Behind the Bastards - Ben Shapiro's Book: Part Whatever, The Journey Refuses to End

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Another reading of Ben Shapiro's terrible novel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's been in my Shapiro's? Did we do that already? Not enough if we did. Not enough if we did. This is Behind the Bastards, and you know what that introduction means.

It's another reading Ben Shapiro's Marvelous Book episode. Ooh, baby. The episodes that everybody loves except the people who hate them. The talented Mr. Shapiro. The talented Mr. Shapiro. Talking about Benny's book, True Allegiance, which I think I can say is like, if the Quran and the Bible had a baby, and then that baby fell off of a ski lift and hit its head on a pile of rocks several times, and then that baby tried to join the military but was told no because it had too much of a history of severe head injuries.

And then that baby tried to write a screenplay about joining the military, but then that screenplay was turned down for being terrible. And then that baby became a right-wing grifter for, I don't know, 20-something years, and then wrote a fiction book. It would be True Allegiance. I mean, that is Ben Shapiro's background, isn't it? That is Ben Shapiro's background, yes. That's his origin story, if you will.

Same ski lift accident survivor Ben Shapiro. Every word is why he cares about that so much. That's why he stopped growing. Okay, that's mean. I think we've all established that you can't be Ben Shapiro. I did. But I didn't. But I did anyway. K-A-T.

That's where we are. He's the result of starting to be a conservative pundit at age 16. Yeah, yeah. Perhaps the only thing... I mean, I'm just going to say it. The only thing a 16-year-old should be allowed to do is join the Marine Corps. And drink alcohol. Drink alcohol. Just those two. Just those two.

We shouldn't even let him go to school. Yeah, no school and nothing like that. Just drunken than the drunken... We don't need them smart. Drunken teenage Marines, yeah. You want them wasted. So, we're back. We're back talking Benny Shaps in his book.

We ended with Combat General Brett Hawthorne talking to his friend, the token Muslim, who isn't a terrorist. And I think the only Muslim who's not a terrorist that we meet in the book. I bet he's the only tall one, too. And now we're moving to a President Prescott chapter. So, when we last left President...

Yeah, he just had his 9-11 moment cruelly wearing a windbreaker in a disaster site. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, cruelly. Now, all right. You have got to be kidding me with this, Mark Prescott said.

His eyes bulged, his face had turned beet red. I'm trying to hold the country together, and you're out there fucking supporting the enemy by targeting Muslims? How am I supposed to counter the accused? Oh, good, he's talking to Brett Hawthorne. Excellent. So, if you'll remember earlier in the book, Brett Hawthorne forced people

to illegally use racial profiling, which did not work or return any usable intelligence. And now the President is angry because that has been released to the media. It's weirdly presented as an argument for racial profiling while being an example of why it's bad.

Yeah. Not weird for Ben, though. Oh, no, not weird. Completely consistent with his inconsistent way of writing and thinking. Par for the course on this book, in this book. I'm sure this will change, but one of the things that I find so fun about President Prescott

is that he's written like an over-the-top movie villain, like a sniveling selfish coward. The actual things he does as President are perfectly reasonable. It's like, oh, you have a jobs program. You call in the National Guard to deal with a nuclear attack. Like, the evil President Prescott.

Fuck that guy. Angry at him. Cruel jobs program. Yeah. Yelling at an active duty general for forcing police to racially profile people for no effective purpose. Like a dictator.

It's disgusting making it a 40-hour work week. Refusing to invade Mexico. Yeah. Oh, right. That whole thing about Mexico. The whole plot of this is that the American needs to invade Mexico after they get nuked by Iran.

God, it's so forgettable. It really is. I've lost a thread several times. Like, that's like potentially like, oh, that's like, that's a story. Yeah. Like, I don't know what that's about, but okay. But like, it's so forgettable. It's gone. I already forget.

This year's pokes a lot of holes in my brain, so information can leak out anyway. It has. It has. But this is not memorable enough to latch on. No, no. The only thing that's memorable are the characters themselves. Yes. Like Combat General Brett Hawthorne,

who has this chapter opens, is sitting on the couch watching the President rage at him. Oh, good. We've got a real classic Ben Shapiro sentence here. All right, let's get into it. On the way to the hotel, comma, the Secret Service agents had been utterly silent. Um,

semi colon, they refused to answer any of his questions, comma, give him any information at all, period. Hey, you gotta do that again. Say it one more time. On the way to the hotel, comma, the Secret Service agents had been utterly silent, semi colon, they refused to answer any of his questions,

common, give him it, comma, give him any information at all. That's not even a full sentence. On the way to the hotel, comma, you don't need a comma there. On the way to the hotel, I'm sorry, I don't need to

translate again. It's basically two incomplete sentences that he'd stitched together into one, still not a grammatically correct sentence. And the only thing he's getting across, on the way to the hotel, the Secret Service agents said nothing. Bam.

Like, that's the point. The last bit doesn't conclude. That's the kind of comma use that you're supposed to have exercised around grade 3, 4th grade,

you know? I think when you're doing your little grammar workbooks, I mean, I think the conclusion here is that we need to criminalize comma usage. Ban the comma. It's very clear he's like,

I know that semicolons exist, therefore I'm going to replace all periods with them. Cymicolons. Anyway. It is fun that Ben has the same attitude towards ending his sentences that the United States has towards ending the war in Afghanistan,

which is never do it. Telling. So the Secret Service doesn't answer his questions, but Brett figures out they must have picked up Hasan. How else could they have found him at Omaris? Who's that like guy who's the big Muslim?

He's like leading care, right? The anti-Islamophobia charity, but in this, they're working with the terrorists. Oh, yeah. You can't trust a charity. You can't trust it. Not a Muslim charity. You. Prescott continued to yell,

I elevated you. I made you. I saved you. And this is how you reward me. Brett could feel the anger building. He'd flexed his fist and let it go. An old trick Ellen had taught him to take his mind off his temper. It wasn't working. Tell me. I expect an answer. What were you thinking? I gave you back your life.

No, Brett said softly, dangerously. I signaled you. I told you to hit the building. Prescott scoffed, disbelieving. You can't be serious. You wanted me to start a war with Iran after Iraq, after Afghanistan. We just finished pulling the troops out for God's sake. We got you, didn't we? That wasn't the goddamn point. So again, this guy's the bad guy.

For not wanting to start a new war. I just can't believe him. I don't think you need to add the word disbelieving after using the verb scoffed. Yes. Yes. That's another classic thing that you should get over in seventh grade

creative writing is like, okay, he scoffs because he doesn't believe them. You don't have to tell us that. It's like saying he said speakingly. He spoke wordingly. Yes.

So they argue about this for a while. Prescott's like, you know, I could kick you out of the military. Yada yada. Brett says, go ahead. I'd love to tell the press just why you did because you couldn't keep this country safe. You weren't willing to make the tough choices like invading Iran.

Tough choice. Keep the country safe by escalating military action. So the president threatens that if he doesn't keep his mouth shut, he'll have federal charges drawn up against him for violating

that imam who's a terrorist civil rights. Has been think civil rights are a bad thing as a general rule, I think. Yeah. Made things worse. Yeah. Brett tells him like, hey, Mr. President,

if you'd listened to me, all of those people who were blown up in America would be alive today. Prescott reached down to the coffee table and picked up the remote control. He flipped the channel to CNN where the anchors continued to gush over Prescott's big speech. General, he said, I can afford a few public

relation hits right now. Rally around the flag effect and all that. You'll be seen as an ungrateful rube looking to hit back at the man who saved you. Your time is over, General. Now get out of my sight. So, yeah. Tough but fair.

I do love that after a nuclear attack on the United States, CNN's talking about the President's speech and nothing else. No. No, it's Tansuit, right? Yeah, they'd be talking about radiation probably. So...

Are you kidding? Rachel Maddow would latch on to that. So, Prescott woke from his... I guess Prescott has a nap after meeting with the General and he wakes up to see... Prescott woke from his nap an hour later to Tommy Bradley's face.

Written across it was Panic. What? It's lazy. Yeah. It's very... Panic was written across his face or something like that. Why are you always so indirect, Ben? Exactly, right.

Yeah. Written across his face was Panic. Sorry, it's just bad. Yeah, so okay. There are news that Reverend Jim Crawford is assassinated and they're blaming it on the white supremacist group

with ties to terrorist mama who's Soledad are Clive and Bundy, but Latino woman. Bit. I love them so much. They're so good. Above the Chiron ran the footage of the

continuing riots in the streets of Detroit. Then the anchors cut to some strong lead on Williams. They build them as protest leader. Oh, leave on. Yeah, here we go. He's calling people to rise up. Yeah, so forth.

Yeah. So we have been writing what he thinks CNN says. Law enforcement sources tell us that Soledad Ramirez, the fugitive wanted in connection with the bombing of government offices in Sacramento, California earlier this year, was spotted during the chaos on the aftermath

for assassination entering the police station. Sergeant Ricky O'Sullivan, who had just been cleared in Malone's killing, is missing as well. And yeah, like law enforcement's not going to tie that to anyone. It's whatever. Ben needs this to work. Wait, wait, wait. She was seen walking into a law enforcement office

but is also missing. She was seen breaking into a police station to free the cop who killed the dead eyed black boy. I know there's a lot of threads here. Yeah, okay. This all checks out. Yeah. Yeah. So the

whole reason for this extended digression where he attacks CNN is because the CNN anchor says everybody's waiting to hear what the president's going to say. So Prescott talks with his assistant about like, all right, what are we going to say? Seems

to me you've got two choices. One is to allocate resources from New York to these various cities. We've got governors beginning to call asking for help from the feds. They want some of the guard members brought back here in their states. President Prescott shook his head. No, bad imagery. You remember Ferguson. You put guns on the street. You might as well tell the media you're a racist

looking for street warfare. Next option we parlay with whom Bradley pointed at the TV. We're seeing in flat. Ah, okay. So now now now now the black terrorist is going. Because it's just like a process like, okay, I see what he's trying

to do. Here we go. You know I'm sure we've discussed when this book was written. I'm shocked it's as recent as Ferguson. Like, yeah, this feels like the work of someone, you know, a

first draft you wrote in college. No, no, this is post Ferguson. Right. It's like he's 17 or something. He's been a professional writer for a decade or more when he writes this book. And clearly has not had professional editors for most of that time.

It is fun to me that the press got like, okay, we should talk to this leave on guy and his assistants like, well the FBI knows that he's got connections to organized crime and the president's like, yeah, so did Big Jim. That didn't stop anybody from like sainting him. Which is just like, yeah, of course, all of the civil rights leaders

in Ben's world are connected directly to organized crime, just like all of the Muslim community leaders are connected to terrorism. But the terror, the actual terrorists to blow up a government building are Ben's heroes. Although Ben would tell you that the Oklahoma city bombing was, of course, had nothing to do with conservatism.

It's very good. Fun, fun. In another classic Shapiro moment, even though this is president Prescott's chapter, we're now with leave on. We have a couple of couple of spaces in between paragraphs and we're we're back with leave on.

Finally, overnight leave on had become de facto of the city without the force of National Guard to back them. The local police had fallen into a standoff position with the protesters, but Mayor Burns refused to authorize action to push leave on and his men out of the building, believing that such action would be too provocative.

So leave on got runners going between different positions in the city. Without National Guard soldiers, obviously they can't put down these protests. The poor disarmed cops have no ability to to do anything.

I guess they're occupying the police station now, which is would be pretty rad. Yeah, leave on didn't know the exact extent of his power yet, of course. Mayor Burns said that eventually things would be put back under control. He put in a request to the governor and the governor had put in a request to the feds.

But soon enough, things would calm down. In the meantime, he urged patients and restraint leave on. On the other hand, called for action. He humored every reporter gave a quote to every journalist. He trotted out Kendrick Malone's mother as often as possible, making his own case for authority bulletproof on the back of her grief leave on's long term

plan. He told the media was justice. He didn't define it and they didn't have to know he meant to run for office on the back of his organized resistance. It had worked for Mary and Barry. Big Jim had said it would work for leave on Williams. All that changed at 834 a.m. He gets a call from the president.

Yep. So let's see what they okay. The president's assistant is like, oh, we just want to tell you how much we admire you. Thank you for tamping down the violence leave on grins because, of course, the violence is all his fault. The cops have killed people. Okay. Mr. Bradley, I really appreciate the

sentiment. What can I do for you? Well, leave on. It's like this. We couldn't admire your stand on social justice more, particularly in the wake of this tragedy with Jim Crawford. I know you and he were close friends. The president wants to ask you for a favor. Please keep your followers from committing acts of violence. That's how this works.

Yeah. And leave on reasonably says I can't control what everybody does. It's a passionate time. And they're like, yeah, just do your best. And he says, in order for me to keep my credibility with my people, they're going to need the president to say something in solidarity. They're going to need to know that he endorses our movement

for justice. They turned out for him at the polls and they know he's with them, but they need some sort of sign. They're going to need him to pledge to stop police brutality against our people. They're going to need his promise to reopen the Riccio Sullivan case. Bradley coughed. We could do most of that leave on. But that last one, that's out of our

hands. We don't control the DOJ. Well, then we might have a conflict here. I've got a lot of very angry people and they're very angry for a reason. You do control the DOJ. Like that is the executive. Anyway, whatever. You appoint

the attorney general. You have some power in this. Yeah, there's some there's some power going on. Yeah. So the president tells Levon that he has another idea that might serve both of our interests. But he's going to have to trust the president. Levon asks

how long and he says not too long. You'll see something in the news. So they ask him to hold off for 48 hours and then they're going to give him a sign. So I guess we'll see what that is. Not in the next chapter because it's we fade to black.

We fade to black. And we're back to El Paso and Ellen who is Ben Shapiro, the general's wife. Who is Ben's wife. But unlike Ben's wife, she loves her husband. Should we

take a break before we go into this chapter? That feels appropriate. You know who does love their husbands? Bombs. Yes, Raytheon loves husbands and wives. That's why it shows up at so many weddings. Bombshells. Oh.

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on the iHeart Radio App, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. So we're in El Paso with Ellen. Um, oh, and they're invading Mexico. Okay. All right. Oh, boy.

First paragraph, the Apache attack helicopter. It's veered low over Seadad Juarez and fire and fire directed rockets at a small duplex on the outskirts of the city. It went up in flames. Governor Davis watched the real-time

broadcast, yelping as the duplex disappeared in a puff of smoke and fire. There goes one of the bastards, he smiled. That bastard was one of the leaders of the Juarez cartel just hanging out in a duplex across the border. Yeah, so it starts with the governor of Texas sending an

Apache attack helicopters to bomb a city in Mexico. Jesus. Oh, that's very fun. Yeah, so Texas National Guard attacks helicopters just start strafing vehicles and bombing buildings.

That's cool. That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's about time. The governor invades Mexico and it goes great. The night was quiet.

It had been for months by which I mean nothing happens on the border. The next day, though, residents of El Paso woke to a terrifying sight. A National Guardsman hanging dead from a billboard in the center of town. Painted in broad black letters were the words Plata o Plomo, Silver or Lead. In other words

pay us or die. Governor Davis wasn't in the mood to pay. It's also weird to send a message to the National Guard to pay us. Pay what? For what? Yeah, for what? What are you talking about? You want to not be invaded by the National Guard.

The governor wasn't in the mood to pay. Well, this seems like a threat against the entire United States. I don't know. There's a lot that's complicated here that doesn't track. Yeah, it makes no sense because nothing Ben says does. Yeah, so the governor orders a full

scale investigation. I think we know who did it, but okay. Yeah, and it turns out now there's rumors of a drug cartel in the city. Rumors of a drug cartel in El Paso, huh? That's shocking. Yeah, so

clearly and for whatever reason, Ellen is the one heading up the investigation who is I think his public affairs officer is now controlling a military investigation of the cartel murdering a soldier in El Paso. Ellen acted swiftly placing

National Guard troops in the local police centers, increasing security along the border. How is that hurt? How does she have that authority? Because you don't want to introduce a new character? Yeah. Wait, have we established what she does? Yeah, she's like

public relations for the governor. Yeah, that's not what this is doing. I guess now she runs the National Guard. She wears a lot of hats. She's a feminist. She can do whatever she wants. She's one of those classic PR ladies slash commander

of the National Guard's police operations. She's a multi-hyphen. Yeah. Within hours, the Border Patrol had caught two men attempting to flee into Mexico. After questioning, Ellen had them detained indefinitely pending further investigation into their activities

the night of the hanging. And she redoubled the limits to the border to stop any further infiltrations and deter any attempts by collaborators to escape into Mexico. That sounds out of her pay grade. Yeah, it really does. Sounds out of the governor's pay grade, to be honest. This is not really governor shit.

All of it was good policy. None of it made for good pictures on the front pages around the country. And Ellen was stunned by the magnitude of the coverage. The media coverage exploded with protest on the other side of the Rio Grande. Nothing about women and children. As the sun came up, at least 100 women stood, carrying toddlers and babies,

waving their hands and screaming for the National Guard to let them cross. The National Guardsman stood their ground. They didn't point their weapons. Ellen and Davis had agreed there would be no such activity, both for both moral and media reasons. But they looked threatening enough in their uniforms. Young, strong, square jawed.

I hate this book so much. It's so bad. It's very bad and also like, do you see National Guard soldiers Ben? They're just like dudes and ladies. Like half of them are middle aged. It's like their weekend job. They're not. Yeah, square jaws.

As far as the eye can see. Yeah. It's very funny. It's very funny that like the good policy is confronting people trying to cross a border to see their families with a line of soldiers. And that's

the heroism. Is having the soldiers. The caravan is on its way. Yeah. And of course when this happens, this completely predictable protest from shutting down all border traffic and invading Mexico, when that

happens, the media gets involved. But obviously not because it's a meaningful story. One of the biggest media magnates in Mexico owned several major media outlets in the United States. Ellen wasn't surprised at the number of cameras showing up. Obviously this was a big story. Still, she resented the intrusion.

There'd been zero cameras for the murdered National Guardsmen, but get a few dozen women crying on the border with their kids and the media had a field day. I don't believe there were zero cameras for a murdered National Guardsmen executed by a cartel after an invasion of Mexico. She complains that someone's tipped off the cameras.

And that's the reason they're reporting on the invasion of Mexico. And these women trying to cross a border. I mean, it's logical, right? What other reason would there be to report on that? It wasn't hard to gather who had tipped off the cameras. One of the biggest magnates in Mexico owned

several major media outlets in the United States. Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy for reporting that news. The invasion of Mexico. Hey, hey, I know we would never cover this normally, but because I'm your boss,

I want you to film some of the American invasion of Mexico. The lame stream greedy. Yeah. And of course, Ellen notes that the murdered National Guardsmen hadn't gotten any cameras. It's also like, no, it would have been the number one story in the country.

Yeah. It has been like, okay. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. So, yeah, the cameras find their way to Ellen for comment. We will maintain the security of the people of Texas. She said, our immigration services

have not screened any of the people out there. Most of them are wonderful people who want to come here and work and build a life without taxpayer help, but we simply don't know who they are. And without screening them, we're not going to open our borders to anybody who wants to cross. We have the body of National Guardsmen hanging from a billboard that tells the story of what we get when we don't

check those who cross the border. And it's telling that he does have to invent a thing, right? Like in order to justify shutting down the border. And it's basically, he's basically saying the thing that Trump ran on, right? I'm sure some of them are wonderful people. Oh, yeah. I mean, this book came out

two months before Trump was elected. Yeah. They're the same person. They're the same person. Yeah. The headlines hit almost immediately. Oh, this should be good. Texas governor's top aid says immigrant women, children pose security threat. I might posit that the top story would be

Texas governor's top aid controlling military investigation into murdered soldiers. Yeah. Yeah. That's a better headline. Yeah. Yeah. She should have known better than to give them any material they could misuse.

Then again, what material wouldn't they have misused? She vowed to ignore any calls coming from a media number. Of course. Yeah. That's how it works, right? I know there's probably some sort of caller idea. The media. The media. The media is calling me.

Yeah. Scam likely is giving me a call. This is the media number. Yeah. So this is the third, the tertiary story in the news. The number one story is that New York got blowed up. The number two story is the riots,

the BLM style riots all over the country. And I guess number three is America invades Mexico. Yeah. But they're not showing any of it just the president's speech. No. No. Until they get the tip. And that the Mexican military

doesn't do anything because they don't want to fight with the National Guard. And they secretly like the cartel being cleared out. So they're okay with being invaded. With the good guys. With the good guys. Each day, small groups of National Guardsmen raided Ciudad Juarez,

usually by motor vehicle convoys across the border. The cartel members had picked up on the nature of the offensive action and it inserted themselves into heavily civilian areas, cutting down on the ability of Texas forces to strike without facing the prospect of urban warfare. Now more dangerous search and destroy missions have been authorized.

The American side of the border remained quiet until it wasn't. Oh good. So we're going to get a border massacre because obviously invading Mexico sparks more violence in the U.S. and stopping all those moms from getting across to their families doesn't again, Ben Shapiro making the point that he refuses.

Yeah. So, oh yeah. A bunch of protesters get shot dead. Eventually 26 people. Everyone figured it for a drug cartel hit. Then the footage came out. Ellen saw it on the evening news as a network anchor entombed. What you're about to watch is very graphic.

Younger reviewers are advised not to watch. She cut to a grainy close range video of a man in a National Guard uniform from behind walking up to a group of tents. Get out of our, the National Guardsman said in a thick Texas accent. Get out of our, you little, and then he uses a racial slayer for

Mexican people. Which, okay. A few children rubbing their eyes came scurrying out of their tents. Their mother's following. Seeing the barrel of a gun, they raised their hands. The screen went white with the fired shots flash after flash again and again. When the night vision calmed, the smoking bodies of two

dozen innocents lay on the ground. So, yeah. I guess, I'm sure it's somebody posing as the National Guard to make them look bad, right? Ben wouldn't have a National Guardsman do the thing. That's mixed messaging for sure. I bet it's Leon or something.

I'll give Ben some credit if it actually is, if he's actually making the point that no, there's racists in the National Guard. They totally murdered children in this, you know? But I don't think that's what he said. I think I might take a bet against what you're claiming. That doesn't feel like what we're

building to here. So, the governor is angry at her, angry at his aid that he put in charge of the invasion of Mexico. Which, I would be angry at this too. Perhaps he shouldn't have invaded Mexico. I mean, that's a firable offense in my book.

I would say so. I didn't write this book. Might also literally be treason to give an unelected aid to control of the National Guard. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like it's a crime, right? So, the governor is angry. Maybe the top news story if everything else

wasn't going on. Sorry, continue. And Bubba, of course, tells him that the president's yelling at him. But not over the invasion of Mexico, over this. I wouldn't think the yelling would have started. I would have think that the president would have sent in federal agents to arrest the governor

of Texas for invading a sovereign nation. I didn't Ellen gripped her fists. I didn't ask for this, Bubba. I did it as a favor to you. Some favor, he said. I've got two dozen dead kids and their mamas and a boy in a National Guard uniform responsible for it all of it. A boy I kept here in Texas

instead of sending him to New York like Prescott wanted me to. Do we know who the little bastard was? Yes, she answered. We do. Oh, okay, cool. Why are you talking like this? It's weird, dude. He's a bad writer. So he's

a soldier, a sergeant named James Easton McLaurence and Davis is like, don't they all have three names? I guess that like serial killer thing. Oh boy. She passed him a photo of a young man in a National Guard uniform. His eyes were open to shade too far, bright blue and

off-putting. His mouth was slack. McLaurence joined the guard after dropping out of high school and getting his GED, not a stellar candidate for higher rank, barely at the bottom rung. He's full active. Wait, how is he full active duty and in the National Guard? That doesn't make any sense, Ben. Do you not know

where the National Guard works? It doesn't sound like he does. He's full active duty. He joined the National Guard. He's full active duty. No, then that's active duty army. That's not the National Guard. It seems like they're saying two different things, right? Yeah, also, they're saying this guy's bottom rung, but he's a sergeant,

which is... Not the bottom. Not a bottom is actually a role with a lot of responsibility where you're often in charge of a significant number of lives. I think you're just supposed to go with it. Don't question him. Just, like, don't write about this stuff. Yeah, don't write about this stuff.

Right way you know, not what you fantasize about knowing. Right. Keep it to your, like, live journal. So, the governor asks what set this guy off and Ellen gives three possibilities.

One is that he hated illegal immigrants because his dad lost his job at a manufacturing plant that moved south of the border. And another is that he was paid by cash by the cartels. And another is that he's, quote, just crazy, simple as that. That's a useful information.

Classic explanation for people's behavior. Yeah. Yeah, and it's, I mean, classic have been to, like, start with, oh, well, maybe he's angry because his dad lost his job. Yeah, racism does not actually enter into that at all,

really. That's interesting, Ben. Yeah, it's wide range. We can get racism. We can get socialism in there. We can get a lot of shades. So, Davis is sending Ellen to New York now. I guess she's botched the job of commanding

the army to invade Mexico. So, Bubba's, I don't know, maybe gonna put, like, the agriculture secretary in charge of it or something. Well, what's she gonna do in New York? She's gonna talk to the president. Oh. Because the president wants to humiliate Bubba Davis

in front of the entire country. Quote, hell, he could have a local DA down here draw up charges against me so that they're frog mocking me when I get off the plane. It's a setup. So, Bubba doesn't want to get arrested for invading Mexico. And so, he's sending Ellen

because she won't get arrested. They won't touch you because of Brett. That's fun. And Ellen's like, well, but the president hates my husband. And the governor says, it doesn't matter. Your husband's a national hero. He's not gonna arrest you.

Ellen had to admit that the idea appealed to her. She hadn't seen Brett in nearly a year now. And she'd missed him awfully. Every time they flashed his face across the television, her chest ached from missing him so much. What do I say to Prescott, she said? You tell that son of a bitch that we're not going to back down off the border,

not for him or anybody. You tell him about McLaurence, you tell him we're investigating. Turn down any federal offers for help. We don't need the feds down here mucking up our operation. Not your choice. Not your choice. Also, it's the crime of the U.S.

Everything's off the rails in this book. I mean, it is the crime of a U.S. servicemen in a foreign country. At no point would that be the jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement. They would have nothing to do with this. Legally, they can't. They can't be local police in any way.

That's just not how the government works. But what if it is? Yeah, like all those full-time active duty National Guardsmen. In the full active duty part of the National Guard. That's active duty, but not the army. Yeah.

This is also, this is unimportant, but if you've already written a couple sentences about how she missed him terribly or awfully, she missed him awfully. Bad choice of words. If you've already done that, you don't need to say when watching him on TV, her chest ached from missing him so much.

Yeah, just her chest ached. I already know why. I'll get it. I can put two and two together. Whenever she saw him on TV, her chest ached. I understand why it's because she missed him so much. You don't even have to say she missed him. You could say the idea of seeing Bredigin appeal to her had been nearly a year.

Every time she saw him flash on TV, her chest ached. And the reader. I can follow. She's missing his brain or her brain. It's all laid out for me. Yeah. You're not trying to convey a complicated emotion. She misses her husband.

And especially after reading the rest of the book so far, I get it. I'm all caught up with her feeling basic human emotion. Okay. Ellen does immediately point out that cross-border murder falls under federal jurisdiction.

And the governor says, he's busy. He won't mind. And it'll allow him to save face to put me up for public scourging. I'll be the bad guy Southern Hick who won't let the sweet-faced Yankee down here to fix things. That's what the media is looking for anyway, right? They wouldn't send a Yankee.

There's FBI offices in Texas. They would send someone from the El Paso FBI whose job is to investigate murdered Americans in Mexico. That's a thing that they do. Right? They got to send a Yankee down to Texas. There's no Texans in the FBI.

Some Libyanke is on their way. Some carpet-bagging fed. Oh, man. What's your in-game? She said, in-game. Darling, this thing here has been going on since the Alamo. There's no in-game. Just a game that won't end any way except

us holding our ground or cutting and running. Wow. The division of Mexico over Cartels is the same as the Alamo. We all remember. It's a game that won't end. Yeah. Cut one of those.

Dude, I can't even. He didn't have an editor. Oh, absolutely not. There's no way. We have yet to look into the publishing company. What? He's probably his dad. Well, his editor is someone he really likes.

Yeah. And doesn't feel comfortable speaking up to his boss, I think. That's my guess. Yeah. Sorry, Ellen agrees to go to New York. And she's sitting in the National Guard terminal at the airport, which might exist.

I don't know. I don't know that the National Guard has the room. Not impossible. Okay, sure. I don't know, maybe. Is that a thing that exists, Cody? I don't know. Are you fact checking, Ben? Yeah.

So as she's sitting there waiting to fly to New York, she gets a call from a number she doesn't recognize. So she picks up to at least hear what the media had prepared. At worst, she could give a no comment. So she goes back on her promise to not pick up from the media, but it's not the media. It's Brett.

Honey, don't come to New York. He sounded winded. Brett, what's going on? I can't say for certain yet. Just don't come to New York. Something bad is going down. How do you know that? No time to explain. The line went dead.

I love it. It's probably time. Too many comments. Would have gone on. You know it's bad because he doesn't tell her he'd take a bullet for you, babe. There's so many cryptic messages this woman gets from her husband.

I would be sick of it. Finish a sentence. Finish a sentence. Don't just like hang up and tell me not to do something. I don't know. Sounds like it's time to take a break for your products.

Perhaps. Speaking of taking a bullet for you. We've already done it. These products would take a bullet for you, haven't we? We did that months ago. Yes. We check the eben

And you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23 I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go in space. And when I was there As you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me.

About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space,

313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic

and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match

and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael.

Hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we are Become Returned. So next chapter is a solid ad chapter

who is remember the terrorist, Aiman Bundy, but a Latino woman so that no one can call Ben racist. Right, smart. Covering your tracks. Yeah, they camped outside the city, no fires, no lights. They'd separated after Detroit,

split up to avoid being followed. They set the rendezvous for Nashville three days later. Solid ad recommended that they wind their way through several states to throw any would be trackers off the scent. She took Ezekiel West and South. Aiden took Ricky East and doubled back through Kentucky. Nearly all the men made it.

A few apparently decided they'd had enough after Detroit. After seeing their faces on television, labeled white supremacists, they took off for the hills. Solid ad told them to ditch all their electronic gear to make for the Northern border if they could. They flee into Canada? That doesn't seem like what a bunch of gun nuts would do. Okay.

The ones who were left look like they'd been through a war. Eddie was the worst. Fatso, as they all called him, had taken a tire iron to the gut then gotten stomped at the center of the crowd. He'd been in and out of consciousness ever since. His fever spiking radically. Just before hitting camp, Ezekiel told Solid ad,

he'd started twitching and then gone quiet. When Aiden and Ricky drove in, Solid ad motioned them over. They put down their kickstands, turned off the hogs. Loves calling motorcycles hogs. I'm literally slapping my knees. You think he's been on a motorcycle? I think he wants to have been on a motorcycle.

Yeah, yeah. But I don't know that I think he's been on a motorcycle. I was gonna say something mean, but I decided I was wrong. We can all fill in the blank. Yeah. Moped, he can ride a moped. Yeah. He could ride a moped.

He shouldn't ride a moped. No, it's too dangerous. Because mopeds are for our big boy vehicles. Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't want Ben to... Or a big girl. Yeah, or a big girl. Just not a Ben Shapiro vehicle.

No, no, no. I'm just looking if there's a Ben Shapiro on a motorcycle picture, because there's so many shameful... I do hope so. Him with like swords and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his little gun.

All right, what do we got? Do we have Ben Shapiro on a motorcycle? No. No. I'm not seeing it. Yeah, there is... He does have that... He does own a leather jacket.

You're right, Cody. He does. If the motorcycle pick existed, it would be online. He would be sure to... It would be the first response. Yeah. And it would be the saddest thing

that anyone's ever seen. But Ben is a little bit too smart to be pictured on a motorcycle. So he gets his motorcycle kicks by calling him hogs every time he gets. Just so embarrassed for him. Yeah. So their friend Fatso,

who's dying, is in a coma. And once they all get back together, Aidan, who's the former Fed, who murdered a bunch of other Feds for her, asks, do we have anybody who knows anything about medicine? She shook her head. We need to get him to a hospital. I do love...

This is... I don't think Ben minted, but this is the most accurate part of the book because that is the thing all of these right-wing militias have. It's like none of them are medics. That's right. None of them ever bring medical supplies.

None of them take care of each other. No, they rely on Antifa to take care of them at protests. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That part is pretty on-brand. Yeah.

So they decide they've got to take him to a hospital. And Aidan's like, he's not going to live anyway. And Soledad gets angry. We're not going to leave him to die. Yada, yada, yada. Okay. So they're having a big fight and Aidan's angry because he doesn't want to risk everybody's lives.

So, but Soledad's like, I've got to make the call. I'm the boss. So she calls for Ezekiel, who's the token black guy in the militia. Give me a hand with this man. She leaned over the body, felt the heat emanating from the burning skin.

She gripped him around the biceps, put her back into it and moved him nowhere. Embarrassed, she gripped him tighter, pulled again. When she looked up, Ricky was so... She's got to go with her legs. She's got to use her legs if she wants to move. That's putting your back into it. That's bullshit.

Sorry. So the cop who killed the dead-eyed black boy helps and is like, we got to get him help. Nobody's going to die for me ever again. No one died for you. You killed somebody. You shot a person to death. A child, Ricky.

It's just some, that's how he's coping. It's what he's telling himself. Yeah. Okay. So they get the guy, they drop Fatso off at an emergency room and they have the black guy stay with him because he's the only person

without a national face in the group. Cool. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's been way too much time on this, huh? This is just like a boring book. It is. It is a boring book.

Like, and they, so Ben starts this next. It's like a full page that starts with like, they dropped him off at the hospital and Ezekiel stayed with him. And then after that, the next like six paragraphs are her talking with Ezekiel. Well, he tells her he's going to stay behind and stuff. Like, Ben starts by explaining what happens

and then walks through it all slowly. Like a bad writer. It seems boring. Boring. Back to the action. The headlights from the hogs carved a three-pronged gash into the darkness. Headlights from the hogs.

Carved a gash. That's my boy. To one side of Soledad, Ricky Road. To the other, Aiden. The night was silent, except for the rumbling of the engines. The murky smell of the, murky smell of the trees? Well, how do...

Spoken like somebody who hates trees. And what is murky smell? How does something smell murky? Well, he grew up in a haunted marsh. So he has a different association. Fame swamp creature, Ben Shapiro. You are right, Katie. Yeah, that's correct.

Oh my God. Of the trees. I wish everyone could see our faces. They're just so disgusting. Every four sentences. I'll be making the face that I'll look over and code is making the exact same face. It's just confusing.

Oh God, okay. So the start of this, they're driving through the forest in Tennessee and Soledad thinks about how awesome she is and how awesome it is that they're doing this and like super rad that we're a bicycle, a motorcycle militia. Aiden, I'm sorry I dragged you into this.

She yelled at last. Sorry, he grinned. I've been waiting for this all my life. Something to fight for. She glanced over at Ricky. His mouth was set in the tight line. His gaze focused on the dark horizon. Nothing left to fight for, said Ricky.

You guys know what you're up against? That's incoherent. Yeah, so she apologizes out of the blue. She apologizes to Aiden and it's like, I'm sorry I dragged you into this. And he's like, why are you sorry? I've been waiting for something to fight for my whole life. And then Ricky just says nothing left to fight for.

You guys know what you're up against? That's completely nonsensical. He's trying to be cool and sparse with the language and it's just ineffective. Yeah, it's just incoherent. Nothing left to fight for means that the thing to fight for is hard. Yeah, they're fighting for something.

Why would you say anyway? This doesn't make sense. So Ricky says they're not gonna let us go. They say we killed Jim Crawford. They say we're white supremacists. Soledad said, do I look like a white supremacist? White supremacy comes in many forms. Direct quote, MSNBC today.

They're nuts. I know, I know, I know. Oh, he's so mad. He's so mad. Nuts, but effective. Oh, boy. Also, when they she's mentioned three times this chapter that all of their electronics are off.

When did he watch MSNBC? How are you having time on your hog? Yeah. On your hog. Continuity, Ben. I'm curious how many times hog is used in this chapter. I actually do want to know how many times the word hog is used in this book entirely.

Mm hmm. Tell us. Only four, OK. Only four matches. Oh, so they're all in this chapter, OK. How many times is the word motorcycle used? That's a good question, Cody. Fourteen, OK.

OK, OK, OK. OK, that's a fair, fair ratio. You impressed. You impressed us. Yeah. Very good job, Ben. Yeah. Point to you, Ben.

OK. So they're talking. It's a very boring talk. OK, so they talk about how their revolutionaries and the comparing themselves to the founding fathers. Oh, yeah. Soledad says, if it's good enough for Benjamin Franklin, it's good enough for me. You do realize, Ricky said, Riley,

Franklin took off for some French whoring during for most of the Revolutionary War. It thundered overhead and the clouds opened up. Shit, she heard Aiden say. Just what we needed. Yeah, OK, it's raining. Addie, addie, addie. Oh, there's something solid ahead of them.

OK, I think the man has found them. So they get off the road. It's a military drone. OK. Too small to be anything else. They could be looking for someone for someone. Wait, military drones are very small. OK, anyway. So the drone.

Yeah, he's thinking of the little little drones you can get for the park. The drone couldn't they see it, even though it couldn't be any. It couldn't be more than 10,000 feet from the ground during a rainstorm, which. I don't think you're going to see a drone in that those conditions in writing a motorcycle, but OK, whatever.

Oh, it's a predator drone. Yeah, those aren't. Those are giant. Those are the size of a car and not a small drone. OK, whatever. Ben doesn't do any research. His size perspective is off. Oh, the drone is on Aiden and they fire a missile.

OK, so the drone does a missile strike on these guys. OK, OK, OK. And it blows her off of her motorcycle. She peaked over the hedge. The first 20 feet of trees had been completely obliterated. The embers of the splintered, burning trees floated through the air. On the ground, its rear wheel spinning. Soledad could make out the twisted metal of Aiden's bike.

Near it, comma, she could see what looked to be a white lump of flesh. Period. Ew. A mangled arm. That's the next sentence. Just a mangled arm, a torn fragment of a maroon scarf. She'd handed him to wipe off the handlebars is the sentence after that. For cleanliness. Yeah, two not sentences in a row.

Use comma sometimes, Ben. Or make them full sentences. You know, nice. She saw a mangled arm, comma, a torn fragment of a maroon scarf. She'd handed Aiden earlier, you know, something like that. Something like that. She felt an arm on her shoulder. Get to your damn bike.

Ricky shouted into her ear. They're coming back around. She tried to get to her feet, but her left leg wouldn't respond. Looking down, she could see the black ooze of blood creeping through her pants. Ricky swung her roughly onto his back. He pushed himself on the cycle. He cranked the throttle. Aiden, she moaned, son of a bitch.

Behind him, the drone dropped to attack altitude. All right. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Good, good reading. Yeah. I'm still just like really bored. I'm I know I'm just like stuff going on.

But I don't know if it's the plot or like how it's written or both. It's horrible. Just everything leading up to this point. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. Like we don't really. Like these people are talking about how they're like the new founding fathers, but like her grievances are very unclear, right? Like she doesn't pay her taxes and so they murder a bunch of feds.

And then they break a cop out of prison on the other side of the country. And like I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what they're doing. What are they fighting for? And we don't see any of them really express an ideology. Right. Yeah. It's vague and just the vague like fighting fighting for something. Yeah. OK.

What what? I mean, you freed the cop you think is innocent, even though he admits he shot the boy. And you blew up a federal building because they came at you for not paying taxes. Uh, what's what's the ideology, though? How are you like the founding father vague so that people could fill in their own ideologies and relate to it?

I don't know if that's I think it's enough. He he trusted like the aesthetics, right? They're on motorcycles and they have guns. Obviously, they're the good guys. Obviously. And like their opposition to like the Obama of it all. And just like, yeah, these sort of vague signifiers and markers of like, oh, I they're yeah, the motorcycles and the wind, the murky trees.

Yeah, the murky trees. I don't even I. What? It's amazing. What does that mean? Nothing. Sophie means nothing. OK. Yeah. So, uh, the leave on chapter opens with revealing, you know, how the president had been calling him and been like, you chill out for a couple of days. I got a secret for you.

Turns out the secret is that they were blowing up that cop and the terrorist mama with the drone. So the president seems to think they killed all three of them. And that's what he tells leave on. So that's great. Yeah. So just so you know, leave on, the president is very proud of what you've done there. You've kept people under control in a bad situation.

Won't be forgotten about that, sir. Leave on cough. I can only keep them tamped down for so long. My people are agitated about that attack still with Sullivan being dead. That helps. But they think the mayor is a show for white privilege. Not how you'd say it. A show for white privilege. You're not a shield for white privilege.

That's not really a term anyone would use. But OK. We're not selling it. Well, I guess some people maybe are some people. Yeah. So, um. But no, he's got these like weird buzzword grievance things that he's got. He's just got to dip it in and that's what it is. Yep.

So I'd be curious to know how many times to talk about intersectionality in this. Yeah, I haven't seen it come up yet. But so what leave on is asking the president for is the ability to remake the police department and put his own people in there and for the president to throw his support behind that. So I guess that's that's that's what he's proposing. Um, and, uh, yeah, they talk about this in a conversation. I don't think we need to go all the way through.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, the president says, all right, yeah, well, let's I'll pressure the governor to give you the police of Detroit. Within days, the applications began piling up on leave on desk. He'd moved over to the mayor's office, taking up virtual residents there, along with his secret political weapon, Regina Malone. He meets with the police union. Uh, it doesn't go well.

The man was old school blue and he didn't want to hear about changes to the department. He pointed out that they all had contracts leave on enjoying his newfound power. Let the man stew for a few minutes. Then he told him they had every intention of honoring the contracts. There just might be a few more cops writing desks. The new boys, he said, would take over the streets. No more Ricky O'Sullivan's now things were running smoothly though. Leave on slotted personal interviews with each of the possible new officers.

Each was slotted for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, leave on worked with the committee appointed by. So, yeah, he's he's just putting up a replacing the police with his guys. Um, okay. That's fine. Um, he writes a new directive for the police. They're not allowed to use racial profiling, which, of course, uh, is bad. Um, when told of the new strictures, dozens of new dozens of officers quit right away.

Good riddance, leave on told the mayor. Less pensions for you to pay when Billy Barton walked into leave on's new office and slapped on a list of 400 officers willing to quit over the new standards leave on looked him dead in the eye. Well, he said, I suppose it can't be helped changed has casualties. The media viewed leave on's new standards as groundbreaking. Rachel sensitivity, they said, had never been used as an actual policing criterion. But nowhere was that criterion more necessary than Detroit had Ricky O'Sullivan been taught

and held accountable under these standards leave on said Regina standing beside him. Cops, Kendrick would still be alive today showing attitude to police officers is something a Detroit cop should have understood had he been properly trained. Don't call our kids thugs just because you don't understand the experiences they've had growing up. They've seen cops pull over their dads, drag them off to jail. We have an entire generation of missing men in our community. Sensitivity is the key.

Okay. So that's why hundreds of cops quit, which scans now. But Ben is framing all of this is as bad as bad. Yeah. That's what's remarkable about this. Yeah. This novel. Yeah.

Yeah. So he changes the rules that anyone convicted of a nonviolent felony could be considered to be a police officer. And yeah, which is also he's like, why should you having sold pot disqualify you from being exactly. Yeah. More cops resigned at this, the final blow to the police enrollment standards came in the area of education.

The standard for the department had always been a high school degree or equivalent. Now with the applications pouring in, leave on head to face the fact that not enough applicants had graduated from high school. Many had dropped out. Again, he cited racial disparities and changing the policy, explaining that every trainee would be given remedial education necessary to do the job. How can you expect people to work their way up the ladder if we don't give them the chance to get on the first rung?

He's just being very reasonable here and also like, yeah, tons of police departments except GEDs. It's not uncommon. Yes. I think our plan is to educate people who don't have the education. Provide free education to police officers. Sounds good. As long as nonviolent felons make them racially sensitive.

Yeah. This guy is the bad guy. So he gets a cover on time. One of the things that's frustrating about this is there's no clear understanding of how much time is passing because leave on is completely remaking a major city's police department and he winds up on the cover of time as the new face of law enforcement. How is this happening so fast? Basically the mayor.

Yeah. And then he's, yeah, okay, but then at the end of it, he says that this all happens within 48 hours. No. This is absurd. I mean, if only. Yeah. It was like, it was boring reading, like hearing about it because it was written in that way

where it's like, okay, so this is like, oh, like you're just describing like a paragraph a month or something. Yeah. No, it's two days. How much do we have left of this book, the pastes? We are 84% of the way through. Well, that's not enough. No, it's not.

Painful. It's not. Should we save the rest for another day? Yeah. I think we've got one more episode in us and I think next episode we'll finish this book and our next chapter will be Brad Hawthorne. Oh, thank God. Yeah.

But also like other people in other scenes, in other places and times, right? Yeah, literally anyone. Much like Ellen, I've missed Brad Hawthorne. I miss Hawthorne. Whenever he's not talked about on the page, written about on the page, my heart aches from him not being on the page enough. And when his name is mentioned, my heart thumps faster. Because his name was mentioned and we miss him.

Brad Hawthorne. Yeah. Okay. This feels like a good spot to end it. Katie, Cody, Plugimals? Yeah, guys. Check us out with our other show, Where's She Ever? And Cody?

Even More News is the name of our podcast and Some More News is the name of a show on YouTube that you can watch. Hell yeah. And our Twitters are Dr. Mr. Cody and Katie Stoll. Crushed it. Yeah. We're at Bastard's Pod on Twitter and Instagram. That's the end of the fucking episode.

That's the end of the episode. Take a bullet for you, babe. Take a bullet for you, babe. Brad Hawthorne. All right. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Find Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space?

Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based

on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.