobody knew anything about, that nobody knew anything about Lance Doping.

So he signed in Affidavit said, nobody know nothing about no doping, So he signed an affidavit said, Hey, nobody know nothing about no, no, no doping. Nothing. I got nothing. Okay. So this means that nobody backs Betsy and Frankie's claims, and the case just kind of fizzled away. So he beat it again. And he talked mad shit on the two of them too, especially Betsy. SA promotions were hopeful that the allegations of doping would get them out of paying the bonus. They didn't. And again, Armstrong comes away as the hero. Because after all, this is what you're going to say. This is 2007. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, 2005. And then yeah, the so we're ahead, yeah, mid-2000s, I forgot the actual date on it.

But really, if you look at the story, an insurance company is trying to short an American hero and accuse him of something that he's oh, clearly never done. And there's a confused wife of a former teammate, poor Lance. Yeah. And since people are already primed to not really like insurance companies, whether or not

they're sponsoring a cycling team or not. So in May of 2010, Floyd Landis, the guy who had won the Tour de France after Lance Armstrong retired in 2006, he popped a positive. And when you pop a positive, one of the things you do traditionally is you throw other people under the goddamn bus. So, yeah, no, you start singing like a gunner. So he said that Lance had actually done the same thing in 2002 and 2003. And land is claimed without documentation that the team manager slash

director bribed the presidency of the union, cyclist, internacional to keep the 2002 test results quiet. Landis also claimed that Armstrong was getting lots and lots of blood transfusions to inject and to inject oxygenated blood back into his body and giving out testosterone patches to his teammates. So I want to talk about the blood thing first. Where you're a high altitude, your blood is thinner, right? Right. Right. I forget exactly why, but I think there's less iron in

it. Therefore, there's less recovery that can happen with thin blood. Yeah. So what they would do is they would draw their own blood or somebody would draw their blood for them when they were really low altitude. And it rest. And like, so it's got the maximum ironing, right? They would draw that, they would keep that. And then that night after they finish writing, they'd get re-injected with that good blood. Yeah, okay. And that would aid in recovery. Yeah.

And on some levels, like, whoa, are you gonna get me for putting my own blood back on my body? Like, but the answer is yes. Yeah, the answer is it's supposed to be, you know, the point is supposed to be, you know, facing the challenge of the high altitude and dealing with, you know, yeah.

And, and so, just as a side note, because Cheryl Crowe got mentioned a minute ago. Uh-huh. And then whole thing. So he got the, he split up with Cheryl Crow. Yes. They split up in 06. Yes.

And I, Oh, the Livestock stuff was before that then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember, like that split being for me the moment where some of these things started kind of hitting home. Like there was a part of me that was like, you know, maybe there's a crack in the facade here. You know, and I don't know, I don't know,

I don't know how much of, because I didn't wanna believe it. None of us wanted to believe it, you know? But yeah. I was just trying to remember when it was in my own head that I'd started thinking like, you know, maybe he's kind of a dick. And I think that was part of it.

That wasn't the moment where I fully said, no, you stole the droids, fuck you. But it was like, well, you know, did you get the droids legally? Kind of interesting. Anyway, interesting. No, it's fine. I just find it interesting what pulls people into like,

okay, I'll look at the facts. And for you, it was his romantic relationship with a singer who's got more money than either of us ever will make ever will like ever forever. You know, I think I think in my in my head part of it was they had been so visible. Yeah, that's true. And it had seemed like such a fairytale kind of story. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden, it fell apart. Okay.

And there was a part where it was like, well, and I'm also hearing all this other stuff where people are making these accusations. Do you think there's something there? Because I never gave a shit. Like it was like, oh, okay. But I also didn't give a shit about the recent Johnny Depp and Berhard stuff.

And a lot of people did. And I'm wondering if there's just like, there's something about that. Two visible people splitting will make people start to look a scant at them. I think there's, there's, I think it's related to the instinct that we have of rubber necking. Okay.

You know, because, because back when we were, you know, upright apes on the Savannah of Africa, and we had to worry about leopards. Sure. When you see someone go down, take something down, it's gonna capture and hold your attention because you could be like, okay, how did they fuck up? Right, right. Like I got an answer, whatever the fuck that is,

I don't need to do that. I didn't do that, right. And that's a really normal thing for him and it's to do is, well, okay, I wouldn't need to do that. I didn't do that, right. And that's a really normal thing for humans to do is, well, okay, I wouldn't have done that, so I'll be safe. Yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, all right. All right, that's interesting. So yeah, there's the blood doping stuff

that he gets accused of by, who do I say, Floyd Landis. And then also there's handing out testosterone patches to his teammates. Now that's, it's your, if you're at the top of the pyramid scheme, you keep your hands clean. I'm a little shocked that if, if, if what Floyd Landis is saying is true, I'm a little shocked that Lance Armstrong was like that taken in by his own hubris to hand out the shit because now he's

literally distributing. Oh yeah. This is how Vince McMahon beat the steroids scandal of the 1990s because there was a doctor who handed shit out. Yeah. Dr. Z. Did not create a level of plausible deniability. Right. Exactly. I was at the other side of the arena. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. That doctor showed them to every show you had. They're going to be in a contract. What do you want? Yeah. Yeah. What do you want from me? It's so, but yes, so it's just man. And so I think that accusation also starts to make the the whole thing look desperate. Everybody keeps claiming that Armstrong is doping, but nobody's able to prove anything,

or do more than simply gossip. So the result is that Floyd Landis just looks like a bitter XT mate. Even the Union's cyclist internacional, I know I'm blowing that, he denied that Armstrong had they denied that Armstrong had any presence of EPO in his blood in 2001. And what I love here is I'm just going to break away for a second. I watched the documentary on Lance Armstrong, the 3430 documentary. And it's, it is a thing to watch. All the 3430s are amazing. But like, this is a study in charming narcissism.

Like he, he's just fucking likable. And he's honest about his shit, but only to a point. Okay. And it just, and, but they asked, they're like, you know, is there any, any regrets or anything that you, you walked away knowing that you're, you're doing good. He says, yeah, I wake up every day grateful as hell that I'm not a fucking asshole like Floyd Landis graces something like thatis. We're like, Jesus dude. Oh my shit. You're still holding that.

That's the point at which he blinks. And like if you go frame by frame, you can see the reptile eyes for like two frames. Right. But like he just basically is like, I'm just grateful I'm not an asshole like Floyd Landis. Like I forget exactly what he said. Like I'm not a fuck asshole like Floyd Landis. Like, I forget exactly what he said. Like, I'm not a fuck up like Floyd Landis. There's something really awful. Wow.

But like, you know, hey, Damien, your team just won. What are you gonna do? Well, I'm gonna go fuck Floyd Landis's mom and give her a son that she could be proud of. Like, could you have just like backed Campbell's chunky soup? Like, instead you're going to Disneyland right? There are so many cliches you could have gone with and you and you instead decided to erect a guillotine

All right to attack a guy who did not have the power to break you down And who does not have that power now and you're still going after it. And yeah, they're, they're, he must have hit a nerf. He was probably right is really what it is. Yeah. I mean, Malignant narcissists do not like having a mirror held up to them. Ironion. Oh, oh, no. Tyler Hamilton came out, not the son of Scott Hamilton. But Tyler, I don't think, Actually, I should probably look that up. But Tyler Hamilton came out in 2011 with another claim. He said that in 1999 through 2001,

Armstrong had taken EPO before and during the Tour de France. Now, the thing is, I never looked up what EPO means. I assume it's exercise placement organisms, but I'm probably wrong. But it's the same kind of shit that they are smearing into berry bonds is butt. So of course other people. Are you okay? I'm sorry. Okay, erythro protein stimulating agents. I love you. Yeah, er, it was her protein produced by the kid and you used to make red blood cells. So it's more blood-doping. Yeah. OK.

So yeah, he said that 99 to 2001, he says this 10 years later. He's like, oh, fuck, yeah. He did that shit all the time before and during the Tour de France. And of course, other people like dude's lying. Tyler Hamilton, come on, sit down. But now that's Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Frankie Andrew, and his wife Betsy, all saying the same story. So clearly they're in cahoots, right? Because nothing came of it. Despite all these claims, there wasn't any evidence with which anyone

could corroborate these claims. We still wanted to collectively, we still wanted to collectively we wanted to believe yeah, it's that well was he convicted? No Okay, that's just because the judge fucked up like okay look I have I have a pile of evidence well It's all circumstantial. Yeah But it's powerful enough to defeat reasonable doubt. Yeah, well, I still don't believe it well Okay, your doubt is unreasonable. Right. Like so by 2012, though, the federal government, who had been investigating these claims, dropped all charges. Couldn't find it. Really? Yeah. So as it turns out, there was one good man in cycling and he was an American hero. Finally, someone against type in the 2010s.

You know. No, I guess in October of 2012, the US ADA, the United States, anti-doping agency, also Hussada, dropped a bombshell that in fact, there was a tremendous network that enabled Handsome Armstrong and many others to dope for years. Yep. Quote, the evidence shows beyond any doubt that the U.S. Postal Service Procycling Team

ran the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping program that sport has ever seen. The evidence was overwhelming, included the receipts, the emails, the inventories, the lab results, et cetera. Now, remember who is sponsoring him? Postal service, which is federal. Federal. Yeah. Which means it's taxpayer money that's going toward this.

Oh, shit. That had never occurred to me. Yeah. Which explains why the federal government dropped all the charges. In 2013, he went on, he went on Oprah and admitted that he had been using performance enhancing drugs, blood doping, EPO, diuretics, falsified documents. And he said that it had helped all seven of his tour victories. He also admitted a few years later that he had been doping since back in the spring of 1995. Wow. Yeah. He said, quote, he said that he would, quote, will spend the rest of my life trying to win back the trust and apologizing to people. And then came the strippings, the justice, the repudiation, the public, ate it, the fuck up. He was stripped of all of his race wins.

One of my favorite ones though is like they he's no longer the the champion of the Tour de France. Well, this the number two guy also doked. All right, the number three guy also doked. All right, you got down to like guy number 17 number. Yeah, way down the list. It was like, which was all right. Yeah. Which all the more reason kids follow your dreams. Be number 18 out of 18 because the odds are if you do it clean, you'll end up in the record. You don't feel. Yeah. So Jesus. He was banned from cycling for life from the IOC as well as many other organizations. He was dumped by all of his sponsors. Many publicly said that they were looking to get their money back from him because he had defrauded them. SCA promotions was quick to jump back in there. His hero-turned-villain

persona was exposed for all to see, often with his own admissions. Quote, yes, I was a bully. I tried to control the narrative, and if I didn't like what someone said, I turned on them. And this included the massage therapist, Emma O'Reilly, who tried to expose him in 2003. He quote, we ran over her and quote, I don't think he actually did like Johnny and everybody was about to do to Daniel Sun. I think he went more metaphorically. Yeah.

He ended up settling with the US federal government over the $100 million sponsorship that had been built on this fraud. He settled for 5%. I've never owed back taxes. I have. Did you settle for 5%? No, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. No. No. Yeah. Fucking lands are upstrow. Fucking. Oh, God.

5% see that bit is new to me. Yeah. That, and you know what? You know what? I just got angry about the whole thing all over again. I've listened to this whole story with total equanimity and utter historical detachment of like, let's look at this phenomenon.

And now I am seething. Five percent. Yeah. The federal government paid him $100 million to hide a goddamn bicycle. Yes. To go to France and ride a bike. Yes. He cheated. He did. Massively. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Before, during and after. Eventually, by his own admission.

And he had to pay back 5% 5% No, no, no, that is not acceptable. I want you to have for Lance Armstrong. You okay? No, I want maybe not, maybe not like, you know, maximum security, but like, no, club fed something I need. So he gets interviewed for the 30 by 30 and he lives in this beautiful villa. Still, yeah, I know. And he bargained down to 5%. So, so name, name for me, how this whole thing, the rise and fall of Lance doesn't fit in with 2013.

Just, oh, yeah, I can't. You have a hero brought low proven to not be spotless, but incredibly wicked. Oh, feet of clay. Yeah, totally. Any good person who does exist only does so in their appearance. And even that is worthy of scorn. Everyone else is clearly wicked. Oh, shit. He's fucking home lander. Oh, so I haven't seen that show yet.

Um, I haven't seen the show, but I read the read the comic. It's okay. Um, yeah. No, you think he's Superman. And he's actually literally God damn sociopath with the powers of Superman and yeah, um, yeah, no, Lance Armstrong is wow. Wow. Yep. I'm, I mentioned that I'm furious, right? Like you did already came. Yeah, okay. Yes. And that's actually we're gonna end this episode I just get to see your in stew Holy So that's wonderful. That's gonna be so great for my wife and kid. I do want to know what you've gleaned so far That you can express some of it Well, there's going to be a whole

other episode to wrap all this up, but also bring back very important parts. I think it's interesting. If you know, taking a moment to take a deep breath and regain my historical detachment, I find it really interesting that in the 80s and into the 90s, we were very earnestly as a dominant pop culture. It was very earnestly heroic. And we talked about the Bronze Age in comics, and we talked about stuff that happened in the 90s in the comics, and anti-heroes became a thing. But they were still anti-heroes. Right.

Stone Cold Steve Austin was still Stone Cold Steve Austin. Was, yeah, cured for this, yeah. Yeah. And then over time, we see this popular corrosion of our idealism. And Lance Armstrong just happened to be the perfect, like his, his arc happened at the perfect time. Right. And absolutely the perfect time historically for him to be literally the fucking avatar. Yes. Of that. And as and and the part of me that that is able to watch in reptilian glee as, you know, Don Draper does all of his utterly amoral shit. You mean all the shit that Lance Armstrong was doing in real life?

Yeah. Is is is is now kind of waking up again and I'm like, oh shit, let's Armstrong did the same fucking thing. Yeah. Oh my god, how? Like, yeah, and now and I want to see the 34 30 episode. Yeah, just because like, no, no, I want details. Like tell me how the fuck this happened. So yeah, I think the serendipity is the word that comes to mind,

but the conflict is a resonance. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for. See, to me, I don't think of it as serendipity. I think of it as all, I mean, I'm building a case here, right, you want to end the war, you better sing loud. And then in the 1970s, it was, you know, let's just fucking sit in our mom's basement and do barbituits like, and I got a divita baby, you know, but like you had the same length of time of a song. Yeah. This one was 20 minutes and it was just, you know, a guy playing the scales on the organ, the drum solo and all that. But in the 60s, you had Alice's Restaurant,

which was seven and a half pages of lyrics, and actually it was about ending the fucking war. Yeah. And I don't think that that's coincidental in any way when you measure it with what was going on politically. Like people had optimism in the 60s that was just crushed underfoot by the failures of 1968 and the assassinations of 1968. So going into the 70s, nobody has any optimism at all. It's

all very cynical. And I think that that's influenced the art that influenced the drug culture, that certainly influenced politics. I mean, Nixon is winning in a fucking landslide in 72. And then you have shit that's all about image and image management in the 80s going into the 90s and you got Reagan and Clinton. And those guys are just about, it's so, yeah, I don't think it's coincidental or serendipitous at all, I think that you don't have all these things happening except at this time. All right, that's fair. So, well, what's your reading?

Right now, I am on, and as I'm off kick, I read The Caves of Steel, and I have moved on re-read. Caves of Steel, I've moved on re-read Caves of Steel and I've moved on to the robots of dawn. Okay. And so that's not what I'm going to recommend though. Okay. Instead, I'm going to recommend Foundation also by Asimov. Okay. Because of its importance within the genre. And it's actually, it has this reputation

for being this, you know, big, important book, capital B, capital I capital B. But it actually reads really easily. So I highly recommend that for everybody who's looking for something to pick up. How about you? I'm going recommend two things. Number one, I'm gonna recommend that you watch 30 for 30. It's a two part episode. It's just called Lance, there's part one and part two. It's from season three, it's episodes 37 and 38, I think. So you can find that probably on ESPN plus.

And just get creative with how you find shit. So I really recommend you watch that documentary. And then I also think that you should read Cycle of Lies, the Fall of Lance Armstrong by Julie McCour. I think she does a really good job there. There's another one called Wheelman, which is pretty good by Reed Albert Gotti. But I really do think that Julie, what's her face, Julie McCore, I think, I don't know,

I think there's a little bit more polish, a little bit more on the ball for that one. It's a little more accessible. And that you can find that wherever good books are sold. And you probably find it in the local library. So those are the things I'm going to recommend. So where can people find you on the social medias? I can be found on social media at Mr. Undersquare Blalock on TikTok. I can be found at EH Blalock on Twitter. And we collectively can be found on the Twitter machine at Geek history time.

And where can you be found, sir? Oh, you can find me at the Harmony on Twitter and Instagram or the Harmony one on TikTok. You could find me, let's see, by the time this airs, August 5th, I wanna say, it's the first Friday of August. We will be doing a new show for capital punishment at Luna's up here in Sacramento. Make sure that you're vaccinated. Make sure you bring $10 for the show as well as another $10

to my food there because it's yummy. And you'll hear me doing all kinds of puns. You probably won't hear right now because I'm the one doing the exposition. But yeah, those two, and if for some reason this airs after August, then actually you could take a look at us on September 9th at Loonas. We're not doing September 2nd because Labor Day weekend, we try to keep this avid holy. So as you should. As you should. So, all right, well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

I'm Ed Playlock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s. a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Ed Playlock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s.