American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - State of the Union 03 - Steven Walters and Erik Archilla 1865

Episode Date: October 5, 2019

We are very lucky this week to be talking to the writers of the amazing 1865 podcast, an audio drama set in the aftermath of the assassination of Lincoln. Steven Walters and Erik Archilla have spent years getting into the heads of the characters of that time, including Lincoln and Johnson, so we decided to ask them their thoughts on the two presidents we have ranked best and worst so far respectively.

I'm going to say, I'm going to say because of that nose, he's a five out of five, because you're not going to forget that nose. That nose is going to be with you once you've seen it. It's going to be with you forever. Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, State of the Union Part 3 Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob. Did that hurt your throat? It did. Jamie's got a sore throat. And welcome to the third State of the Union episode. The episodes where we track down some genuine Americans and see if they roughly agree with what we're doing.

Although we do select the Americans based on the historical knowledge, not just random tourists. No, it's the yellow pages. No, not the yellow pages. Blue? Blue pages? It's the blue, wasn't it? I don't know. No one's listening for this. So who are we talking to, Rob? We are talking to, and it's very exciting this week because we are talking

to the two writers of 1865. They have just finished at time of recording. A couple of days ago the last episode came out. It is an audio drama, if you have not listened to it yet. An audio drama all about what happens after

Lincoln's assassinated. Basically everything around John Wilkes Booth and then going into Andrew Johnson's impeachment. Oh, he was bad. Well, yeah. So I was listening to 1865 thoroughly enjoying it, like you do. And it occurred to me, we've not talked to any Americans yet about Lincoln and Johnson.

No. And here are two people who seem to have spent God knows how many years looking into these presidents' lives. Perfect candidates. Who better to talk to? Exactly. I thought. Good. Yeah.

So anyway, we're going to be talking to them in 35 minutes. But through the magic of editing, if you're listening, you don't need to wait that long. Because you can listen now. What now? Well, now-ish. See, I did it to you this time. You... Hello. Right. We're very lucky and very happy to have with us right now, Eric Archilla and Stephen Mortis, names that you might recognize if you have been listening to the fantastic audio drama of 1865. And you guys wrote that.

Yeah. I'm just going to say, well done. It's fantastic. I've really enjoyed listening to that. I'd say it's the most Hamilton-y type thing that I've experienced, and I'm a huge Hamilton fan. I'm a huge Hamilton fan too, and that is really, really high praise. I'm blushing over here in New York. It's just great. It's that sense of real drama that's happening, but also you're just getting

slight history thrills at the same time. However, some of our listeners might not have heard 1865. So do you mind just giving us a bit of an outline of what it is and just how you got it started? Yes. So 1865 is an audio drama. It's a fully narrative serialized radio play, really. It tells the story of Edwin M. Stanton, President of Abraham Lincoln's War Secretary, and to use a Hamiltonian term, sort of his right-hand man. The story starts the moment that Lincoln is shot at Ford's Theater,

and it goes all the way through to the impeachment of Lincoln's successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson. It's a political thriller. I kind of like to tell people that 1865 is a little bit like House of Cards meets Deadwood, the TV series, but set in the 1860s and heavily researched and based on true events. Yeah, slightly fewer swear words. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit. We're categorized as fiction

because we are filling in conversations that we don't know exactly always what they said, but we have heavily researched the story and always tried to stay true to the history and just fill in the gaps to explain why the history happened. Yeah, I think that's something that really stuck out to me whilst listening. On our show, I spend a month looking into a president and we discuss it, we move on. You guys, how long have you

been doing this? Well, you know, Eric and I went to college together. We were theater students at a college called Baylor University in Waco, Texas. That's where we met. And that was back in, I guess we got there, Eric, what, in 1999? 99. Yeah, 99. And so part of our theater studies was theater history.

And Eric and I were assigned, I guess, the 19th century. And we were supposed to pick a topic for a research paper. And Eric suggested that we look at John Wilkes Booth because in American theater history in the 19th century, not a lot happens that's really exciting. Basically, vaudeville and minstrel shows and comic opera and nobody cares really about comic opera. Vaudeville didn't give us a whole lot to play with

and no one wants to touch minstrel shows we were looking for something else that was exciting that that drew us into the time period yeah and you know uh as we as we started to research it we went to our theater history professor a guy named scott lehay and we we asked him we said hey we really hate research papers can we write a play about john wilkes Booth and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? And for some reason, he said, yes. I don't know why. You just can't do it. Sometime in like 2001, Eric and I wrote a very bad play about John Wilkes Booth. And we kind of put it away. We didn't think about it again for about 10 years, I guess. And then in 2013, we decided to kind of revisit it. We always felt like there was something there that we hadn't really had the opportunity to

explore. I was working as the resident playwright of a theater in Dallas, Texas called Second Thought Theater. And we applied for a grant. We got the grant, and that gave Eric and I the opportunity to kind of dig back into the source material. And from that, two separate plays were born. One of them was called Booth, and it obviously focused on John Wilkes Booth and kind of the actions that led him to that infamous act. And then the other play was called Mars, and it really focused on Edwin M. Stanton. And the kind of combination of these two plays is what ultimately became 1865. So you could say that we've been researching this for a really long time. But the truth is, it's pockets of time stretched out over a decade plus.

Because it's been such a long time, do you really feel like you've got to know these? I mean, they're characters, obviously, in 1865, but they were real people. time do you do you really feel like you've got to know these i mean their characters obviously in in 1865 but they were real people so do you feel like you've you've got to know them i yeah i do in a way eric what are your thoughts on that very much though yeah well a lot of the research we did was uh looking at as much of the actual writings and words of these people as we could. And we tried to incorporate a lot of their actual quotes into the series anywhere we found a place to do so. So I think the best way to get to know somebody is to look at what they said and what they did.

And that's what we were really focused on was their actual words and then looking at their actions throughout the period and to see what they actually did. And, um, and then from there, I think we have a really clear picture of, of who these people are. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's history is a funny thing, right? I mean, you can look at any one historical figure or any one moment in time or a year in the life of say a president, And you could research that subject for the rest of your life. And you would just be scratching the surface of the amount of information that's out there, that's available.

And so on one hand, yeah, I mean, I definitely feel like I know Edwin Stanton and Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. But on the other hand, I feel like, you know, even after all the work that we've done, I still feel like I'm just now barely dipping my toes into the amount of information that's available. You know, the other thing that you run into is bias. And so you'll look at a source or read someone's words talking about someone. And they may have a very different perspective of the person than the person feels about themselves. And so it's unpacking that a lot

of times and understanding the bias. Were there any surprises that you discovered researching this and discovering their lives? Yeah. You know, it's American history, the way that American history, particularly Civil War history, is taught in the United States is problematic. And, you know, when I was growing up, Eric and I grew up in, I think, similar environments. We're both from the state of Texas. I'm from Fort Worth. And Eric, you're from Tyler, right? Dallas, mainly. I went to high school in Tyler, Texas. Yeah. But it's kind of like Civil War history is so fraught with bias, political bias, disinformation. You know, as an example, it was not expressly taught to me in my high school American history

classes that the civil war was largely fought about slavery. I don't know if that seems shocking to you guys, but, you know, to me now, knowing what I know, having done all the research that I've done, it's shocking that it's not taught. It's impossible to make an honest, in my opinion, an honest intellectual argument that the Civil War is fought over anything other than slavery. Well, it is interesting that it is only relatively recently, not long before we started the President podcast, that I realised how many people in America were taught that. Because obviously, in England, we have a very different view of the American Civil War. And it's just taken as a given. Historical fact, the Civil War was fought

over slavery. It was fascinating to me when I first learned how much that is pushed against. In Europe, you will definitely not find any view that the war was anything but slavery. And that's, you know, to be honest, that's the only intellectually honest interpretation of why the Civil War was fought. And any pushback to the idea that it was about slavery is just an attempt to rewrite history and reframe the war to be about something else. I mean, you always hear in the States, you often hear that the Civil War was fought about states' rights. States' rights versus the limitations of the federal government. That's true, but it was states' rights to do what? To own slaves. And I always say to people, go read the secession

documents from each of these states that chose to leave the union, and you're going to be hard pressed. Spoiler alert, if you're going there to look for another reason besides slavery, you're going to be disappointed, right? Also massively hypocritical, that argument anyway, because the Fugitive Slave Act, that was federal over state, but many states were more than happy with the Fugitive Slave Act. Yeah, very complicated. And if you want to get into modern hypocrisy, it's funny that the same people that will own Lincoln and say we're the, you know, the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln and that slavery was Democrats' fault, are the same people that will then turn around and defend that the Civil War was not about slavery.

So it's very strange. We're in a strange time when we consider this history in modern eyes. Yeah, and it's kind of like they want to have it that way. Yeah, for me, that's been the most eye-opening thing because I've always considered myself a conservative. eye-opening thing because I've always considered myself a conservative. And when I started reading the actual words of the secessionists and of Navy Secretary Gideon Wells and Andrew Johnson, I started to see that a lot of the things that they were saying in that time are the things that modern day conservatives are saying now, even though I don't think it's for the same purposes, but it was heartbreaking to me that I've been repeating a lot of the same phraseology, for lack of a better word. And it was shocking to me that I was repeating those same words and same phrases and

just breaks my heart knowing that that was the case. And it's really opened my eyes to how African Americans view history through their eyes and how they react to modern language. It's just made me a lot more sensitive to the things that are said. Yeah, yeah. It's the power of studying history, isn't it? Absolutely. Well, going back to 1865 then, what I was most impressed by was how you managed to get an incredibly complex historical moment and actually form a narrative around that. It's not easy to get the complexities of real life and frame it as a story that can be easily understood. So what challenges did you face trying to do that? Yeah, I think you just hit it right on the head of the nail there. I mean, I think the biggest challenge is to take these very nuanced, complex political issues

that require a lot of contextual understanding and to kind of reduce them to a sort of digestible nugget that makes people understand the sort of overarching kind of bird's eye view of what was happening on the ground. That to me is the biggest challenge about writing historical fiction like this. It's incredibly difficult. But ultimately, what you do is you go back to the fundamentals of drama. You go back to character. You start with basic question is, who is this person and what do they want? And for us, the person that we were the most interested in was Edwin Stanton. And what did he want? He wanted to preserve President Lincoln's legacy. And the person who stood in the most opposition to him and to his goals was Lincoln's successor,

was Andrew Johnson. And it was the conflict of these two men that we really latched onto. And it helped us tell the story because in this myriad of really complex political ideas, you really do just have two men. One of them wants to do right by the freedmen and do right by the four million freed slaves and, you know, to keep the country together. The other one seems to not want to. The other one seems to sort of abandon some of his own principles in favor of his own personal gain and seems even willing to run roughshod all over Congress and the Constitution to get it done. And so that really set the table for us. And through that conflict of these two men, we were really able to impart a lot of historical detail about the congressional crisis and the constitutional crisis that led to the first impeachment proceeding in US history. And certainly, the more we got into it, and as the years went on, and, you know, President Obama became President Trump, some of the things that

we were looking at, obviously had a lot more resonance to what was happening in the news cycle. resonance to what was happening in the news cycle. Yeah, I must admit, reading Twitter at the moment and your Twitter feed, I am loving at the moment because you're just saying things about the news that day and then just pointing out that it's about your podcast. Well, I have to say,ic deserves all the credit for that he he by and large runs our twitter uh our twitter feed and does an incredible job of doing what you just said so kudos to you eric thank you it's it's fun but sad at the same time yes yes um going back to to edward stanton um at what point did you realise

You had such an amazing character there Because I'll admit When we did our Lincoln episode I doubt Jamie you even remember Me mentioning Stanton I remember the name Yeah I think maybe I'd spend a minute Talking about this guy

Who seemed to have a tragic backstory He was meant to be Really on top of everything as soon as he walked through the door. And he seemed to really help turn things around during the Civil War. But I think that's about all I say. And then I listened to your podcast and just thought,

oh, there was so much there that I completely missed. Because he's not a particularly well-known figure in history, I would say. So at what point did you realize you had such a good character to work with there? Well, I always say that Edwin Stanton demanded that this story be about him from the pages of history books. It's as if he crawled out of it, wrestled me and Eric to the ground, and in a very Edmund Stanton way, forced us to do his bidding. I mean, when we really got into the, you know, because we started

from John Wilkes Booth, and that led us directly to Stanton, because Stanton, you know, as war secretary, in the wake of Lincoln's assassination, he presided over the manhunt for Booth, which was the largest manhunt in U.S. history. And so he very quickly became Booth's antagonist, right? In the sense that in the anti-hero way, when we were writing a story about Booth, who is not a hero, but we wanted to write a story about what made Booth. But the more that we, you know, experimented with that dynamic between those two characters, the more it just became obvious to us that Stanton was our character. He was our lead. And, you know, I think part of the reason that history doesn't remember Edwin Stanton is just because of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, he cast such a large shadow. I think he's argued, I think for most people, Democrats and Republicans today, I think Abraham Lincoln. I mean, he cast such a large shadow. I think for most people, Democrats and Republicans today, I think Abraham Lincoln is still considered to be one of the, probably the top five greatest presidents. And because of that, because he loomed so large, guys like Edwin

Stanton are kind of forgotten because they, by and large, worked in the background, in the shadows. But yeah, there's no doubt Stanton had an enormous impact on the outcome of the Civil War. And I think, Eric, you talk about this a lot. I'll tee you up for this. But also, he had a big impact on Lincoln as a man and as a politician. Yeah. Well, just to backtrack real quick, I think the other reason that Stanton is forgotten is because of that lost cause narrative, the South kind of controlling the history books. They did not care for Stanton, and I think because of that, they basically erased him from relevance. But in researching Lincoln, it became very obvious to me that Stanton was the one who was pushing Lincoln towards emancipation. First Stanton

forced Lincoln to allow arming captured slaves. Then he pushed Lincoln towards emancipation. And then in those final days, literally before Lincoln was assassinated, Stanton was pushing him towards equal rights. And the book that I found really helpful, which is Frank Abiel Flowers, Edwin McMaster's Stanton, the Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, very hard subtitle to say. What a title. It goes really in depth into all of these steps that Lincoln would take back and Stanton would push forward in kind of the struggle between these two men to enact that change and when it should be rolled out and how quickly it should happen. Yeah. And I think to piggyback on that, if you read our podcast in, spoiler alert, with an

obituary that was a real, we edited it, but it was a real obituary of Edwin Stanton. And it was in a Northern newspaper and it speaks of him very favorably. And it says something to the effect of Edwin Stanton stands at the top of the list of those who were dedicated to the cause of equality. The only people that don't like him, and again, I'm paraphrasing, the only people out there that are not going to like Edwin Stanton are the proponents of the lost cause, meaning the Confederates. And at the same time, what's interesting is I also found an obituary of Edwin Stanton in a Southern newspaper that came out the same day. And in that newspaper, he is painted as a true monster and as a tyrant and as a man who would trample on the constitution and did not care

about the people or the country at all. The truth is, is Edwin Stanton, like all of us, was a human being who had his flaws and foibles. I believe that, especially looking at him through the modern sense, but even as a man of his time, he did have a good heart and he had a moral center. And he believed because of the way he was brought up that slavery was an evil that had to be eradicated for the country, for the United States to live up to the highest ideals of our constitution. And he fought tooth and nail to see that come to fruition. Sometimes, if you listen to the podcast, you'll find out, sometimes in the process of doing that, he railroaded people and he manipulated people.

And he did things that I think that we would probably call today repugnant, but he did them in the name of a greater good. But what to me that brings up is this question of, do the ends justify the means? Especially when you're dealing with really high stakes, something like, you know, emancipation or today, are we going to live in a representative democracy or are we going to live under authoritarian rule? When you're asking yourself questions about these very, very high stakes issues that have ramifications that could literally change the course of American history, it's not easy to say, do the ends justify the means? Well, yes, they do, or no, they don't. It's complicated. And I feel like Edwin Stanton really embodied that difficult question. He doesn't necessarily provide clear answers, but he certainly, as a complicated historical figure, opens up the window for the question and the dialogue to be had. Yeah, many times he went against the Constitution in service of what he thought was right.

And so one example is arresting newspapers for putting out press that he did not agree with. for putting out press that he did not agree with. He had a very tight control over the press during the Civil War. Arresting people and holding them without trial, he made a statement that said, I would rather hold someone indefinitely than waste time pulling people from the battlefield to have a trial because winning the war was the first and foremost priority. And so, as we see with the mary surratt trial um holding a citizen under a military tribunal and and and

later that's that's struck down by the supreme court that they can't do that anymore um so time and again he pushed the limits of the constitution in service of what he thought was right. Don't forget that while he was doing a lot of those things, he was doing them acting as the secretary of war under two different presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. And the presidency absolutely had oversight over the war department. So who's really to blame for some of the mistakes that Stanton made? Certainly he bears some of the responsibility as the man who enacted them and pushed for them. But so do the presidents, both Lincoln and Johnson, for presiding over the War Department

at the time when those decisions were made. And then also you can't forget in the case of Andrew Johnson, you were dealing with a president that was calling the 13th and 14th Amendments unlawful. You were dealing with a president who was saying that Congress was an illegitimate body. And you were dealing with a president who was a bigot and a racist and who didn't necessarily want to undo the outcome of the Civil War, but certainly did not want to see abolitionists like Edwin Stanton succeed in their goal to push for equality. So it's like, it's always complicated, right? It's never simple. And I think that's what attracts me personally to Edwin Stanton and to the story is that it's, it really gets right in there into the middle of a conversation that we're having in our country

right now. You know, are we going to, are we going to be a nation of laws? Are we going to be a nation that is representative democracy? Or are we going to say that the president has absolute executive authority to do what the president wants, no matter what? So do you feel like you changed Stanton at all as you were writing it? Or do you think you've managed to stay fairly true? That's the same for any of the characters you did. do you feel like you had to change any of the characters to fit the narrative of the story at all i don't think we've i don't think so i mean i you know at this point it's really hard for me to disentangle who edwin stanton is from a historical standpoint and who

the character is and the way that eric and i have have painted him. Sometimes that's difficult for me. So I don't know that I'm the most objective person, but I feel like we have been true to the essence of who Stanton is. And I also feel that we have been true to the essence of who Andrew Johnson is, was rather. I don't know that you can say that we've been fair or that we've gotten it perfectly right. I think that's impossible to do. But I think that we've, to a large extent, have been true to the essence of who they are. Eric, do you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. And actually, one of the things that we haven't released yet is we have the characters speaking in their own words. yet is we have the characters speaking in their own words

so we've found speeches and letters and things that they have written that we can have the actors say the actual words of these people so you can make that make that comparison for yourself Can you get Andrew Johnson to do his drunk speech please?

Actually the inauguration is one of the speeches we had chosen. We also have a speech of Johnson talking about how he is the black Moses. Oh, yes. He was talking to African-Americans. And then we have a speech of him during his swing around the circle where he's talking about the dangers of the black vote. Yeah. So he's definitely not the most favorable person, in my opinion, because of his stance on that.

Well, I have to say that early on in Donald Trump's presidency, I read a lot of articles talking about the parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson. But I actually – you're starting to see them now, especially here in the past week or so, but people are starting to compare him to Andrew Johnson. And Eric and I, we're like, wait, we've been saying this for years. I mean, they do have a lot of similarities. I mean, they're very different, right? I mean, Andrew Johnson was born into indentured servitude. He really did pull himself up by his own bootstraps and rise from nothing to, you know, the highest office in American government. And obviously, Donald Trump's beginnings in his career were very different. You know, he was much more fortunate, or as we call it in the South, he had more blessings than Andrew Johnson. But in terms of,

in terms of, you know, this impeachment inquiry into Trump, and in terms of, you know, this impeachment inquiry into Trump and in terms of, you know, what caused Congress to fight back against Andrew Johnson's presidency, there are a lot of similarities. In many ways, you might say that Andrew Johnson was impeached on a procedural crime, but that the reason that he was impeached for a procedural crime was because of the tone of his language and how he was inciting potentially rebellion against the checks and balances of the Constitution and undermining the Congress in the eyes of the American people. The danger that people felt Johnson posed to the political system is what caused the impeachment. And that certainly sounds like the conversation that we're having today. And when you look at the other side of the coin,

like the deep state, you have a, with Johnson, people from the very beginning, even from that drunken inaugural speech, said that he was unworthy of the office and they were trying to impeach him from day one. So you get that side of the coin as well. Well, speaking of the drunken speech, which I think it's mentioned in one of the episodes, isn't it? But I mean, obviously we don't get to see that because it's before the events play out. But whilst you're doing all your research, is there any really good little stories that you came across that you really wished you could write, somehow work into the narrative, but you couldn't fit them in? Eric, do you have anything on that? One of the things that I, that struck me as far

as the research goes is how small a world Washington was and how closely connected all these people were. And so we've mentioned it in some of our talkbacks, but there's just a lot of tangential stories that we found really interesting. I think that the escape of John Surratt is really fascinating. I think the fact that John Wilkes Booth saved, his brother saved Robert Lincoln from falling in front of a train is a fascinating story. So there's a lot of little tangential stories that I think are great. When it comes to Stanton and Johnson, I just want to delve deep into hearing some of the things that we mention in the show a little deeper in context.

Having the first case where Stanton met Lincoln I think is really, really fascinating because Lincoln served on the same case as Stanton, and Stanton thought he was inept. He thought he was an embarrassment and later claimed that he didn't even remember that Lincoln was on the trial. But Lincoln the whole time watching Stanton fascinated by what a remarkable lawyer he was and said that that had a huge impact on him in law. And that's why he, I think, later brought Stanton in as his war secretary. Yeah. If I was ever going to do an offshoot of 1865, I think I would want to, a prequel, if you want to call it that, I would want to talk about Stanton's career as a lawyer. And certainly his relationship with Abraham Lincoln is a big part of that. I mean, for those of you who don't know, like Eric said that, you know, Stanton hired Lincoln for a trial when he was a young lawyer. They absolutely did not get along.

Lincoln less so than Stanton, but they didn't particularly like each other. And of course, over the years, that relationship evolved and became one of mutual respect and trust and, you know, I think in their own way, friendship. And I certainly think that, you know, Stanton's career as a lawyer is really ripe for good drama. You know, he was an incredible lawyer and, you know, had a lot of significant cases. One of the cases was the, I believe, the Daniel Sickles trial. Yes.

cases. One of the cases was the, I believe the Daniel Sickles trial, which was the first time in US history that the insanity defense was ever used. And that was Edwin Stanton's brainchild. So there's a lot of stuff about his early political life that I find interesting. In terms of the struggle between him and Johnson, I think that the part of the story that I wish that we had been able to dramatize is what happens in episode 11, where we basically flash forward from 1865 to 1868. And we do that just because we just didn't have time. But the struggle over the 14th Amendment during those years and Stanton's role as a member of the administration, kind of fighting Johnson from inside the cabinet, to me, if we ever get to make this into a TV series, I think that means its own season. Because it's a very, very complicated game of politics that Stanton is playing. We allude to it in the show. He says to John Mercer Langston,

I can't fight him, at least not out in the open. I have to keep my head down and pretend to be a loyal servant, but you can, Congress can, and I'll help you. And I think that that story is one that I think would have been really, really fun to dig into. We just didn't have the time, the real estate. Yeah. I mean, it's a shame because there'll always be more that you want to tell, won't there? Yeah. Because so much happens. Because originally it was a single play, two plays, you said earlier. So how long does the podcast version go on for?

There are 13 episodes about Andrew Johnson and Edwin Stanton's epic political showdown. And then there are three episodes that are about John Wilkes Booth's side of the story that kind of lead up to the action that starts the whole series off, which is Lincoln's assassination. Which I finished yesterday, actually. Yeah, it's very good. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

We're also hoping that we could just generally have a talk about Lincoln and Johnson, but in relation to how we have rated them, because we always like to just talk to some real Americans every now and again, because we're very British. Maybe we got it all wrong. So if you don't mind, if we just run through the rounds and the scores that we gave them for those rounds and you can just chip in your thoughts and

rate them yourselves if you want. Okay. So we're going to start with statesmanship. I don't know, how would you describe this, Jeremy? How much of a statesman were they? How presidential were they? How much of a role model? How good were they, basically? This is their positive round.

So with Lincoln, we scored him 18 points, which I believe off the top of my head is actually the highest we've given out. Okay. And Johnson, we scored zero out of 20. Which is our joint lowest. He's not on his own. I believe Buchanan got zero as well. But you're not allowed negative numbers.

Not in this round, but the next round it goes negative. Right, so for this round, let's start with Lincoln. Have we been too high? Have we been too generous here? I'm very aware. Okay. Well, I'm very aware Lincoln has this mythos around him. I mean, he's Lincoln. How can he possibly be anything but the highest scorer in this round? But did he just get a bit lucky? Well, so Eric, I know you'll have a lot to say about this. First of all, he is one of my favorite presidents. And so I think if we're judging him on statesmanship and on how presidential he was,

I think he gets the highest marks. First of all, consider what he was up against and consider what he was trying to do. And if you look at the decades leading up to the Civil War and how divided the country was, obviously to the point that we were ready to kill each other. And then you think about the position that that puts Lincoln in. I mean, you know, the job of the president, I think, when done well is to forge consensus. Well, how do you forge consensus between two parties and two factions that are so divided along regional and political and class lines that they're willing to kill each other for it. And then if you consider that Lincoln through his leadership was able to keep as much of the country together as he did, including the

border states, then I mean, what you, what to me, what emerges is the picture of a man who was a political genius. And, you know, my view of Lincoln, um, and I think there's evidence to, to, uh, you know, buck me on this. And I think there's evidence that supports this, but my view of Lincoln is that in his heart of hearts, he was always against slavery. And in his heart of hearts, he was always against the practice of slavery and that equality was something that he wanted. But Lincoln knew that he had to be careful with his words. And so if you look at the Abraham Lincoln of 1862 and the Abraham Lincoln of 1865, there's

a change there, at least in so much as what he's willing to talk about in public. And I think that's because in 1862, he was terrified that if he pushed too hard on emancipation as the cause for the war, that many in the border states would turn on him. He would probably lose the election of 1864, which Eric, you can talk about this a little bit. It's kind of a miracle that he won that election at all. And didn't just win it, but actually won it very, very favorably. Yeah, right. And, you know, they kind of call it the miracle election, because if you think of how divided the country was, you know, it's kind of, it's almost impossible to believe.

But in the way that, you know, James Monroe once said of George Washington, that the only reason that the constitution passed is because of Washington. His quote was, Washington carried the government and his influence carried the government. And even though the founders couldn't agree on many aspects of the constitution, especially the presidency, many of them voted in favor of it because of Washington's character, and they knew that he was likely to be the man holding that office. Similarly, I think it can be said of Lincoln that Lincoln's influence carried the war, it carried the country, and it kept us together. And were it not for him, I think that the outcome could have been

very different. And the reason I don't think you're being unfair to Andrew Johnson is because I think he's the worst president in United States history prior to the year 2016. And I think that, um, you know, in complete contrast to Lincoln, he was not, um, he was not a leader in the natural born sense. Um, although there are certainly things about Johnson that are admirable, maybe is too nice of a word, but like we mentioned before, that he was able to make something of himself when he was born into indentured servitude. That's certainly impressive. Things about him that are repugnant are so repugnant that it's, I just don't think that

you can give him, it's impossible to give him a low score. I mean, it's too low, even if you went into the negatives. I just think he was not up to the task. And I often wonder what the country would have looked like had Lincoln survived to carry us through Reconstruction, because the damage that Johnson did in a very, very short period of time created wounds that are still with us today. Eric, do you have any thoughts about that? As you said, he was up against a lot of division. He was dealt a bad hand from the very beginning, and the way he was able to hold everything together, even in his own cabinet, it was very divided. He navigated so many different issues and political feelings, and he did it masterfully. I think the suspension of habeas corpus probably rubs me a little the wrong way that happened under his presidency.

A lot of citizens arrested, but in a time of war where you're trying to hold the country together, he was in a difficult position. So I would probably stick with the 18 that you guys gave him, knocking off two points for the suspension of habeas corpus. Johnson, again, I think the worst president ever. I hold him worse than Buchanan because Buchanan was a lousy president, but Buchanan wasn't actively trying to welcome in an enemy to the country. Buchanan was just, I think, unsuited for that position.

Whereas Johnson was embracing people that had committed treason. Johnson was a fervent racist. So I would stick with the zero on him as well. And I'd go less if we could. Right. And I mean, you look at the political cartoons that they created, you know, in the late 1860s about Andrew Johnson, and it's always like him in a diaper throwing like a temper tantrum. Do you know what I mean? Like it's always, you know, they, uh, they infantilize him and there's a reason for that. And it's because I, his flaw to me, his, his greatest flaw, aside from his, uh, being a bigot, his greatest personality flaw was that it was always about him. I mean,

in my reading of Johnson, you know, he, he seems to have some sort of narcissistic personality disorder where he where he thinks that he's put upon and he thinks that um you know people are unfair to him he thinks that the press is out to get him and you know that he doesn't get credit for uh you know all the good that he's done we are still talking about johnson yeah yeah let's talk about the actually the accomplishments of Johnson. He accomplished nothing in his own right. The only thing that is positive, I think, out of his presidency is the purchase of Alaska, which at the time they called it Seward's Icebox. They thought it was a horrible idea that he bought this chunk of ice in the north. So that's really the only good thing that he did. And then outside of that, all of the steps he took were to veto the civil rights bill, to fight against the amendments. And in fact, when he passed the 14th Amendment, he put in a statement saying, I'm only turning this in because I have to as a function of my job, but I'm not for this amendment. Yeah, we did think about giving him a point for Alaska.

I think we were just so horrified by everything else, we just couldn't do it. It didn't look up to anything really, did it? No, so you're fairly happy with our scores there, yeah? Oh, I think you're spot on. Absolutely. Great. Okay, well, we'll go on to the next round then. Disgrace.

Disgrace. I think it's Johnson's round. Yeah, well, you get minus points in this round, so we are in the negatives now. Lincoln got minus two, which is one of our lowest. I think up to this point it was our lowest. We've just done Hayes, though, and Hayes gets nothing in this round because he was just a really happy chap.

So, yeah, we're on minus two for Lincoln. I think that was, if I remember correctly, he was a little bit uncomfortably racist at times. It was very much of the time, and it's very hard to judge these things from history. And for the time, it was actually quite good. But with modern eyes, there were some things that were a little bit troubling. And there was obviously a lot of people who hated him. Did they hate him personally? Or was it what he represented? Sorry, I should say this round is very much a

personal thing rather than what they did as president. Johnson gets minus 15. He gets minus 15 because he was an obvious racist. And he also just betrayed his own ideals. He claimed to stand up for the poor working class of the South. And he kind of threw that away as soon as he was president. So he got a quite hefty score there. What do you think?

What would you be scoring in this round? Eric, do you want to go first on this one? Yeah, I would say for Lincoln, I agree with you guys about the things that Lincoln said early on. And we talked earlier about this view of Lincoln and this way that we look at him. And it's funny because the way we look at Lincoln is really the Lincoln of the last week of his life. It took him a journey to get there, in my opinion. Steve thinks it was more measured that he felt that way, but it was more measured trying to keep everybody together. But I do think that Lincoln had a journey to get there, and I agree with the things that you said about the – some of the uncomfortable statements about keeping slavery to keep the country together.

I would probably give him a minus three because of those things. You guys gave him a minus two. I'd probably rank him just a little bit lower on Disgrace Gate because of those things um you guys gave him minus two i'd probably uh rank him just a little bit lower on disgrace gate because of that um but again um he did did come further than any other president but then because of the last statements he said about equal rights which were way far above everyone else i'd add two points back on. So I'd leave them at a minus one. I want to keep them at a minus one as well, because I think even in the sort of, you know, more cynical view of Lincoln, which is that he was a man of his time and therefore intrinsically racist. I think even if that's true, even if it wasn't about political calculation and trying to keep the country together, I still think that compared to the

extreme racism and bigotry on the spectrum of the men of his time, I still think he falls into a category of people that deserves our reverence. That doesn't mean that we want people today to adopt those same views, because I think in today's society, some of the things that Lincoln said are difficult to swallow. But I think in his time, on the spectrum of how bad things really were, he still, to me, falls on the right side of history. So I also would give him a negative one, but it's really only because of looking at it through a modern lens, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I think we might have given him one

because he abandoned one of his boys on a cart because he was too busy thinking about something. I seem to remember he did that at one point. But something we didn't really give much credence to that is often discussed is his marriage to Mary, which I've read in various different ways. Mostly Mary gets the blame, but I've also seen Lincoln criticized for it. But our take, I think, was just it was a difficult marriage. And it's really hard to judge through that much time.

He probably deserves bonus points for being able to stay in that marriage. Eric, how dare you? Mary Todd Lincoln was a saint, and I don't know what you're talking about. It's funny. The only place I've ever heard talk positive about Mary Lincoln is the Lincoln Library. Really? Look, I mean, I about Mary Lincoln is the Lincoln Library. Really? Look, I mean, I think Mary was clearly a troubled woman. But I mean, let's be honest, Abraham Lincoln was stubborn as a mule.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, he kind of walked through, I mean, at least I think the way that we think about him today, right, is that he's just kind of walking through life with a sort of easy way, kind of cracking jokes in very serious situations and kind of walking through life with a sort of easy way, kind of cracking jokes in very serious situations and kind of, you know, keeping it together. But if you look at his actions, I mean, you know, looking at what happens in 1865, the fact that this guy knew that he was potentially in danger, I mean, he knew, and yet he still chose to take nightly walks all by himself. He still chose to go out in public at a time where

he knew that the Capitol was potentially crawling with enemies that wanted to hurt him. And even against the wishes of guys like Edwin Stanton, he persisted. He just said, no, I think I'm still going to go. You can certainly admire the fact that he wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. He wanted to show people and to show the country that it was time for them to move on. That's certainly admirable, but it's also very careless. And that to me shows that like Stanton, Lincoln was an incredibly stubborn person. And so, I mean, I'm not defending Mary Todd Lincoln. I know that Mary was a troubled woman and I know that, you know, I think it's very clear that she had some mental health issues and I'm sympathetic to that. But certainly,

I mean, Lincoln, I mean, he would be maddening as a partner. Wouldn't you imagine that? I mean, just somebody that's like, yeah, yeah, I know that I might die tonight, but I'm still going to go for my walk because I want to, you know, that's maddening. I've always been fascinated that he kept that group of death threats in his desk. I've always wondered why he would hold on to those, especially since he didn't listen to them. Why was he holding that group of letters, badges of honor? I don't know. Well, he was.

I got the feeling whilst looking into him that he did have a fatalistic outlook to life. He seemed very... almost obsessed with mortality. He'd had long periods of depression where he'd just be mulling over the fact that he was going to die at some point. And like you say, that cannot be easy to live with. It really can't.

But we didn't knock him down on points for that because we didn't think that was disgraceful, but I know it's sometimes mentioned. What about Johnson then? How disgraceful is he? How low can we go? That's what I was just about to ask. You can go

to minus 20. We didn't go to minus 20 because we have also come across people like Andrew Jackson who displays all of the horrible bigotry and hypocrisy and things that Johnson clearly displays. But he also went around shooting people. So we had to differentiate slightly. So that's why he's not in full marks,

because there have been some people who we think behaved even worse at times. Whereabouts would you be going? Look, I think that there are things about Andrew Johnson that are impressive and admirable. To me, one of the most remarkable things about Andrew Johnson is that at the outset of the Civil War, that he turned against the South and stood with the North against secession.

And he got a lot of move for that decision. He stayed with the Union. So at heart, at some point, he was a Unionist man and he wanted the country to stay together. And for a guy from North Carolina who grew up in Tennessee and was a well-known politician in Tennessee at that time, that's a big deal because that's you standing up for principle, even knowing that it compromises you politically with your constituents. I mean, that's a huge deal. And yet, in the wake of Lincoln's death, when he has the reins of power,

what does he do? This champion of the working white class, the poor white working class, this champion of the white farmer, turns his back on a federal agency called the Freedmen's Bureau and seems to, at every turn, try to undermine Congress's attempts to fulfill Lincoln's legacy and pass the 13th and 14th Amendment and eradicate slavery once and for all. He fights it tooth and nail every step of the way. I don't know what happened to Andrew Johnson. I know that in his heart of hearts, growing up as an indentured servitude, and an indentured servitude, he must have had sympathy for the fact that the poor whites in the South needed help just as the freedmen did. Certainly they had advantages and privileges that

the freedmen didn't have, but indentured servitude was a horrific system and a horrific life. And part of what the Freedmen's Bureau was trying to do in the wake of Lincoln's death, in the wake of the war being over, is they were trying to restructure and reorganize society and particularly the economy in the South. And the Freedmen's Bureau as a federal agency would have been extremely beneficial to the poor white working class and to the poor farmers in the South, just as it was going to be extremely beneficial to the Freedmen. And so something happened to Jonathan, and I don't know what it was, but he changed. And unlike Lincoln,

not for the better and to the country's detriment. And you put him in a negative 17? Negative 15. Negative 15. And what's Jackson? Jackson's at a negative 17? 20. Negative 20. I give him a negative 17. I think you're right. He was not a cold-blooded murderer. He did not purge over genocide. So I think that like you have to make, you probably do have to give Jackson a heart, a harsher score in this category. But I think he's,

I think he's up there. I think the other positive thing that Johnson did was he did support abolition at the end of the war. He did support, especially in the framing of what was going to happen with reconstruction, that slavery needed to be abolished. So he did uphold that and did not fight that. He did fight the 13th Amendment because he said that the South didn't have representation in voting on it, but he did support its passage. So I definitely have to give him points for that. On the subject of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Jackson wanted to keep the country together and was against the nullification crisis.

higher because of that, because he did believe in having a strong union. I would put probably Johnson at a negative 17. And I would put probably Jackson at a negative 18. Right, so closer. Okay. I must admit, I did think when listening to 1865 that you guys were portraying him in an even harsher light than we judged him. And we have judged him to be the worst president. So, yeah. Can I say one last thing about Johnson? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I think that the real danger that Andrew Johnson posed to the country inside of his bigotry was, or perhaps greater than his bigotry, which is a massive problem.

or perhaps greater than his bigotry, which is a massive problem. But I think that the real danger that he posed is that he was undermining our constitution in a fundamental foundational way. He was essentially challenging the idea that in the wake of the civil war, that the states that chose to secede should be punished for that. And punished might be the wrong word, but that there should be some sort of incremental way to reintroduce the South into the union, which is what the radical Republicans wanted and which is what Edwin Stanton wanted. Andrew Johnson resisted that. And in resisting it, and by challenging the 13th and 14th amendments, And in resisting it, and by challenging the 13th and 14th Amendments, and by insisting and ultimately making it happen that these Southern congressmen were able to be reseated in the House and in the Senate, and therefore able to participate in shaping the laws of

Reconstruction, in doing that, you really did stick a knife right in the heart of the Constitution, in my opinion. And by undermining the legitimacy of the Congress and sort of positioning himself as a president who could do whatever he wanted to do, he exploited some of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses implicit in the Constitution. And I think that that's, I think for that reason, he's the, that's that to me, even aside from his bigotry, which is bad enough, I think that's the thing that makes him our worst president prior to 2016. Yeah. The one thing I'll say about that is that the, um, the tenure of office act was actually struck down after all of, of what happened with Stanton. So I think Johnson felt like the law

was unconstitutional. And I know he felt like it was unconstitutional. But I think that he felt like he was on the right side of the Constitution on that issue. Also remember that in addition to the tenure, the violation of the Tenure of Office Act and the conspiracy to violate the Tenure of Office Act, right? In addition to those things, there was another article that expressly talked about his swing around the South toward. And it talked about the fact that he was going around the country, making stump speeches, campaigning for the upcoming election and saying that Congress was an illegitimate body. And that everything that they had done had no bearing on how the individual states in the South could live their lives and make laws. So in other words, he was saying Congress as a constitutional function is illegitimate and can be ignored. And it was extremely insightful.

Yeah, that is essentially inciting. I mean, if you're saying to an individual state, hey, the laws of Congress don't matter because of the 10th Amendment, do what you want, then in a world where the president, regardless of what party is, I mean, it's no secret that I'm not a fan of President Trump, but this to me, this is not a partisan question, right? Republican or Democrat, independent, doesn't matter. Do we want to live in a country where the president has absolute executive authority to do whatever they want and that the judicial branch and the congressional branch, the legislative branch are not co-equal branches, and that they're subservient to the will of the president? Or do we want to live in a system closer to the one devised by the founders? And I think that Andrew Johnson, in similar ways to Mr. Trump, put us in a very, very dangerous place where we're having those

questions today. We're having to deal with some of the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our constitutional system. And I think we're going to find out whether the Republican Party of today is going to put country over party. And again, to me, this is not a question about Donald Trump or about Republicans or about me saying that we need to get a democratic president in office. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that as a country, we have to decide, do we want to live in representative democracy? Do we want to live by the laws and mandates of the constitution? Or do we want to live in an authoritarian system? I mean, I think that's what we're up against right now. And I'm sure for a lot of your listeners, understanding American government is probably a little different, just like when we're up against right now. And I'm sure for a lot of your listeners, um, understanding American government is probably, uh,

a little different, just like when we're watching the other day, I was watching, um, the live stream of parliament and I had no idea what was going on. Uh, just the guy going, Oh,

duh. Oh, duh. It's very dramatic. Very dramatic. Yes. Like a cage fight. I loved it.

Yeah. I, I, I honestly don't know which country is doing the best at punching itself in the face at the moment. Yeah. It's a tricky one to call that.

Great. Right. On to our last main round then. Basically, if you could give the president a film or a multi-part series hbo style yeah or maybe some kind of audio drama perhaps um how how interesting would that be and i'm very aware you guys obviously have a bias here because well we scored lincoln 15, maybe not as high as some people would have thought, but he's got a really good story,

as in he started in a log cabin, as many of them did, but he really did, and he rose all the way to become president. The Civil War happens, but he's sort of in a room hearing about most of it. So, yeah, I think we knocked him down slightly because... Yeah, he's out of the action, wasn't he? Yeah, he was out of the action slightly.

Johnson, we gave 10 because, again, he lived through the same time so you're going to get all the same kind of drama but it would just be harder to watch his life, I think, and slightly less interesting because it would just start off relatively positive and then just keep going downhill. But you guys managed to do it, and it was

very entertaining. So, yeah, what are your thoughts? Well, I'll say, you talked about Lincoln being in a room the whole time. The room he was in was the War Office, pestering Stanton the entire time. I think the two of them would make a fantastic sitcom. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Steve, you want to take this? So really, the question is which one of their lives makes a better movie? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, Lincoln's, obviously, right? I mean, I don't know. First of all, Abraham Lincoln's life and Andrew Johnson's life, from a story perspective, are both tragedies.

And they're both Greek tragedies in a way, but for very different reasons, right? I mean, it feels like, in a way, the story of Abraham Lincoln and his life being taken from him by John Wilkes Booth is the first chapter of an act, you might say, of a Greek tragedy that ends up with Edwin Stanton in the aftermath of his assassination, making some fateful decisions that lead to his demise. And that you might say, that's what our story is. Right. Or you could do what, you know, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner did. And you can, you know,

you can tell a very sort of beautiful traditional biopic about Lincoln's life. But on the Andrew Johnson front, I mean, I feel like that it's, his is a tragedy, you know, there's no doubt about it. And he, you know, because of the change that he undergoes, which is moving away from his core principles, is kind of hoisted by his own petard, you know, and he's impeached, he's acquitted by one vote, but he, uh, you know, he, he's, he's denied a second term and he's denied the power that he, he craved. Um, and it's kind of, you know, relegated to being a regional hero of, of Tennessee. Um, I guess you could have a second chapter of Johnson's life where he goes back to serve in the Congress, uh, post-presidency

and continues to fight for the sort of principles of the antebellum South. But I don't know. I don't really want to see that movie. That movie sounds terrible. So I think Lincoln has to win in whichever category you put it in. You know, Lincoln's story is a tragedy, but not a Greek one. Johnson's story is a Greek tragedy, but not one that I want to watch. I mean, I think the real reason to listen to 1865, the audio drama, is to learn about

Edwin Stanton. I think Johnson's just the, you know, he's the villain of the piece. I don't know, Eric, what do we do? How do we rate this? I mean, I think we definitely need to go higher on Lincoln. If there's any president that someone wants to learn about, I think it's Lincoln. Um, I, if, if there's any president that someone wants to learn about, I think it's Lincoln. Um, I think when we had our play, uh, it was really, really successful as far as audience attendance goes, because I think people just really connect with him and, and want to hear

more about him. Um, so I would put probably Lincoln a 19. Um, I think, like you said, it's, I will take off a point for the fact that he's so stationary during a lot of the war, but he's a fascinating person, and to see the journey that he went on, whether it was measured restraint or whether it was him having a change of heart, I think that it's a story that a lot of people don't know. They know the myth of the man, but they don't know all of the machinations that went along during the war and the political maneuvering and just what a fascinating person he was and the stories he told. I would give him a 19. Johnson, I want people to take our story and make a movie of it,

so I'm going to say I think Johnson's a 20. I would give Johnson a 15. I think his story is also remarkable, and I wouldn't want to see him as a main character, but definitely an antagonist to a strong story possibly about edwin stanley just hypothetically though yeah i agree on both fronts and i'll just say that you know the way that uh uh kushner and spielberg uh painted lincoln in in their biopic is to me spot on i mean he you know he's a man who's probably manic depressive. I mean, we know that he struggled with melancholy.

And yet the thing I think that's the most wonderful about him and juicy about him from like a playwright's perspective is just that he had a great sense of humor. And even in very difficult, tense situations, he was able to use humor as a tool both to get what he wanted politically, but also to just sort of navigate his way through the world. And I absolutely love, obviously, Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Lincoln in that movie. But even more than that, I love the writing of Lincoln that was done by Kushner. I think that it's just spot on. He knew how to lower people's guard and win them over. And I think no one's a clearer example of that than Edwin Stanton, who loathed him and then came to consider him, I think, his closest friend.

I think he really, really cherished that relationship. And Lincoln also. Well, talking of actors, it kind of fits into this round. The actors in 1865 were fantastic. And you mentioned earlier, we were talking about how different your portrayal is to reality. I'm going to say the main difference is I do not believe that Stanton has such a cool voice in real life.

believe that Stanton has such a cool voice in real life. Yeah, that's an actor who plays Edwin Stanton. His name is Jeremy Schwartz, and he has a very cool voice. Oh, he's so good. It's so good. Yeah, he's brilliant. Yeah, you get descriptions of Stanton just being this sort of angry gnome-like man and I've just not got that voice in my head but I definitely think you went the right way for the drama. A funny story about

Jeremy, not long after the podcast came out he got a phone call from the marketing director of an American football team called the Miami Dolphins and And Jeremy is now the in stadium voice of the Dolphins, which doesn't make any sense. And it makes perfect sense all at the same time. It doesn't make any sense because what is the marketing director of an American football team doing listening to our podcast? But it of course makes sense that they wanted to work with Jeremy because he's, I mean,

he's one of the most talented actors that I've ever known and as a voiceover actor he's just the best I mean there's no doubt about it I mean he's he's incredible and really really breathed life into the to the character and I think understood what what Eric and I were hoping Stanton would be. He's a treasure. Yeah, no, it is fantastic. Great. So, I mean, you're both going to give Lincoln and Johnson more points than we gave them. But I think the difference between the scores is roughly the same. So, yeah, I think we've done all right.

Yeah, that'll do. But last round, mini round, and it's a really easy one, this one. Small round. It's only out of five. We judge it on their official portraits, but let's boil it down. Basically, who's the best-looking president? Who's the sexiest? Poor Lincoln.

I think Lincoln definitely tried to hide it with a beard and was fairly successful, but he has an unfortunate face. Beautiful. I think Lincoln has beautiful eyes. He has very kind eyes. So I'd probably give Lincoln a... Well, but he has such an iconic look, though.

That's hard. Are we going for beauty or are we going for memorability? Well, we kind of just merge it all together. I think we scored him four out of five because he is so iconic. He's got a score high, but at the same time he's got the hat. He wasn't blessed with looks.

No, he was not. I think we knocked him right off for that. Johnson, we only gave him 1.5. I think the official portrait wasn't particularly flattering. We were just a bit fed up with him by that point, so he took it out on him slightly. Yeah, so maybe we've been slightly too harsh there.

I'll do something controversial here because I've been so hard on Andrew Johnson. I'm going to say on the scale of memorability, I'm going to say because of that nose, he's a five out of five because you're not going to forget that nose. That nose is going to be with you once you've seen it. It's going to say, I'm going to say because of that nose, he's a five out of five. Cause you're not going to forget that nose. That nose is going to be with you. Once you've seen it, it's going to be with you forever. And so I'm going to say that the nose makes his face very memorable, but not in a good

way, but I still give that five out of five. I'd go with Lincoln on a four, but to me, Johnson looks like he, he, he dealt it and now he's smelling it. I'd probably give him a two. Fair enough. That's similar to us. Here's a piece of 1865, the audio drama history. The actor who's also really brilliant and I think is a great match for Jeremy is the actor that plays Andrew Johnson.

His name is R. Bruce Elliott um he's an incredible voiceover actor and we're so lucky to have uh R. Bruce in the show but I'll tell you it's really weird if you find a picture of R. Bruce Elliott and you put it next to a picture of Andrew Johnson they look exactly alike and And right now, Jeremy also has a really long bushy beard and is probably about the same height and stature as Jeremy. So they also look exactly alike. So it's a little creepy, actually, how much our two dudes favor the two men that they're portraying. And Lindsey Graham looks nothing like Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, Lindsey Graham has red hair. Great.

Well, I think generally you've agreed with our scores. I think so, yeah. So we're not too far off base? No, I think you're right on. Good. Yeah. Good. Great.

Right. Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. To be honest, I was listening to one of your behind-the-interview episodes. And, Stephen, I think it was you who at one point said, I'd probably rate Johnson the lowest out of all our presidents. And I just thought, oh, that's funny. So did we. Maybe I should see if we can talk to these guys.

But, yeah, it was just an excuse to have a talk really because i've really enjoyed 1865 so thank you very much for that um and i'm hoping our listeners if they've not checked that out already definitely do that because uh it's fantastic uh thank you and i've enjoyed listening to your show um i i actually hear your voices sometimes as monologues when I do things. So like, um, uh, shot in the man driving down a highway, his six year old in the back talking over the podcast that he's trying to listen to. Um,

and I like to hear that playing out and it's so funny. Uh, but really enjoy the show. Oh, thank you very much. I wasn't aware you were listening to it. I just want to hear Eric continue to do a very awkward British accent. Oh,

splendid. I'm good at, I'm good at awkward accents. Jamie can start doing his American accent. It will be fine. Ah, damn. Right.

Well, thank you very much for joining us then. Uh, it has been a pleasure. Likewise. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much for having us. We,

we love to talk, uh, American history and presidential history. So have us back anytime. It's, it's a true pleasure. Likewise. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much for having us. We love to talk American history and presidential history. So have us back anytime. It's a true pleasure. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Eric, I don't know how you quite get away with not having to teach in the afternoon because you're doing an interview. Oh, I have actually, I have two off periods that are back to back. So just, that's why I said this time worked for me. Well, actually, I'm in a classroom right now and the entire group of kids is staring at me give this interview. Because I'm that great at teaching. I think that's definitely the way to teach.

It's just first-hand experience. If you work really hard, kids, then maybe you can do an interview with some British guys. Yeah. Great. Okay, then. Thank you very much. We're planning to release it

this weekend. Excellent. Hello, can you hear us? Excellent. Steve, I just lost them again, so tell them I said excellent too. They're gone. You guys are gone. They're gone. Bye-bye.