Behind the Bastards - Bonus Episode: Untitled Warhammer 40,000 Podcast

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Robert and Joe Kassabian are soon launching a new podcast about Warhammer 40,000 and you. This episode acts as a legally binding teaser / preview.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh, welcome back to, well, this is the Behind the Bastards feed, and this is normally where you get new episodes behind the bastards. But every now and then we try something new. And in the not too distant future, I'm planning to be launching a new podcast with my friend and fellow giant nerd, Joe Kasabian, also a fellow podcaster. are you doing? Hey, buddy. It's good to be here. Yeah. And we're wanting to do, we're planning to do a podcast on Warhammer 40,000, which is a game system that some of you are probably aware of and others of you maybe aren't. I think a lot of people know about this now. It's reached kind of a point of cultural, critical mass. I think a significant chunk of people on the internet are just kind of casually aware it exists in a way that they weren't when we were kids and started playing this. Yeah, 100%, I remember back when I first heard about Warhammer through the books, like nobody really knew what it was other than other people that would fall into that fan zone. But now anybody who doesn't even know it's a miniature, maybe they know it from the like the total war games or whatever.

Yeah. It's definitely the biggest it's ever been. Yeah. And I, the podcast will, you know, talk later about what exactly the podcast kind of things of the podcast will be covering. But this episode, I specifically wanted to talk about the intersection of Warhammer 40K and like pop culture and pop politics in the United States and elsewhere. Because it's one of having a surprisingly large impact on like the way people communicate on the internet. And the way people talk about Donald Trump in particular, that's really weird.

But before we get into that, because I think that's the thing that's going to be relevant to everybody, even the people who, you know, aren't into the game, at least can get something out of this stuff. which is why we're putting this up as our teaser episode in The Bastards Feed. But before we do that, Joe, you've got a book to plug. I do. My debut Gunpowder fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn, comes out May 29th. So you can pre-order it now, which is the best time to get it. So when it arrives, it'll be nice and fresh. Excellent.

Well, everyone should do that. And everyone should listen to the episode, which you have no choice but to listen to, because I'm going to start reading it to you. and you're already listening to the podcast, right? So if you're at all into social media and up to date on the current political horrors of our age, you've probably heard President Donald Trump referred to as God Emperor Trump. Currently, that phrase alone returns about 4 million results on Google, and that is a reference to Warhammer 40,000.

In 40K, as its fans call it, the God Emperor is the founder and deity of the Imperium, a vast million world empire that includes nearly all human beings. He was once a mighty warrior and a deadbeat dad, but he spent the last 10,000 years or so hooked up to life support. So you can already see, you know, the guy likes gold. He's always covered in gold, and he's a terrible father. So you can see why Donald Trump gets compared to him from time to time, right? Hey, I mean, recently Trump posted a picture of himself as Jesus Christ. So maybe he's starting to buy miniatures.

That's right. That's right. And the emperor being a being who's lived tens of thousands of years is kind of insane. to maybe have been Jesus or at least somebody who like profited, you know, was influential in starting the early church. He's been insinuated to have been basically everybody. But, you know, getting beyond that, if you haven't, don't know anything about Warhammer. And you just heard the phrase God Emperor Trump. You probably didn't think too much about it outside of like, oh, people are being weird about politics again in the United States, right?

Couldn't be. Couldn't be. right? Trump is kind of a singular figure when it comes to global media attention. So it's not all that noteworthy that fans of a game would reference him in memes. What makes this one unique is that people using the phrase and spreading memes about it are kind of as likely to be mocking the president as praising him. It's a real Schrodinger situation, and this aspect of it is really well embodied by something very funny that happened on February 11, 2019, over in Italy. The Villargeo Carnival is an event held in Villarigio, a city in Tuscany, and has been a yearly parade in celebration since

1873. It started when a bunch of rich guys decided to make a parade with floats that would help put the city on the map in a cultural sense. And rather than funding the parade themselves, they push to increase taxes on working class citizens and poor people processeded by wearing masks and presumably committing petty crimes, right? So you've got like a classic story here. It really is a beautiful thing. I love a good carnival. And kind of the, The key feature of this is there's these huge paper mache floats, the largest of which weighs like 40 tons that people spend the year making. There's a massive things. They're the size of buildings.

And then like walk through the street, right? And there are drive through the street, I think, now. And there's these big drunken parties and everybody wears masks. And it's a great time. About half a million people attend each year. And 2019 was like any other year, except that the pride of the parade was a 65-foot-tall sculpture of Donald Trump as the God Emperor of. manned. Would you show me this picture?

I lost my shit. I had never seen this. It'll be the thumbnail image of this. This one's not going to be a video episode because it's a special one, but I do kind of want people to see it. If you just Google like Trump God Emperor float, parade float or something like that, you'll see pictures. And it really is something.

It's massive, right? I would love to be into the planning meeting on that one. Because, you know, it took a small to medium-sized team to build this monster. Yes. And someone had to pitch that idea to the rest of them and explain exactly what the fuck it was. It was several people's whole year.

The guy behind it is artist Fabrizio Ghali, who created it as a critique of Trump's presidency. Some of this is obvious if you like really look at the details of the statue. There are like four blue Twitter birds flying around the sword handle. The emperor, like this is based off of like a drawing in several drawings of the emperor, which is he's guys wearing huge. a huge golden suit of power armor with like eagle's wings on it. He's got a massive flaming sword. Everything about him is gold.

Often he has glorious long flowing hair, the kind that Trump doesn't. But yeah, in the float, this big sword he had, there's like Twitter birds flying around the handle, which Fabrizio put there to make the point that Trump had weaponized Twitter against his enemies. And written on the blade in Italian was the phrase, your taxes and your duties. And the specific way that these were written in Italian was meant to be like bring up a different phrase, which Galley summarized as meaning here's your fucking tariffs, right? Like that's the, the blade is the tariffs, which is kind of like prescient that he, he really picked those out as being a weapon in a way they weren't nearly as much in 2020, 2019 as they are now. Yeah.

And it still kind of works as a bit of imperial propaganda in 40K. Like this is 100% something that the emperor. would have said to like a planet in revolt like here's your fucking tariffs. Here's your fucking tariffs with a literal sword. Yeah. Fabrizio said of this, quote, it's a joke, but in fact he's trying to destroy nations with the economy instead of nuclear missiles. This is one of the strongest actions, let's say, that powerful people like Trump can use.

So we'll go back to Fabrizio in a bit. But what's relevant to my point here is the point I was making earlier is that as soon as pictures of this float get online, they go viral. People are sharing this like crazy. and Fabrizio's meaning sailed right over a lot of people's heads. I'm going to quote now from an article in time. Many conservative commentators on Twitter appeared to interpret the float as a tribute to Trump.

Several tweeted that it was a parade for Trump. Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for Right Wing Channel One American News, wrote, This Carnival in Italy looks a lot more fun than the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. Just look at this Trump float. Oh, incredible. Everybody knows it can't be a Trump float

because it wasn't sponsored by Coinbase. Right, right. No one was selling crypto. It was 2019. It couldn't have been affiliated with Trump. Yeah, exactly. Nobody could rugpole the parade. Oh, man.

I do, you know, if the emperor was a real character, he's got to be alive. He should be alive then because he's like 30,000, 40,000 years old when the game starts, which means theoretically, the emperor could have bought NFTs, right? That's true. His madness could be entirely driven by all of his apes getting stolen. It might be what set him. down the path. The thing that really drove him to combat chaos as someone tried to explain the concept

of a slurp juice to him. No, I got a ruled humanity. You people can't cover in yourselves. The fuck. You can't be fucking trusted. Yeah. So Warhammer 40,000 and the God Emperor character have existed since the 1980s.

For most of the time that the game has existed, it's been a fairly obscure pastime. It requires a lot of money in order to actually play the game. And it used to require a lot of money just to like buy all of the books and guides that would teach you anything about the game at all. But social media and video games have introduced 40K to the masses in a way that like you don't have to spend a lot or even any money to at least consume the lore. A lot of people who are fans have never played the game. You know, maybe they play some video games.

But a lot of people just like watch hours of YouTube videos. And those YouTube videos are largely regurgitating decades worth of lore that have been like written and stored in. websites or put in wikis. Like, that's all, that's the hobby to quite a few people who call themselves fans. And so as a result, when the long simmering U.S. culture war ignited the world of gaming a year or so prior to the start of the Trump campaign, 40K became a battleground too. The fact that the Imperium that the God Emperor ruled was in the text of the game,

a fascist state, which was, you know, largely the subject of satire in the lore, made it kind of an obvious inspiration for white nationalists looking to hide propaganda in memes, right? The fact that, like, people who were playing 40K were usually playing one of the factions affiliated with this evil fascist space empire, even though the game was satirizing, the evil fascist space empire part of it all meant that there was like some room, wiggle room for folks to get in and try to like propagandize to people. The all they need is a tiny bit.

There's always enough wiggle room. It's like a mouse smashing itself. under a door. There's nothing you can do. Right, right, especially since like, it's part of its wiggle room and part of it's like, well, what do like angry young men who aren't great at like being socialized do? Well, they spend way too much time playing games. I say as an angry young man who wasn't well socialized when he was, you know, 17. I see myself in these comments, Robert. Yeah, playing a lot of Warhammer. Right. And hey, I'm well socialized now, and I still love Warhammer. That's fine. God damn right. Which is always why.

out to me because Warhammer is inherently a social game. It is. It is. Even with all the video games or whatever, if that's how you want to consume it, great. But the second you cross that line and start buying minis, you have to go into a room and start talking to people. Yeah. At some point, you're going to have to be around other people if you really want to do it.

So God Emperor Trump memes started spreading on 4chan back in 2015. Right around the same time Trump announced his campaign. On December 25th, 2015, a YouTuber named Talit uploaded a video that, a bunch of early memes entitled it Donald Trump Emperor of Mankind. Talit was a very small time creator. We're talking about a thousand subscribers, but this particular video broke half a million views. And part of it, like the imagery in the video is there's a famous piece of art from the lore of the game that's the emperor fighting his son who betrayed him over the body of one of his other sons that was murdered by the betrayers. It's a very famous drawing.

And they just included that, but they had swapped out the emperor with Donald Trump very crudely. And I believe Hillary Clinton was playing the role of Horace, his evil son. I'll do a screen share so you can see this, Joe. That is very confusing. This is a real beautiful find. I think that's Hillary in there. Yeah, that's Hillary. Oh, yeah, that's Hillary.

That's Hillary. And then there's Donald. Who would have thought that Donald Trump was Hillary Clinton's gene seed father? Yes, it is implied the meme, because again, this is his son who is the evil he's fighting. So yes, this kind of is implying that Hillary Clinton was created by Donald Trump. And she's absolutely towering over him too, making trouble look worse. She looks way cooler. She just killed an angel.

It's pretty sweet. So the meme broke, the God Emperor meme broke mainstream awareness in 2016. when New York Times reporter Jonathan Weissman wrote about the hate mail and threats that he received online from Trump supporters. Quote from that article. The anti-Semitic hate, much of it from self-identified Donald J. Trump supporters,

hasn't stopped since. Trump God Emperor sent me the Nazi iconography of the shiftless hook-nosed Jew. I was served in image of the gaites of Auschwitz, the famous words Arbite-Macht Fry, replaced without irony, with Mocken America Great. So, again, this guy and this journalist,

like Weisman doesn't recognize, that this guy's making a Warhammer reference, or at least he doesn't write about it. Yeah. It's just like, what the fuck is this? The username of the guy messaging him. And again, like, why would he have, right?

Like, if you don't, like, you wouldn't assume Trump God emperor is someone referencing a video game. You just, in this context, you just assume it's a crazy fascist, right? Right. Yeah. But about two months after that column came out, a writer with the Huffington Post, Nicco Pitney wrote an article about the growing Trump God Emperor meme phenomenon.

Quote, among Trump's active online supporters using the nickname as now commonplace, the post announcing Trump's participation in the Q&A heralded our God Emperor, and a search of the phrase returned over 200 posts in the day after Trump's appearance. Some forum members say God Emperor is simply a tongue-in-cheek attempt to rile up Trump opponents who fear he would be a strong man as president. The term is attributed variously to God Emperor characters in the science fiction series Dune and a tabletop game called Warhammer 40,000. We know he can't literally be one.

wrote member New Jersey 908, but the phrase whips people into a frenzy saying that we literally want a dictator. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, at least you're just saying that. Fun mark. Yeah. It was nicer back then when they had to pretend.

It was a bit. And I do love to, like, well, it could be Dune. Like, well, it could be, but it's not. Like, Warhammer is kind of, like a lot of Warhammer was originally ripping off Dune. And the Emperor characters based heavily on, on, uh, Atreides, right? Like, there's, that's certainly like, like, Warhammer is essentially all of the sci-fi that was big in the 1980s and before getting put into a blinder and, like, merged together, right?

Mixed with Thatcherite, UK, yeah. As we'll talk about, yes. So, like, the, the journalist there is correct. Like, yeah, I mean, they could have been, but in this case, they definitely weren't. They were talking about the emperor from 40K. Now, a big part of the appeal of the God Emperor character for these people is that he was explicitly in the lore of the game genocidal. The way the backstory goes, you know, Warhammer 40,000 is set in the 41st millennium, like 39 or so 1,000 years into the future. But in the lore of the game, in like the year 30,000 or so, about 10,000 years before the current day of the setting, the emperor, while he was still alive and healthy, launched a great crusade.

After unifying Earth, you know, there had been a big space empire before. but it all crashed after the AI, you know, went crazy and fucked everything up. So Earth was just like this warring mess of techno-barbarians and shit. And the Emperor takes over, he unifies Earth and he makes a bunch of gene-modified super soldiers called Space Marines. And he sends them out into the galaxy to commit mass genocide against all of the different alien species that he considered a threat in any human world that wouldn't bend the knee to him, right?

They just do thousands of genocides out in the gnatics. galaxy. They take over like a million worlds. And this all does in badly for the emperor, like his sons, who were his main generals that he had created in a lab too, eventually a bunch of them betray them. And he's badly wounded. And he has to be on like this life support system forever and ever, which leads to the nightmare future that the game itself is set in. But the fact that like none of this works for the emperor and that again, kind of in in the lore, you're not supposed to be like, ah, the emperor, what a good guy who was doing a good thing. You're supposed to be like, oh, he's just like wiping people out for no reason. Like, he was just a real, real dick.

Yeah. People always like to say, like, oh, it's, you know, and nobody's good in the world of Warhammer 40K, which is true. Yes. But specifically, the Imperium is horrible. Yeah. Absolutely horrible. And in the books about this genocide, there's like moments where your favorite characters are wiping out a species and like the last members of the species will be like we just wanted to be left alone. Like these are, they're not subtle. Like the writers are not super subtle about them being the baddies. Say what you will about Warhammer 40K, but subtle is not one of them. Subtle is not something you can apply to this game.

However, some people fail to see the broader message in the lore and just hone in on the things that appeal to them. And there's a great 4chan post I found from the, I think July 21st, 2015, where someone posts a picture, and it's yet another one of those, like, Photoshop things where you've got, like, Donald Trump in the place of a space marine. Year is now 40,000. Trump turned out to be the God Emperor and initiated the Imperium of Man, killing Zenos all day, every day in his honor. Life is good.

And again, like, in the game, things aren't good in the 41st millennium. The emperor's stuck in a life support chair, and everyone worships him, even though he was a major atheist, and everything's falling apart all the time. Life is not, in fact, good. And anywhere the space marines came from is, by design, terrible. Right. Yeah.

They're abducted child soldiers who are, like, genetically enhanced so they can go crack down on rebellions against the state. They're not, like, it's not a, like, it's a fun game. There's a lot of, like, the lore is interesting, and the models are cool. But you're not supposed to think, boy, I wish I lived in that world. that would be silly. Imagine if RFK Jr. got the keys to the space marine program. Absolutely not.

He's already got a strategic stockpile of trend and butter ready to go. Yeah. Yeah, that's the first step towards having space marines. It should just let RFK cook up, like, whatever kind of like mammal penis-based potion he can to invent the extra organs that make you a super soldier. Fuck, he's America's first, like, first neo-apothecary. That's right. That's right. Yeah, he's the beginning of the techno-barbarian tribes.

So the very first edition of Warhammer 40,000, which was called Warhammer 40,000, rogue traitor. It was a tabletop war game published first in 1987. Before 87, its manufacturer, Games Workshop, published a wide array of board games and miniatures, most of which were focused around fantasy wargaming and role-playing. Tabletop war gangs have a long history. The ancient Greeks were talking thousands of years ago, had a game called Patea, where players would simulate phalanx combat using game pieces and some sort of rule system. I don't think we actually have the rules, but I don't actually know that much about it.

But they did have it. How many dice did they need? Yeah, what kind of dice? We know the Romans had D20s. So, I mean, theoretically, right? That's true. But, yeah, and there was, like, it was for military training. It was to help people who were going to be, like, officers, I think, sometimes figure.

like learn the ropes and whatnot and learn to think strategically. The Romans being Romans plagiarized the Greeks and made their own war games, which were similar but often much more complicated. The earliest form of chess, which is a tabletop war game, was created in India in like the 600s, I think. And I think the 1600s is when you start to get like modern chess. And by the 1800s and early 1900s, people had started selling and marketing war games with little lead soldiers, often saying.

simulating Napoleonic combat or like American Civil War combat. But this is when you start to get war games that at least you could recognize at a glance as the same kind of thing as Warhammer, where you've got two dudes and they're pushing little models of soldiers around a table, right? Like that's kind of when that comes into being. Games Workshop had been founded in 1975 by three friends who loved these first stirrings of nerd culture and wanted to make and sell games of their own. The first edition of Warhammer, which is now called Warhammer Fantasy, came out in 1983.

In 1986, Games Workshop published an issue of their company magazine, White Dwarf, that featured an orc model carrying a banner with the face of Margaret Thatcher, and the Prime Minister of the UK painted on it. And the piece was labeled Maggie's Death Banner. And there's a... I'm going to show this to you, Joe. It's fucking great. Yeah. First off, pretty good paint job. Like, it's a credible, incredibly painted orc.

And that's just straight up Margaret Thatcher's face on a banner with like a severed hand on the top. It's great. That's good. And like the orcs understanding of technology is pretty much Margaret Thatcher's understanding of how economics work. Right. Yes. Yes. If you privatize it, it go faster.

Yeah, that's right. In a 2023 article for the gamer, Ben Sledge writes, she later appeared, she being Thatcher, in The Evil Within, a campaign for Warhammer fantasy roleplay. The name of the campaign itself is a reference to one of Thatcher's speeches, where she infamously said, We have always to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty. She was, of course, talking about the striking miners who feared for their livelihoods in the face of countless mine closures under her regime. The Empress Margarita, also spelled Magrita, is a clear satirical representation of Thatcher, ascending to power in 1979, the same year as the British Prime Minister. Oh, that's so cool.

It gets better. Ian McRecker leads an army of orcs against Arka Zargal's dwarfs, who themselves are suffering miners. If those names aren't recognizable to you, Ian McGregor was responsible for shutting down countless mines under Thatcher's orders, and Arthur Scargill was the leader of the National Union of Mine Workers during the strikes in 1984 and 1985, who later founded the Socialist Labor Party.

So that's not subtle. We have to unionize the dwarves. Yeah. Yes, all dwarves are humanists. as are the sponsors for this podcast. Unless they're not, I have really no way of knowing. Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off with the best deals from

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Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

And we're back. So I think that has established politics and political satire was kind of embedded in the foundations of Warhammer from the beginning, right? Yeah. But it was also more a thing in fantasy than 40K. As Sledge notes in his article, after 1987, the people making Warhammer 40,000, I think in part because 40K really started to take off and they were like, oh, this could actually be big, we probably shouldn't like make so many jokes about partisan politics that might

stop people from wanting to buy the game. Maybe we should put Margaret Thatcher's face on a banner. Yeah, probably should have Maggie's face on as many banners. So they got a little more subtle with things. The politics didn't disappear entirely. And you could always tell it was like punks making it in that period of time. The early years of 40K art and lore contained many references and illusions to aspects of punk culture. So today in the game, space marines are these gigantic, much taller than people, like, monk-like, like heroic warrior monks, right?

And they're, you know, they're all superhuman. They're the result of all of this genetic tinkering. And, you know, they're incapable of fear. And they're these kind of like idealized, like the absolute ideal of like a stereotypical, like, warrior, right? Like that's everything a space marine is. That's not what they were at first. The first space marines were basically like mercenaries and like drafty cops of like this brutal imperial that were there to like crack down on descent and stuff.

There's a great from an early white dwarf magazine. There's a piece of art that I'm showing Joe now that's like an early, it's a drawing up. There's like a punk who's been spray painting Marines out on a wall and he's got his hands against the wall and there's two space marines standing behind him. You know they're not taller than him because they weren't initially superhuman. They were just guys in armor. One of them's got what looks like a stun baton in his hands. And then there's text underneath it that says,

When the Eye of Terror blinks, ships fly between Lost Worlds and the rest of the galaxy. Miners ship their oars and slavers play their loathsome trade, where Chance permits the forces of the Imperium make their mark, bringing to the Lost Worlds the brutal order of the Imperium, if only for a few days. So there's space cops, right? Space Marine cops flying through space so they could play Candy Crush and do nothing at a different location. Right. That's not the only way space marines were depicted,

but they were often depicted as that, as like cops and bullies, they were nearly always thugs. They were not, you know, they weren't, like they looked cool, but like their personalities were not cool, right? They weren't meant to be. Yeah.

Went from being like a warrior knight to starting off as like Sully from Long Island. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, strong Sully vibes in these guys. So again, Even though after this point there's no more whole campaign settings created to mock like union busting and the like, the designers behind 40K were always pretty direct about the fact that the Imperium are not the good guys,

and the emperor is not a great leader. In fact, here's how the first ever Warhammer 40,000 rulebook opened. For more than 100 centuries, the emperor has sat immobile on the golden throne of earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technicons. He is the Keryan Lord of the Imperium, to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, and for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten, human blood and human flesh, the stuff of which the Imperium is made.

Much more explicit. Now it's kind of couched in the pseudo-religious terms that the entire Imperium exists as, but back that it was definitely very much, you couldn't hide from, like, no, this is an empire that runs on blood and death. Yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, there's still that bit, that intro goes on to include some of the text that they have at the start of every game book now. And they always do make the point that like, this is a bad, this is the worst possible regime, right? Yeah.

They've been very consistent about that. But I love that bit at the start, right, which you've wanted out where they're like, the Imperium runs on the blood and flesh of human beings. It's a cannibalistic nightmare regime. Yep. Nothing changes. Nothing changes. Variations of that passage have been included in basically every book of rules. and lore published by Games Workshop

in the years since. Unfortunately, they didn't do that in a vacuum. And over the long years of the game as existed, they also expanded the lore behind the space marines and turned them into what they are today. And because the space marines are what sold the best and what looked the coolest, especially the kids who were just getting into the hobby got into,

the space marines were who they marketed and focused more and more of the game around. And there's a lot of different alien races and stuff in it, and obviously those had to become more monstrous to match, right? Because that makes the space marines look cooler and more heroic. And all of this led to a situation where a lot of players didn't realize, really, that the Imperium aren't the good guys, and that purge the heretic and other imperial catchphrases shouldn't be seen as admirable.

But again, space marines look really, really cool. And Warhammer players and writers have created so much fiction and fan out over the years that a lot of people have made that aesthetic a real part of their lives. And this has happened in some pretty extreme. cases. Probably the most extreme example of this would be the fact that if you watch enough videos put out by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense or just a ton of combat footage from the war in Ukraine where you can see a lot of Ukrainian soldiers, you'll inevitably run across dudes with decorations in their armor or gear that look like this. And Joe, you're seeing this now, but this

is essentially a, I mean, it's a wax like stamp with some papers underneath it. That's adhering it to the armor is how it looks. I've seen some, but I haven't seen this. Yeah. Yeah. These are in the game, these, like, whack papers adhered to, like, armor by these, like, wax seals. It's called an oath of moment, right?

Or purity seals, too. Like, there's two different kinds of things that both sort of, you know, involve there being, like, papers attached to it. But, like, these are things, like, an oath of moment is, like, before battle space Marines are, like, write down, like, what their goal is for this fight or, like, make a vow that, like, this, you know, the enemy won't pass this point or something. and then they'll like adhere that to their armor to like hold them to it right and you know this was like they started putting these on the armor of the models these like little bitty like you can see these like scraps of paper adhered by like wax seals because they made the power armor the space marines had look have more of like a medieval night vibe and that's a big part of like the 40k aesthetic is you have like a lot of these medieval like weapons and armor but it's also like futuristic that's a big part of like the 40K aesthetic is you have like a lot of these medieval like weapons and armor but it's also like futuristic that's a big part of like the appeal of the aesthetic of the setting and it appealed to people so much and there's

so many fans of Warhammer in Ukraine that like one a lot of young Ukrainian men started going into battle they started putting purity seals on their armor like to the extent that like now people make and sell period like seals that you can put on your gear right I've seen like detachments named after like space marine stuff as well yeah yeah yeah like it's it's fucking wild and there's even like if you look down there there's an other example of one on a guy's armor with a bunch of like Warhammer patches on his body. Yeah. Yeah.

It's nothing but Warhammer stuff going from the Dex Mechanicus, more space marines, got an imperial guard one from the death watch of Creek. Yep. Or the Death Corps. Yeah. Well, in that picture that you're looking at, Joe, came from a two-year-old post in the Warhammer 40K subreddit that read, greetings from Ukraine. Yeah, this has become really popular here because many of the military are Warhammer

fans. So many of the volunteers who help the military try and find merchandise or patches of this type for them as a nice gift, right? Hmm. It's, I, and I'm not, by the way, like, we're talking about this in the context of people taking Warhammer the right way or the wrong way. I don't have any issue with this. Like, you're fighting a fucking desperate war for your survival, do whatever you want to

your armor, you know, if that makes you feel better. It's just, it's weird. It's, it was strange to see, like, this actually making its way to a real war because so many of the people fighting that war are fans of the game. Like, that's just a strange moment for the hobby. And you can, for a comparison to how much this has jumped into mainstream, like, consciousness, when I was in the military, we had stupidly, we called them morale patches. We had super little morale patches, too.

I never saw 40K1. I mean, this is back in the early 2000s up until the 2010s. Yeah. Never saw anything. Never. And so within a decade, it's just like, no, there's detachments named after. after air space marine groups. There's morale patches.

Like, it's having a moment. That's for sure. It's having a moment. And it's going to get weirder, Joe, because I got another thing to show you. Oh, boy. Every year, the firearms industry gathers in Las Vegas, Nevada for the shot show. It is the gun industry trade show where different companies show off new weapons, both firearms that are meant for civilian use and for police and for the military.

And one big trend, as I'm sure you know, Joe, in military arms design over the last, for a couple of decades, but it's really escalated over the last 10 or 15 years, have been small, portable, semi-automatic and automatic grenade launchers. In many cases, ones that can fire like smart grenades, right? We have a degree of control and like when it detonates, how far it has to go, right? Like, that's a big, it's like a major area in which weapons have like, weapons development has leapt forward over the course of the last like 20-something years in this regard.

You have a lot more options there than you used to for grenade launchers of that type. And periodically, you know, as some of these different products that are like, because the main weapon that a space marine carries is called a bolter. And it's this big, cool looking rifle that's actually not like a rifle at all. It fires basically like a rocket munition that one charge shoots the munition out the barrel. And then a secondary charge actually ignites the rocket. And then the rocket will like shoot towards its target and blow up. And, you know, they're huge guns meant for future terrifying post-human war. And periodically, when you'd see one of these new automatic grenade launchers, people online would be like, oh, that looks like a bolter.

We're finally making real bolters, right? Because that's kind of what they look like. And this year at Shot Show, Barrett, which is a company that makes very fucking big guns, brought a semi-automatic grenade launcher, painted in Ultramarines Blue with a fucking an oath of moment attached to the barrel. Oh, wow. Hey, everyone. Robert here, the maker of that 30-millimeter grenade launcher. was actually Mars Inc, not Barrett. I made the mistake because both Mars and Barrett are making basically identical 30-millimeter

grenade launchers and competing to get a contract from the U.S. military for this program called the SSRS system and both had models of the SSRS on display at Shot Show, but it was Mars Inc that painted theirs up to look like a bolter and put a purity seal on it. Thank you. I have to wonder what Games Workshop feels about this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's just straight up 40K.

That's just a bolter, yeah. Ultra marines blue and everything on there. Like, it's fucking wild. Yeah. So whether or not you think that's cool, depends on your attitude towards the arms industry. Again, you can think about that however you want, but it represents a kind of awkward problem for games workshop. The fact that stuff like this is happening is evidence of the insane degree of cultural penetration that Warhammer has achieved. But having real weapons made in the image of your video game or of your game weapons can be probably.

problematic too, right? Yeah. You don't want to be connected to someone being actually murdered by your product. Right, right. Like that, that can be a problem. And speaking of things that are problematic, the sponsors of this show. Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills.

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More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

Listen to the Honest Talk podcast and I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, name? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast?

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. First people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember.

I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast. we could call in and say, hey Jonas,

and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah.

Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle. A one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. We're back. So, as I kind of brought up before we went to break, the wide popularity of Warhammer has increasingly forced problematic confrontations, both between sort of

how much people like it and how many many things they want to stick Warhammer on and what the company Games Workshop may want Warhammer stuck on and between like groups of fans themselves and about four years ago Spain's largest Warhammer tournament let a guy play while wearing Nazi

paraphernalia and I believe his army was kind of like Nazi themed too like a Vermacht themed Guard Army or something if I'm remembering correctly but he was like wearing Nazi shit and he'd entered the tournament under the name Austrian Painter Like real fucking subtle, my dude.

And people weren't thrilled about this. I'm going to quote from an article in Polygon. G.T. Talavera tournament organizers gave comment to tabletop wargaming site spiky bits, stating that the club repudiates the Nazi mentality in all its aspects. Nazi ideas have no place in our group because they are contrary to everything we stand for. The organizer said that the player said he would not leave unless they involved the police. As displaying Nazi imagery is not illegal in Spain, the organizers hesitated lest this bring legal trouble upon their club. And I don't know enough about the situation to know, like, where these guys really just backed into a completely fucked corner and haven't a lot of options.

Should that probably, I'm going to guess they could have and should have done more, but I don't really know much about that. What I do know is that this causes a lot of people to get pissed off online. And it blows up enough that Games Workshop has to publish an announcement on November 19th, 2021. The Imperium is driven by hate. Warhammer is not. And in this announcement, there's a couple of interesting lines. First off, they're pointing out that, like, look, the Imperium of Man is a cautionary table, like so many aspects of Warmer 40,000, it is satirical. They go through the definition of what satire is, right? Like, that's literally in this little article that they put up. And then they note, that said, certain real world hate groups and adherence of historical ideologies better left in the past, sometimes seek to claim intellectual properties for their own enjoyment and co-op them

for their own agendas. We've said it before, but a reminder about what we believe in. We believe in support a community united by shared values of mutual kindness and respect. Our fantasy settings are grim and dark, but that is not a reflection of who we are or how we feel the real world should be. We will never accept nor condone any form of prejudice, hatred, or abuse in our company or in the Warhammer hobby. And then they basically, they straight out say, if you come to a games workshop of interstor and wear symbols of a hate group, we'll ask you to leave if we don't want your money.

Some things don't need to be said aloud until they do. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's an implication. And to be fair, in most places in Europe, this would have been against the law. Spain, however, is different for different reasons. Yeah. Yeah. It's that siesta vibe, you know? Sometimes it applies a little further than it ought to. And I want to note, too, to be fair, I don't want it to seem like, because as you noted, like, this isn't the thing you have to say until you do.

There's some valid critiques that there were other things that cropped up for a few years prior to this, that Games Workshop should have made a statement earlier. I'm certainly not saying they shouldn't have. We may dig into some of that, you know, later as the podcast goes on. But like, they haven't handled this perfectly. But that's a pretty good message, right? That, like, we don't want your money and we don't want you in the hobby. And it's good that they did say something eventually, right? You know, this is a publicly traded corporation.

They're not a, they're not a culture warrior and they're not an activist. Yeah. But, like, I'm glad that something got fucking said. And they've, that's not the only thing they've done in the last couple of years. There's been some more subtle and some less subtle moves. You know, one thing that happened recently. So for years, a lot of fans have asked for like, as the get, because as Warhammer's gotten more popular, more women have played. And they've added in more female models for different, like, sides and stuff.

There's more female guards men than there used to be. More female Eldar. And, you know, they've at least trend, and the Sisters of Battle, which is an all female line, has gotten like a refreshed line and a lot more attention. And, you know, they've done this a few ways, but a lot of people want there to be female space marines. And this is kind of a, you know, still a topic of a lot of debate. Within the actual lore itself, the emperor, like, they can only be male because of how the emperor designed their gene seed and stuff. And the real reason for this obviously is that, like, nobody thought about it in 1987, that, like, they would want there to be, like, female models for space Marines. They were thinking about that kind of stuff.

And it would hardly be the first bit of lore that was retconned. Right. Like the tapestry of Warhammer lore is a series of retconnings. Yeah. And that said, I also do kind of, one thing that I appreciate is in some of the more recent lore, when they've gone back to like talk, like, feature, have books that feature the emperor and talk about the creation of the space marines. One way they've kind of retcon things is, because there's a conversation between the emperor and one of his top advisors who's like, I thought you should have made all the primarks, you know, your sons that were the leaders of these legions, women. Like they should have all been girls. They're leaders in the space because we would have had less problems.

They wouldn't have all wound up going to fucking war with you. They would have been less annoying. And I kind of do like the idea that all space marines are men because the emperor is just kind of a misogynist. And it led up destroying him, right? The fact that he, yeah, it kind of does. Like it sort of works. But one thing Games Workshop did do recently is they introduced the emperor's bodyguard or these other group of fucking future super-soules. soldiers, the custodes, who, or the custodes, whatever, fucking fake Latin pronunciation you want to use.

And they've been adding, like, female sculpts, like female heads and stuff. You can only really tell the faces. But a chunk of people online lost their goddamn minds. I'll tell you that right now. Wow, I'm so surprised by this. Razy over this shit. And it's very funny because you'll see them posting stuff like, you know, if you just want to play the hobby, play the hobby. but don't come into my culture and try to, like, change it because, like, you want to,

you want there to be blue-haired, you know, girls in your, in my fucking game. And my culture. Yeah. A lot of these guys being like, oh, this is going to destroy the hobby. Like, this is, like, once Woke gets in, it ruins everything. Fucking Warhammer has never been worth more money. Like, Games Workshop is one of the most valuable corporations in the entire United Kingdom. Fucking little plastic models of space marines and orcs and shit are worth more than fishing

to the British economy. And it's an island. I can play these weird space monsters like tyrannids or orcs. But you know, when you add women to the mix, really ruining the immersion. Once the wombs get in there. I can't believe it. Fucking insane, man. Yeah, it's very silly.

And, you know, at its core, this is a culture war centered over a very important problem for creatives, though, which is that like when you're creating fictional fascist organizations, whether they're impossibly advanced sci-fi empires or like a cult of deranged post-apocalyptic bikers, there's a risk that you're going to make that some of the fans of your work will be fans of those fictional fascists. And not in a, I just think they look cool way, but in a, I have some opinions about, you know, this racial group way, right? And real fascists, as we noted, have spent decades getting really good at using stuff like that as a bridge to start propagandizing to young people. Whether we like it or not, fictional worlds are battlegrounds and the broader culture war against descendant fascist sentiment worldwide.

Fabrizio Galley, the creator of that God Emperor Trump float that we started this episode discussing, said something similar in an interview that I read on Heavy.com. The time of intellectuals, philosophers, and of old and worn culture is over. We have entered the era of fantasy, video games, and virtual life. Yeah. Right on the nose there, 2019, but bang! hit the target. I hate

I hate when you read something from now several years ago. Yep, that's just everything now. That is just everything. Yep, that's just everything. Whoa, Joe, I think that's all I've got here. You know, how are you feeling? I'm feeling good, Robert, and I hate to say it.

Yeah. Because I love talking about Warhammer. Yeah, you feel good because you're getting paid to talk about Warhammer. And I love the weird shit that comes out of it, especially hearing stuff like this, because I don't want people to like this to be the first introduction to Warhammer, like, oh, wow, it's populated by fascists. Yeah. I go to a local Warhammer club where I live. I'm not going to docks it, but it is full of incredibly lovely people and probably one of the most diverse rooms I've ever been in in the Netherlands. Yeah. And yeah, it's good to be. We can

close out talking about stuff like this, because it's concert. A conservative a weirdo as I was as a kid, I really do think playing Warhammer was one of, like, the healthier things for me in terms of connecting me to other people who believed different things. Like, even within the context of, like, a fucking gaming group at a hobby store in the early 2000s, like, I remember after the invasion of Iraq, like, a few weeks or months after, like, my friends and I, like, somebody brought in, like, a printout of, like a missile strike on, I think it was a BMP on, like, an Iraqi troop transport. and you can see frame by frame, this thing blowing up with, like, people inside it. And we're fucking shitty kids in Texas being like, whoa, like, look, I've never, I'd never seen anything like that. And one of the guys we gameed with was like a veteran who'd been like a tanker.

I think he had fought in Desert Storm and was not, like, I had always assumed was a pretty conservative guy and was not like the most, like, was a man in his 40s or 50s who would yell at children over the rules of video or of a tabletop game? Hell yeah. Like that kind of dude. But also when he saw what we were doing and he realized what it was a picture of, he was like, don't do that. Like, there were people in there. You don't laugh at something like that.

You know, like, it's not cool. It's not something to like go like, whoa over. Like, it's not a game. Like, it's the most terrifying thing you can possibly imagine and you need to have more respect. And as like a fucking 12 year old little piece of shit, like that actually like hit and impacted me. And I was like, oh, yeah, I was kind of, if like fucking this guy is calling me out for being a dick, I might have been being a dick. Meanwhile, he's dressed head to toe at Imperial Guard cosplay. Like, you shouldn't do that.

Absolutely. Hey, man, death isn't funny. Covered in skulls. Head to toe. All right, Joe, you want to plug your book before we roll out here? Yeah. So I am the host of the history podcast, the lines led by donkeys. So if you like military history, check us out.

And my first gunpowder fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn, comes out May 29th. And you can digitally pre-order it now. So check that out. Reviews are coming in. They're very positive. And I'm really excited for it to release. Excellent. I'm very excited to read it and excited for our listeners to read it.

And also, Joe, I'm excited for you and I to have a podcast about Warhammer. When's it coming out? Neither of us know. There's going to be a little bit of a delay. Like we're currently dealing with, you know, there's a lot of logistical issues, including like just bringing you on and signing contracts because you're in a different country and stuff. We'll figure it out.

There will be a podcast and it'll be a weekly show. It'll come out at some point this year. We just don't know exactly when yet. But we wanted to tease the idea for all of you and show you kind of what we've got coming down the pipe because we both kind of tease this online. and social media a couple times. And I felt like bad about not putting something out. People had noticed.

Yeah, people had noticed. So we'll be getting you, you know, we'll have more coming out soon. The show will be usually 40 minute to an hour long episodes. We'll be covering, you know, history and the lore in game. We'll be covering like real world reporting on different controversies around the game. You have a great pitch for that based on another one of these like weird political culture war things that hits like a convention where people are like playing and gaming and doing like painting contests and how the community deals with it. So we'll be talking about like both real

life how this this hobby is influencing and has been influenced by the shit going on in the world. And we're going to talk about just the nerdy shit that we love. Like I'm looking forward to putting together a painfully detailed history of like the concept of a space marine and sci-fi fiction and how that's led us to like games workshop building an empire. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, like, what are you most excited to talk about? I'm incredibly excited to talk about and explain how the Imperial Guard works to people

and how they die by the tens of millions. Yeah. Well, that's all for today, folks. We'll be back later. I mean, at some point with a show. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzone Media. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers, and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off, with the best deals from brands you love all in one place. It's a summer kickoff thing. Join today at Simonplus.com. Rewards program Terms Apply. See simonplus.com for details.

Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast?

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.

Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. Worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your. podcast. Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Imagine an Olympics

where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.

I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed Human.