Behind the Bastards - Part One: Edward Bernays: The Founding Father of Lies

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

In episode 75, Robert is joined by Jamie Loftus to discuss How Edward Bernays Invented America (And Propaganda). Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, 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 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. Jamie, if I'm not mistaken, your dog got a terrible haircut and is ugly now. Yeah, I think we can all, I mean, you saw the picture. He looks like Lord Farquaad. He used to be one of the sexiest dogs in the game really getting,

and it was like this was the first time that he was taken on a walk and received no compliments because he looks like shit now he's going to have to develop a personality. Yeah, he looks like, as you said, an incel, which is why I picked the opening for the show that I opened. And now it's a perfect circle. Yeah, he is now going to start really hammering on about bone structure. Yeah, he's going to rent a van and ram a crowd. That's probably not something worth joking about. Point is the dog looks like shit now.

Yeah, the dog looks like shit. But you know, Jamie, because of our subject for this week, I've learned that if you want your dog to get compliments again, the answer is not to get him a better haircut. The answer is to just simply change all of America's standards towards dog beauty. And today we're going to talk about the man who can tell you how to do that. Our subject today is Edward Bernays. Yes.

Yes, do you know who Edward Bernays was? No, I'm coming in colder than usual on this one. I love it. Yeah. I love it. I'm ready. Well, let's talk about Eddie B. Is he hot?

Ed Bern. Sophie, we'll pull up a picture of him, and I'll cue Sophie in on when to show it to you. And you can give me that judgment. I'm going to read my little intro first, though. OK. So in common parlance, the term founding fathers is applied to the men who literally founded this country either at the end of a rifle or a pen.

And from a literal standpoint, that does make sense. Whatever else you want to say about them, dudes like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin did start this thing we call the United States. But the country they founded only bears a passing resemblance to the one we live in today. So for my money, we should expand our ideas of the founders to include the people who are most responsible

for making America into the place it is right now, at this moment in time for all of the people who live here. And by that measure of the term, it's possible that no single man deserves to be called a founding father of this nation more than Edward Bernays. Eddie liked to be known as the father of public relations, which is only part true. He and another guy named Ivy Lee both have a pretty solid claim on that title.

But calling what Bernays did PR gives an incomplete picture of the man's accomplishment. Edward Bernays invented mass manipulation of the American populace to achieve specific ends. And in doing so, he invented modern America. So this is the guy we're talking about today, the first PR man. I mean, isn't just saying you're the father of PR, even though you're not just good PR?

It's fucking fantastic PR. Yeah. So his dad's just good spin, Bernays. That's just good spin. I don't have evidence otherwise, and I'm not going to look it up. He lived to be 103 years old. Yeah, he never died until he finally did. Like he should have died so much earlier,

because he was a real piece of shit, but he just kept being alive. It really does. Yeah, like the toxicity of a person can really preserve you. Well, and he's one of these terrible people who made really good health care decisions for himself and was always a very healthy person, which are the worst terrible people, like the health nuts who were monsters.

Yeah, like when Steve Jobs is sloshing his green juice, you're like, get over yourself. Because I need to live forever. Yeah, but unlike Jobs, Bernays picked health stuff that actually worked apparently. Sick roast, Robert. Fuck Steve Jobs, you're dead ass. All right, Edward Louis Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria in 1891.

His father, Eli, and mother Anna Freud Bernays came from a middle class Jewish background. On his mother's side, they were perhaps a little bit above middle class, due to a very famous relative, her brother, Sigmund. As in Sigmund Freud, the guy who thinks we all want to fuck our moms. Sigmund Freud is his uncle, yeah. Whoa, are they close? Oh yeah, yeah, they were fucking tight.

Yeah, they hung out. There was actually, he helped Freud get along when he was older and was having trouble making money. Bernays helped sell Freud's books and stuff over in the US and get him speaking deals and shit. So they were fucking tight. You can't see the gesture over the audio. But I'm doing that gesture.

Everyone knows the tight gesture with your fingers. That's true. That is already deeply fucked. Okay, so your uncle is Freud. He's peddling all this weird stuff that I sort of agree with, but mostly I think it's more of a him thing. Freud is always like the first 20% of everything he says is right, and then he just goes off the rails. Right, and then he starts talking about how he wants to fuck his mom.

You're like, okay, that's fine. But stop projecting on the rest of us. Yeah, he's like a guy who's really good at like building roads, but doesn't know where to build the roads too. So he just randomly starts making roads in the middle of nowhere and they lead to cliffs and stuff. That's Sigmund Freud, father of psychiatry. Also a coke addict, and I guess coke addicts like Blazing Random Tra...

Oh yeah, he was way into cocaine. Yeah, super huge into cocaine. The first book he wrote was called On Cocaine, which was about doing cocaine. That's where psychiatry comes from as a guy. That's hardcore, and I appreciate it more than I did one minute. Oh yeah, he's my favorite coke addict that isn't a Hollywood producer. That's a cool, like a contemporary thought leader wrote a book called Jeweling for a Long Time, like that man.

Alright, I'm on board. He's the nephew of Mr. Dragan. The world's most famous coke addict, yeah, slash scientist. Now, Austria in the 1890s was not exactly the best place and time to be Jewish. When Eddie was one, his parents moved the family to New York City, where his father went on to become a moderately successful grain merchant. Growing up, Edward's family was not rich, and there were some moments of financial strain when times were tough,

but for the most part they managed an upper middle class existence. Now, his father, Eli Bernays, was not abusive or violent to his children, but he was a very German father, and that meant he was seen as more of a force of nature by his kids than like a loving and supportive parent. Years later, Edward would write, quote, The household during the day centered around mother. In the evenings and on holidays and Sundays,

my father dominated everything and everyone, intimidating all of us with his unpredictable temperament. My earliest recollection of him is that of a heavy set man leaving the house every weekday and Saturday morning for a place called Downtown to make money. My mother was constantly on the alert to prevent explosions of father's temper. Cooking odors were anathema. He would sniff the air like a lion when he stepped into the vestibule of the house each evening. If someone had forgotten to close the dumbwaiter and odors sifted up from the kitchen through the house,

he would call out in a loud, stern voice, Open the windows! My mother would rush to the windows and throw them open regardless of outside weather. I never knew why my father was so obsessed with details. So that's his dad. And it's worth noting he capitalizes the M in mother, but does not capitalize the F in father. Oh, another sick burn from Mr. Bernays.

I mean, yeah, his dad just sounds like... God, yeah. The force of nature thing is so weird. I cannot relate at all. It's someone with a very meek father. But it seems like, okay, so his dad needs attention and his mom is terrified of him, and I'm sure that bodes very well for their personal life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's one of those things that boated... Like, this is actually a very German thing. Like, the way his family worked was pretty normal for German families. A couple of years ago, I interviewed an old guy who had been in the Hitler Youth as a kid and was like 14 when World War II ended. And when he talked about his childhood, he made a point of noting that, like, you didn't speak to your father directly unless he asked you a question.

Like, on Sundays, when the family had a single egg, his dad would eat the egg and they would all watch. Like, you didn't start eating food until your dad started eating. Like, dad was like the dictator of the family. And this guy was like, that was pretty normal in Germany at the time. It was like a way, like, especially turn of the century Germany. I really, I really hate that egg thing. That's the worst thing I've ever heard.

It's super fucked up. And it just, like, it feels, like, weirdly symbolic, even if they don't mean it to be. They're like, oh, yeah, no, we have to watch daddy eat an egg. Well, and it's this guy who, again, like, grew up in the Hitler Youth, connected the way that, like, families were structured in Germany to how fascism was able to get such a hold on the country. He was like, we were already kind of used to this idea

because of how we grew up with our fathers. Like, anyway, that's the connection this guy made. And that's why you never watch daddy eat an egg. Never watch your father eat an egg. That's why you never do it. My dad and I used to do this weird egg thing, but it wasn't like that. It was like... My dad and I used to do this weird egg thing.

It's a sentence that can go a lot of ways. What if I chose to just, like, not get more specific? Like, anyway, back to Edward Bernays, me and my dad used to do this weird egg thing. We used to do this. We used to eat... We would each have an over-easy egg, and then we would time... We would both swallow the yolk's whole at the same time,

and then we'd high five. That's horrible. Is that German? That's the worst story ever, Jamie. It was really fun. I'm making the rule right now that if anyone listening to this ever sees their father eat an egg, start pelting him with rocks.

No more fathers are allowed to eat eggs in front of people. You're enabling fascism if you watch daddy eat an egg. Stop your parents... Just your dad from eating eggs. I guess it's fine for your mom. Unless that gets creepy. Anyway, I'm going to read another quote Bernays wrote about his dad. My sisters and I stood in awe of our father.

We observed silence in his presence until we were addressed. When he left the house in the morning, he called goodbye to us from the hall. We then ran from wherever we were and pecked a farewell on his bearded cheek. After dark, he returned. I saw him for a few moments after supper before I was sent to bed. He occasionally raised his voice to us in commanding tones, which had the shock effect of a New York traffic cop on a timid motorist. His awesome personality made corporal punishment unnecessary.

So he doesn't get hit at all by his dad. There's no abuse, but it's like this is the strictness of the family he grows up in. And Edward hates it. Like he really doesn't like his parents' relationship. He doesn't seem to like the way his dad does things. And he grows up wanting to live a life as different from the life his parents lived as possible. That's like an early motivator for him. Fair.

I wonder what old Sigmund's making of this marriage. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't come across any evidence of Sigmund psychoanalyzing his own nephew. He seemed mostly worried about money. Yeah, probably just something about fucking should have fucked your mom, kid. Well, maybe if you fucked your mom, this wouldn't have happened. Classic Sigmund Freud. Always telling kids to fuck their mom.

So Eli wanted his son, Eddie, to get into agriculture and pick a career that was in line with the family business of selling grain. But Eddie had zero desire to do anything even vaguely related to agricultural work. He graduated from the agricultural college at Cornell University in 1912. So he was, this is something that everyone listening should be able to identify with. He was like yet another middle class kid with a degree in a field that he didn't want to work in. Like half of my friends. He worked for a brief time decoding cables about the grain trade and living off of dad's money in New York until one day in December 1912 when he wound up meeting his old friend Fred Robinson on the morning trolley. Now he and Fred had worked on the school paper back when they were in high school and now Fred's dad had handed his son control of two academic journals he happened to own.

The Medical Review of Reviews and the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette. Fred asked his old friend Eddie for help in running both papers. Next, according to The Father of Spin by Larry Tai, quote, They use the medical review to argue against women wearing corsets with stays and to encourage shower baths. They published expert opinions on health controversies, a relatively novel approach, and they tried something even newer to promote the journal and its advertisers, distributing free copies to most of the 137,000 licensed physicians in the United States. So Eddie gets like a chance to break into publishing and immediately is this guy with new fresh ideas that nobody had thought of before. That sounds generally positive. So far, yeah, nothing bad. Stop putting women in cages and let them take a shower every once in a while.

Yeah, Eddie Bernays is a feminist icon, by the way. Wow, interesting. Yeah, he is. He's a weird feminist icon and a problematic one, but credit where it's due. He was like an early guy being like these chest prisons we put women in seem like a bad idea. Perhaps they'll get angry. Maybe they're uncomfortable. Well, that's, I mean, I guess that's the least you can do with a medical journal. Hey, stop putting your wife in prison. Yeah, don't imprison her lungs in a cage.

I'm on Team Eddie so far. Yeah, we're all on Team Eddie so far. So about two months into his new job, Eddie Bernays came across a review written by a doctor about a play that was just now starting to take off in New York, or that had just been written. It hadn't even performed yet. And the play was called Damaged Goods. It was about a man with syphilis who gets married and spawns a syphilitic child. Now, this is about the most risqué subject you can imagine at the time. People in 1912 did not talk about STDs in like any context like doctors didn't like talking about them.

So the play both dealt with the subject frankly and dealt with the common remedies people attempted to use to deal with the illness. So it was like like a groundbreaking thing that you would like discuss STDs at all in a popular play. It's the rent of its time. Yeah, it was the rent of its time. It really is like kind of in line with that. So Eddie and Fred published that review, but decided that just like publicizing the play itself wasn't enough. So Bernays reached out to a guy named Richard Bennett, who was a popular actor who'd expressed an interest in taking part in Damaged Goods. And he told Bennett, quote, the editors of the medical review of reviews support your praiseworthy intention to fight sex pruriancy in the United States by producing Bruce play Damaged Goods.

You can count on our help. So because of his really traditional upbringing and like how how kind of cloistered his family life had been, Eddie grew up wanting to like break as many taboos as humanly possible. And Damaged Goods gave him a perfect opportunity to do this. So he attached himself and the medical review of reviews to the project as a sort of proto PR firm. His plan was to essentially gain funding to produce the play and to get people to go to it and make it a financial success by turning the play into a cause celeb. Where basically like he was he was staging as like if you go to this play, you're fighting the cause of pruriancy. You're like fighting prudishness. Yeah, it's literally rent.

So where people are like, yeah, I helped, I've seen rent before. Yeah, I helped raise awareness of AIDS by watching this play. That's exactly the same thing Bernays is having people do. But in 19, frickin 12. Yeah, Damaged Goods unrelated is just a great name for anything. I would see anything called Damaged Goods. I would see anything called Damaged Goods. Yeah, even if it was, it kind of sounds like a hairband.

I would still see it though. I would see it if it was a movie starring Jeremy Renner. And I'm not a Renner, a Ritter fan. You're not a Jeremy Renner fan? I'm not a Renner stan, yeah. Oh God, didn't he like try stand up or something? He's like tried stand up and he hates women. Love that for him.

I don't know, but he is. I saw one picture of him from the New Avengers movie and I thought that guy looks like Damaged Goods. It's true. When he had the giant samurai tattoo on his arm, that's some Damaged Goods right there. That's the face of Damaged Goods. Jeremy Renner with a giant samurai tattoo. There was a brief amount of time where both Jeremy Renner and Anne Haich were hitting up bar shows. It was like, can you get out of here?

Get, get, get, especially cancelled. I don't know. I think Jeremy Renner was born cancelled and that's what gives him his great power. Born to be cancelled will be the name of my next play. That's his other arm tattoo, his second sleeve. So Edward Bernays formed the medical review of reviews sociological fund committee at age 21. And like the sociological fund committee was essentially like the organization he made to fund the play Damaged Goods. So he raised money from people like John Rockefeller and the Vanderbilts in order to put on the show.

His plan was wildly successful and the sociological fund committee raised huge amounts of money. Damaged Goods was a hit and it inspired Bernays to launch a series of other plays aimed at exposing other ultra aspects of society. Drugs, white slavery, anything that stirred controversy. After tasting success for the first time in his life, Eddie took the opportunity to travel to Austria and visit his famous uncle Sigmund. They talked and walked and traded ideas about the functioning of the human mind. When Eddie got back to New York in late 1913, he'd become obsessed with his uncle's idea about how unconscious drives from childhood impact the way people behave as adults. Bernays realized that if you could figure out what unconscious drives motivated people, he could manipulate those people on a massive scale. So he starts with like, I'm going to get people to see this play about syphilis by convincing them that it's like an act of, like a humanitarian act to watch this piece of entertainment.

That's successful. So he starts doing it with other things, drugs and white slavery and stuff. And he's really just titillating people, but he makes them feel like they're accomplishing something. And he realizes that, like, he's tapped into some sort of drive people have to do better. So then he goes to Austria, talks to his uncle. One of my least favorite sneaky things. They're just like, you're super woke, but what you don't know is that I'm taking all of the money. Like, you're just like, okay. Well, Eddie, you're losing me, babe. You're losing me. So his first project after getting back was a comedic play called Daddy Long Legs, which basically seems to have been... And a back. And a back.

Yeah, you're back on now. We'll have gone for a second. The descriptions of it make it seem like it's just like almost a shot-for-shot ripoff of Little Orphan Annie. Like the plot is literally that a poor girl comes up from the street and gets adopted into wealth and privilege. Why is it called Daddy Long Legs though? I don't know. Probably for some weird aspect of 1912, like 13 vernacular. Now, you may notice that the idea of a ripoff of Little Orphan Annie, that's not at all risque. It's not like syphilis or white slavery or anything like that.

So how is Eddie going to make people feel like going to the show is activism if it's just about some poor kid getting adopted by a rich guy? I don't know. Alright, well, he found a way. Is it Freud-y? A little bit. Basically, he uses it as an excuse to launch a charity campaign aimed at encouraging adoption. So he's like, okay, this play itself, there's nothing risque about it. So I can make people feel good by making them feel like buying tickets to this is supporting the cause of getting poor kids adopted by rich kids or rich parents and stuff.

So he forms groups on college campuses and high schools to raise money that's aimed specifically at getting like private middle class and upper middle class families to take in orphans. One of the colleges he goes to is Vassar and he arranges a meeting with some influential undergraduates and gets like a writing in the front page of a couple of newspapers. But they only donate about 15 cents of money, which is fine. He's not actually trying to raise money for anything. There's no actual charity here. He just wants to be able to say Vassar supports this charity campaign, which they didn't. Yeah, exactly. And Vassar gets really pissed at him, but the stories are already on the front page. There's no turning it back.

So like, this is the tactic this guy invents, which is you may recognize as familiar with the way things work today sort of. So yeah, he's a trendsetter. He's established like the way PR ought to work where it's like, I want to make it seem like these fancy institutions support what I'm doing. So I'm just going to take a picture with a couple of people there and folks will read between the lines and assume the college supports what we're doing and assume there's a real charity, even though there's not at all a real charity and no kids are getting matched up with rich parents. Right. So he's a genius. Yeah, cool guy.

At age 23, Edward took on his biggest client yet, the Russian ballet. Now, this was a particularly tough task since macho American men had little inclination to watch a bunch of Europeans and fancy tights bound around on stage like a bunch of fairies. Ballet was seen as effeminate in order to fight that expression of toxic masculinity. Bernays used another expression of toxic masculinity and published articles in prominent newspapers with titles like, are American men ashamed to be graceful? I'm back again. He's really smart. I like him. Yeah, that's good.

I mean, it's just like you just have to make that's such a weird angle to come out. Yeah, I'm just like, oh, sorry, bro, are you like afraid to like enjoy a gorgeous ballet? Oh, I'm sorry, you can't enjoy the beautiful shape like the beautiful expression of a man's glorious glute muscles bounding in perfect symmetry on the stage. You don't like watching his quads bounce. I like just like the image of an angry bro outside of like a ballet theater just there just being like, dude, like what? Oh, I can't just go out and see fucking Romeo and Juliet with my friends. What the fuck are you talking about? You're saying it's not manly to enjoy a man's tightly wrapped package as it as it bounds up and down on the stage like I can't watch that.

Are you are you are you scared of grace, bro? I'm still not there, too. I'm just like, why won't my boyfriend go to the Phantom of the Opera with me? Why? Why? Well, because the ending has been spoiled. Are men afraid to watch musicals that slap? That's the update. Does Phantom of the Opera slap? Yes, it still slaps after all these weeks. You know what else slaps, Jamie Loftus? What?

You know what you know what slaps even harder than Phantom of the Opera? I see it coming and I hate it. The products and services that support this show and or program. These slaps. These slap like the Phantom of the Opera. But unlike the Phantom of the Opera, you don't know where this story is going from a lifetime growing up in American pop culture. So this will... Wow, another hater.

Another hater by... Not a hater, but I'm saying like the Phantom of the Opera, we all know how the Phantom of the Opera goes. No one knows what these ads are going to be. True. They could be for a belt company. They could be for Coke Industries. They could be for the Church of Scientology. They could be for Blackwater.

Like, anything could happen when ads come on. It could be anything. That is the beauty of ads. Yeah, so let's spin the roulette wheel of capitalism and see where upon it lands. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French.

In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic... And occasionally ridiculous... ...deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing.

And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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 Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, 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 to 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 Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! Oh my god, what a ride those ads were. I know. You know what, I didn't expect it to be a Raytheon ad. But now that it's run, I've been thinking, I really need some new missile guidance systems, because I have a lot of Yemen to shoot at.

The power of suggestion is very strong. You don't realize how many ways there are to kill until you listen to the advertisements on this show. Exactly. I'm going to bomb so many school buses in foreign countries, thanks to these beautiful Raytheon products. Wow. And their sponsorship money really keeps the show afloat. So thank you to Raytheon. Yeah, it's really cool to get to finally see pictures of your large mansion that you live in. Yes, yes, built with Raytheon money.

Yeah, Shay Raytheon. Yeah, oddly enough, the main demographic for behind the bastards is the Saudi royal family, so this is really a good place for Raytheon to advertise. Yeah. Alright, let's get back to Edward Bernays. Who is related to this because he invented advertising in the modern context? He did. Yeah, if he revolutionized bullshit. He revolutionized bullshit.

So Bernays had realized with his campaign for the Russian Ballet that he could sort of change American opinions about things like European men wearing tights by pushing think pieces into popular publications like Vanity Fair and creating the illusion of a national discussion. Isn't that crazy? That's done to this day. Yeah, yeah. He's the first person to figure it out and it's completely destroyed our civil society. It's like when they keep, do you remember that article that was like, why aren't millennials buying diamonds? Just like starting a conversation that no one was in the middle of. Meanwhile, the question with all of my fellow millennials is more along the lines of like, why can't I afford to buy my insulin?

Why did I go to a dentist to accept Groupon? Why are people able to afford a dentist? How do I clean my vanity bones without getting a new credit card? Yeah. Did you know that there are Groupon dentists, Robert? I am not surprised by that. It's a hard industry for dentists. I went to one and she sneezed in my mouth, but I think she did good dental work.

The last time I went to a dentist, that's horrifying. It took me a second to catch up with that. She sneezed into my mouth. She wasn't wearing a mask. Was she like those painless dentists where like what she brags about is, I'm a maskless dentist. Didn't even get to happen. Yeah, mask off, bitch. It's 30% cheaper than the other dentists, but I will get my fluids inside of you.

Yeah, the crazy thing is I'm pretty sure that the gum procedure itself went just fine, but she was like talking about Game of Thrones and she sneezed in my mouth. That's awesome. That's some solid dentistry. Hey, had I gotten health insurance, had it been an option in my life, I wouldn't have this gorgeous anecdote to share with you on this podcast. Really, what is dystopia? I don't know.

The last time I went to a dentist was when I had health insurance and it was to get my wisdom teeth removed. I understood then that that was the last dentist trip where I was likely to get hydrocodone, so I just have not been back. Why would you go after that? I guess that's fair. My mouth kept bleeding. Oh, mouths are meant to bleed, Jamie.

I was starting to get nervous about how my mouth would bleed in any situation. If I started to feel any feeling, my mouth would respond by bleeding. If your mouth stops bleeding, that's when you have a health issue. You want your mouth to bleed all the time. Well, that's fair. But if you see enough pictures of yourself doing stand-up with your mouth actively bleeding, people start to think it's a bit and not just how your mouth is. Well, play it is a bit.

Either way, if your mouth is bleeding, it means you're drinking plenty of blood, which means you have high iron levels, which is what you need if you can't afford to go to the doctor. I love this spin. You're going full Bernays. Thank you. I really have learned a lot from him. So, as the 19-teens rolled on, Edward Bernays was making very good money on the cutting edge of a field that hadn't really existed before he got into it, public relations. Tragically, his success did not at all impress his father. Bernays later wrote, quote,

My father's attitude toward my activities remained less than lukewarm. He was disappointed that his son had turned press agent. He enjoyed good theater and concerts. To occupy an orchestra seat at a performance was one thing, but his only son to make a career of the theater in daily contact with actors and managers was something else. He's like, open the window. Yeah, open the window. Get this actor stink out of here. Yeah, his dad thought actors were gross,

and he thought it was gross that his son had become basically a press agent for the theater. I mean, wouldn't you feel the same way? Yes, I hate the theater and all people who are involved with it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable way to feel. Get in TV like every self-respecting actor. Fucking bored trotting. Yeah, where's your...

Is he in SAG? Yeah. Then I'm not fucking interested. Yeah, he is older than SAG, I suspect. Now, when World War I kicked off in August of 1914, it was, you know, probably the greatest calamity in human history. Whole nations in the continent of Europe were utterly ruined by war on a scale never before imagined. Luckily for America and for Edward Bernays,

it also meant an opportunity to get into some new business. For America, that new business was mass arms sales. For Edward, that new business was convincing Americans that getting involved in a European war was a good idea. Now, this is gonna be hard to get your mind around, Jamie, but there was a time when Americans thought going to war in foreign countries was a bad idea. Oh, see, that's not something I feel like we can relate with in our lifetimes. No, no, no, it was not. Okay, daddy, long legs, how's it gonna do it?

How is daddy long legs gonna do this? Well, his first big idea was to get out an article in the magazine Musical America, urging musicians to help America get on board with the war by having singers perform songs about the U.S. military whenever they performed at clubs. So that was, you know, they can't all be great homeruns. That is one thing that seemed to used to work in this country that I truly can't understand. Like, hearing, even like post 9-11, I'm like, this, this really... You know, it actually did work in 9-11.

It did. I grew up in a conservative household and I heard that fucking, Well, I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. I heard that fucking every week of my life in the run-up to like the Iraq war. Oh, good. Like, yeah, that was like the theme song of we're going to... The soundtrack of we support this horrible war. Yeah, yeah, that was, and my parents were very moved by it,

especially after 9-11, thought it was the most profound song they'd ever heard. It was, so yeah, I guess maybe that wasn't a dumb idea. It probably worked really fucking well back then and it worked really fucking well in 2003. Oh, Bernays. Yeah, yeah, he was a fucking trendsetter. Yeah. So eventually, Bernays' work earned an interview with the Foreign Press Bureau, who were the United States' proto-propaganda agency for the U.S. military at that point in history.

They were worried about hiring Bernays because he came from Austria and they thought that might make him not loyal to the United States. But eventually, they grew convinced that Bernays was really a company man and they gave him a chance to serve the war effort directly. No, no, no, he's a relentless capitalist. Yeah, he is on board with capitalism. We're good, we're good. I'm gonna quote again from the father of Spen.

Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So he's moved on from ballet to the First World War. Well, he's gonna have to- It's just quite a jump. I never overestimate the confidence of a random guy. Yeah.

Like, well, I successfully promoted daddy-long legs, better trying to, like, make fuck the world up. Yeah, it's one of the- I know the thought went through his head at some point. Like, if I can put asses in seats on Broadway, I can put do-boys in trenches in the western front. Wow. Well, there's no bouncing back from this.

And it worked. It worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an integral part of winning the American people over to World War I. I mean, there's really appealing to the power of FOMO is powerful for anyone. They're just like, are you serious?

Like, people are- There's shit happening over here. It's one kind of dumb to be a European in 1914 and think like, oh, this war is gonna be awesome. We gotta get into it. Like, everybody wants a little bit- It's gonna be over real quick. Like, I wanna have a partner.

I wanna have a chance to be a hero. That's one kind of dumb. And it's an understandable kind of dumb if you know European history up to that point. It's a whole other kind of dumb to watch three years of unspeakable slaughter in the trenches of Western Europe and be like, yeah, we should really get in that.

Like, this seems like it's gonna be a great thing. Let's hop on board this train, guys. But it does, but it does work. It does work. It does work. Imperial Germany is defeated, thus ensuring peace in Europe forevermore. I haven't read in a European history past 1918,

but I think it went pretty well after that. It's kind of happily ever after kind of deal. Yeah, seems like it. So, there's an extent to which, obviously, American involvement in the First World War is one of those things that set off a chain of events that made the rise of Nazi Germany inevitable. And you can't blame Edward Bernays for that.

He was doing what he thought was best. What you can blame him for is his work in the tobacco industry, which, ironically, would go on to kill more people than his work selling America on World Wars. But first... It's so wild that, you know, like, his dad could have just been like, I love you. Yeah.

His dad actually did say that a lot, because we have some letters between them. It seemed like his dad could only communicate emotionally with his son through letters that they wrote each other. But his dad was also, like, really insistent that his son get into agriculture, which I guess maybe he was right about it,

because instead Edward Bernays... Seems kind of like a petty thing to do. Yeah. That would be fun, Edwin. I'm glad that people... I wish he picked that career. Yeah, I was like, I mean, I guess the world might be better off if he had done that.

I wish that fathers were still pushing their kids to do the same shit as them. That's what a fun trend that was for most of human history. I mean, I say that, like, I make fun of that idea of, like, dads, like, pushing their kids to do the same thing they did, but I wound up completely accidentally in the same career field my dad was in without ever meeting to,

because he was a radio guy for 30 years, and now look at... look at fucking me. Look at you, you're on your goddamn microphone in your Raytheon mansion. In my Raytheon mansion. I'm also reporting on the Boston Bruins for a local paper. You can't escape it.

You can't escape it. Yeah, genetics is destiny. Except for Edward Bernays, who instead of farming tobacco just sold it to millions of Americans. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit, Jamie, but first I feel like we should have a little detour and talk about Edward Bernays,

feminist icon. Wow, this is... This is my content. You ready? You ready? I'll be the judge of that. Bernays was a longstanding women's rights advocate and was well ahead of his time on just about every gender issue.

He supported women's suffrage before women could actually vote. He and his wife, Doris Fleischman, got married in 1922 after a long lingering courtship. When Edward had opened his first independent company, which he called a publicity direction office in 1919, Doris was his first employee. They fell in love, but were so focused on avoiding

what they saw as the mistakes of their parents that they kept their relationship hidden for years. Eddie's sister actually had her husband adopt the Bernays name when they married so that the family line could go on, because she was that convinced that her brother would never marry. He was kind of like a hippie sort of dude

where he was like, we're not gonna get married, we're gonna do a different sort of relationship that nobody else in America is on board doing yet. So he was ahead of his time on that. Now, on paper, the union between Doris Fleischman and Ebi Bernays seemed like it was like the wokest one in history

up to that point. They got married without a wedding ring, they did not inform their parents, and back before the wedding, they'd both joined something called the Lucy Stone League, which was an advocacy group dedicated to fighting for women's right to maintain their maiden name and not change their maiden name after marriage.

Wow, that's so cool. That is cool and true to their word, after their marriage, Doris kept her maiden name. When they signed into the hotel where they would spend their wedding night, she registered for the room instead of Eddie, and she registered under the name Doris Fleischman. This was the first time any woman

had ever done this in American history. And like to give you an idea of where gender relations were at the time, multiple major national newspapers reported on the story of a woman signing in for a hotel under her maiden name. By herself? Wow! There were headlines like,

this bride registers under her maiden name! All press is good press! And just independent with the exclamation point. Wow. So that's where we are at this time. But you know, Eddie Bernays and his wife are fucking trendsetters here.

That's... Oh, wow. I mean, talk about multitudes on Mr. Bernays. His friends must have thought he was such a cuck. That's funny. Man, good for him. That's something. That's not nothing.

That's not nothing. And he was in the 1920s was an advocate of the idea that housewives deserve to be paid by their husbands. Because he believed they were doing Yeah, real work and that they ought to be compensated for it. And because he and his wife were business partners,

he split the revenue from his agency with his wife evenly. So they were equal partners on paper at least. So... Is she hot, Sophie? Is she hot? Wait, we gotta look him up.

Yeah, we gotta look him up. Doris Fleischman. I should have said earlier I don't think Edward Bernays is hot. His head looks like a cube. I would not call him hot. His wife is beautiful. Wow.

Yeah, you do what she says. Cube head. So, well, actually, see, this is where it gets kind of fucked up. Oh, no. So, Jamie... I was behind the nice friends. It's a...

This is a complicated story. Because everything I've just told you is true. But it leaves out... It leaves out an important aspect of the story which is what Doris herself actually wanted. So, I'm going to quote again

from the book The Father of Spin. Doris also was a pioneer for women's rights, but winning the right to use her maiden name wasn't one of her proudest achievements. Eddie admitted it was he who'd insisted on their joining the Lucy Stone League, bringing a reluctant Doris with me, and it was he who pushed her to use

her maiden name on their wedding night, because I had an inner fear that marriage, though I wanted it fiercely with Doris, would take away some of my liberties as an individual if there were a misses added to my name. So, years later, Doris actually would adopt her husband's last name as she'd apparently wanted

to do all along. She never... It was played as this big gesture of an independent woman making a strike for women's rights, but she actually really wanted to take Bernice's name, and he wouldn't let her. But he did.

Yeah. It's fucking complicated, right? That's some... Extremely weird. Yeah. It just does sort of ring as, yeah, whatever his fears are compounded with the fact

that this all got them pressed every time they would do something that was a hashtag feminist win. Yeah. That is so... That's so many levels of emotional fuckery

where... I'm just picturing these gaslighting sessions of like, are you telling me I'm doing something bad? No. No, but like, no one ever... Doris. It's so complicated. The only woke man is also

a fucking dick. Yeah. It is the 20s. It is the 20s. God, imagine the cube head telling you what to do. Yeah. For 58 years. I mean,

she expressed happiness in the relationship. Doris Fleischman was a legitimate pioneer of women's rights. She worked in journalism long before that was common. And she was a huge part of her husband's groundbreaking PR work. But in spite of his insistences that theirs was an equal partnership,

Bernay's always focused on the Bernay's name in their work and downplayed his wife's involvement in it during the decades where that was a hindrance rather than an asset. Doris was expected to maintain their home as well, like any housewife of that era. But because Eddie was so woke and uncomfortable with the idea

of having his wife do housework for him, she spent most of her life rushing to and from their home ahead of him to ensure that the house was in order and to also ensure that Eddie didn't see her putting the house in order. And Bernay's, their daughter later said he wanted her to be a feminist outside the house, but inside he wanted

her to be a Victorian wife. Haha, that's, yeah. That still happens. That's like, I would say, a solid 25% of men who own like the future is female shirts are like still

pieces of shit and like expect too, too much from, well, good to know. Good to know. Yeah, he's the original Beware the woke man sort of stereotype. Yeah, like the guy who brags about being woke is usually quite

dangerous. Yeah. He's like, who's that guy from who's that guy from Orange is the New Black who like wouldn't shut up about how woke he was for three years and then everyone just stopped casting him so he'd shut the fuck up. He's like that guy. Someone I don't know who that guy

is. His name was Matt and I'll tell you shirtless. I mean, I'll say for my own part, the only thing I'll brag about is accidentally drunkenly vomiting on people that I'm close to because I, I

Jamie am a true hero. You are the true wokeman. Thank you. Thank you. Who among us is the true wokeman? The person who has a problem moderating his intake of intoxicants and has ruined many a shirt from his friends.

Sick. Matt McGory, that was that was Mr. Woke I was thinking of. Is that the guy? Yeah. The shirtless woke man? Yeah. God, so gross. Well, shirtful woke man, Eddie Bernays. Cubehead. When Doris died

in 1980, a professor named Susan Henry was inspired by the obituary Edward Bernays wrote about his wife and you know, inspired her to write a book about Doris Fleischman and several other female pioneers. The book is titled Anonymous in Their Own Names, which is a solid fucking title.

Professor Susan Henry reached out to Edward Bernays because he was still alive about writing this book that would feature his wife heavily and he was enthusiastic in his desire to help Susan and to talk up the accomplishments of his deceased wife. As Susan dug more and more though

and talked to the Bernays' daughters, she came to very critical conclusions about Eddie and I'm going to quote from her book now. After visiting him in March, I finished writing a paper about Fleischman that was accepted for presentation at a national conference. I sent him a copy nervously though, since the paper's theme was

his dominance of her at home and in the office and her lack of professional recognition. Once again, he surprised me. No criticisms whatsoever, he wrote to me after reading it, except possibly one slight point. I had overplayed her invisibility, he thought, and not been sufficiently mindful of how their business

would have suffered, quote, if we had publicized a woman giving advice to men. This was not a slight point at all, but he was willing to treat it as if it were and to invite me back. So again, that's Eddie's justification for why he didn't give his wife the credit and she deserved while they were actually doing

the work and waited until later when women's rights was in vogue. That's certainly spin. Yeah, he's the dad of spin, big papa spins. Now Edward continued to work with Susan on her book in spite of the fact that her work both revealed the great role Doris had played in his innovations

which meant less credit for him. This might seem to be somewhat to Eddie's credit as a human being and evidence that he was a man capable of seeing his own past flaws and acknowledging them in the harsh light of the historical record. But it's worth noting that Edward's own daughter Anne did not take this charitable

view of her father. Quote, When I asked Anne Bernays why she thought her father was so helpful even though by telling Fleischmann's story I was undermining the soul credit he had received for their work, she reminded me that one of his favorite phrases was reflected glory. I was showing his good sense in choosing her mother as

his partner. She explained, you're flattering him. I later realized that the timing of my research added to the flattery. In contrast to the anti-feminism of the 1950s that made it a problematic time for Fleischmann to disclose much about her career in A Wife as Many Women, so she barely mentioned it. The feminism of

the 1980s and 1990s made this an excellent time for Bernays to call attention to her career. He was willing to take less credit for their public relations accomplishments if he could take full credit for having been smart enough to marry and form a professional relationship with this remarkable woman. So

that's how Eddie Bernays's daughter analyzes everything that went on with her. I find her very interesting. I realize she's an author, isn't she? His daughter, because I recognize her. I think I had to read one of her books at some point. Well, that sounds

accurate in terms of just like, I mean, those men are still out there, just like the fair weather supporter of like, when it's I mean, this guy just sounds like, yeah, when the world will give you positive attention for being a feminist, he's a feminist.

And then when feminism is out, then cool. Well, I hate him. He's kind of the worst kind of man. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

he wasn't entirely a fair weather feminist. I got to give him that. Like, there were things that he was very outspoken about before it was popular. Like, him insisting that housewives get paid was never a popular. Like, that's still not a popular thing to be on. No, that is cool. Yeah, and so is the just

I mean, just the general like yeah, even if it's we don't know how genuine it is. But I get like the fact that he said like, you know, women shouldn't be forced to work course. It's like, that's that's good. I like it. But then the fact that is what he wasn't actually listening to his wife.

Kind of really puts a puts a bad taste in your mouth. Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking complicated and weird and you know, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Pure intentions, Robert. Why?

That's one of those things like when we talk about like his reputation or his record with feminism. There's a lot to criticize. There's a lot to praise. I wouldn't call him a bastard on that because I am a big believer and you have to judge people by the standards

of the time and even with all of the warts on his story, he's still better than the average man for that time on that issue. I agree with like and there is something to be said for just being an influential person saying something that's not

like popular. Even if it's done for PR like it can still be helpful to the world. Well, I mean, yeah, he just kind of sounds like a kind of flip floppy but sort of I don't know.

You know, at the end of the day, he's sold a lot of cigarettes and I guess I just don't like it. And we are going to talk about the cigarettes next because that's where we really get into Edward Bernays definitely a bastard. But before we talk about cigarettes, Jamie Loftus, let's

talk about the fine products and services that Raytheon provides. Products and services like the Hellfire missile guidance system, which Jamie let me tell you, if there's a wedding party in Afghanistan that you want to blow up with several dozen pounds

of RDX explosives, there is no missile guidance system better than the ones Raytheon makes. Oh, I love it. I'm looking at Raytheon merch on online right now and boy, do they have some graphic design. Yeah, my favorite Raytheon shirt

is I went to an Afghan wedding and all I got was peppered with shrapnel. They're... I don't know why I decided on Raytheon ad plugs today. Yeah, I mean, when Raytheon they really need... I just like to say it like how it sounds.

Yeah, I'm a Raytheon stan, for sure. Yeah. Products! For most experts, we're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say.

For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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? How many people are made up? Listen to CSI on Trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass 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 to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, 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 Kreklev

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. We're back!

We're talking Eddie B. We're talking Eddie B. Daddy Long Legs. The original Eddie Long Legs. He has as many names to intro him as Pitbull. Yeah. And in fact, he and Pitbull

are very closely related. That's not true, but let's see if we can just get that lie to take off. Edward Bernays would approve of me telling that lie. Would he be perceived as cooler or less cool? Does your profile raise

if you're related to Mr. 5 Mr. Worldwide Pitbull himself? I like Pitbull. Yes. I like Pitbull and that's my feminism. Pitbull, is there anything more feminist than liking Pitbull?

Than Mr. 3 of 5 Mr. Worldwide. I don't know. Yeah, no, not at all. That is the most feminist one can be. Exactly. When we go to war with Iran, we're going to airdrop Pitbull into the country

in order to lead a women's uprising against the regime. That's how that's going to work. The revolution will be scored to Pitbull. And the revolution will of course be sponsored and supported by the good people of Raytheon.

Pitbull X Raytheon is, I mean, after Forever 21 X Flamin' Hot Cheetos. It's a match made in heaven. Forever 21 would do a Raytheon line. I believe it. It's the only one they haven't done. Because that's

fucking Pitbull branded Hellfire drones. That's a great branding opportunity right there. So, we're going to talk about Edward Bernays and the motherfucking tobacco industry. And, Jamie, when I say motherfucking, I mean because

his work in tobacco fucked over a lot of mothers. Oh, I thought it was another Freud thing. If you know an older woman who died from tobacco, it's probably Edward Bernays' fault.

Well, that's not fair because he only had a grandma who dropped from lung cancer. Yeah, I mean, I didn't like my great aunt so I guess shout out to Edward Bernays. I mean, then you really can thank Edward Bernays. A lot of sweet and low packets. And Edward Bernays ensured that there

would be more sweet and low packets by taking her out of the game early. So, you're welcome, Jamie. Yeah, thank you so much. So, World War I was, of course, a huge boon for the concept of smoking cigarettes. Prior to the war, real men tended to prefer cigars or pipes or if

they were baseball players, chewing tobacco. Cigarettes excelled in wartime due to how easily you could smoke them in a trench. They became a standard part of military rations and hundreds of thousands of American men returned from Europe with a fun new addiction. In 1928, Edward and Doris' PR firm

was contracted by George Washington Hill, the head of the American Tobacco Company. Hill's goal was to get women to start smoking the company's biggest brand, Lucky Strikes. Hey, that worked out. I can crack that market. That worked out. Yeah, it did, it did. All right. Yes, spoilers.

This plan works like fucking gangbusters. This works. Now, at that point, only about 12% of cigarettes were consumed by women, which represented a huge surge in lady smoking from like the way things had been in the 1890s, but wasn't nearly enough to make big tobacco happy.

Hill hit upon a brilliant theory. Since being skinny had just come into vogue, if he could convince women that cigarettes would help them lose weight, he could get them super fucking addicted to tobacco. Ah, yes. So Hill came up with the slogan on his own. Oh, yeah.

It really does. And Hill came up with the slogan, Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet, which is a solid slogan. Okay, but he's a feminist, though. Yeah, he's a feminist. He is not intersectional. Now, Hill knew that he was going to need the talents of the

world's greatest ad man to make the slogan work. Don Draper. From The Father of Spin. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of who Don Draper is kind of based on Edward Bernays. Except without the whole square head thing. Yeah, except for much better looking. Although they both do have giant heads.

Does John Hamm have a big old head? Yeah, John, I've seen John Hamm and he has a very large head. Nice. Very good looking guy, but huge head. Well, isn't that like there's something about humans that are like, they find big heads cute and that's why the Powerpuff girls look that way.

I'm not crazy here. It's the same reason we find babies cute because their heads are big for their bodies. It's like kittens and puppies, too. Yeah, all right. I like a big head. I don't like a cube head. So, yeah,

Hill had this idea for like an ad campaign, Reach for a Lucky instead of a Suite, and he contracted with Edward Bernays to make the idea work. So I'm going to quote again from The Father of Spin. Bernays launched the campaign against Sweets with his tried and true tactic of enlisting experts, in this case convincing

Nicholas Murray, a photographer friend, to ask other photographers and artists to sing the praises of the thin. I have come to the conclusion, Murray wrote, that the slender woman who, combining suppleness with grace and grace with slenderness who, instead of overeating sweets and desserts, lights a cigarette, as the advertisements say, has created

a new standard of female loveliness. I'm interested in knowing if my own judgment concurs with that of others and should be most happy to have your opinion on the subject. Magazines and newspapers were also furnished with the latest findings on the get thin trend. For fashion editors, that meant photo after photo of slender Parisian models and

hout couture dresses. For news editors, it meant testimonials like the one from the former chief of the British Association of Political Officers of Health, warning that sweets cause tooth decay, and advising, the correct way to finish a meal is with fruit, coffee, and a cigarette. The fruit, Dr. George F. Buchen continued,

hardens the gums and cleans the teeth. The coffee stimulates the flow of saliva in the mouth and acts as a mouthwash, while finally the cigarette disinfects the mouth and soothes the nerves. Jesus. Cigarettes are dental. They're vets?

You learn a lot from the 20s by knowing people were told coffee is a mouthwash in cigarettes to clean your teeth and we're like, alright. There is a part of me that's like I would like to live in that world for like a day. It would be nice.

It's like everyone was living in a Kesha song. Yeah. It's so, yeah, that's psychotic. That, I mean, it is crazy how, I mean, making cigarettes look feminine is, it's such like an advertising

hack job that was so effective, but it was like, that was still, my mom smoked cigarettes for chicks, basically, and my dad smoked boy cigarettes, like my dad did like Winston's and my mom does Misty Menthol 120s

because they're thin and sexy and there's a rainbow on the carton and that like, it's, it works. I hate it, it works. It super works. It's the same reason why there's all these like, where they have male patterned baby wipes now.

Yeah. And it's, God, I mean, it's like becoming a little bit like more controversial to still be like arbitrarily gendering stuff like that, but it is crazy how recently it was so egregious of

just like, this one's for chicks and this is how you know. If you ever want a really fun trip down an advertising rabbit hole, look at all of the different handguns that are like, marketed towards women, like car and stuff, like their lady gun ads are it's fucking great. Oh my God, yes,

guns for, like, anything for the gals is just guns for gals. Guns for gals? We got to protect ourselves too, ladies, but look at like this pink trigger. Well, it's less, I mean, you do see some of that, mostly it's like

gals, we know you all want to carry the biggest gun available, but you don't want to ruin the lining of your yoga pants. So like, here's yoga pants that are built to carry a gun, or here's like a gun that's designed to, like, go with the contours of feminine, like, fashion, it's really

How can I pack a piece and still look hot? I still look demure. Yeah, it's It's fucking great. There are these new things, I actually like these, but they sell them at, like, Walmart and Target.

But there are these panic alarms to carry around in case someone tries to attack you in the night, but they just like, like, heart keychains, and they're advertised with, like, if you ever need to make a big scene, girls, this is the accessory to have, and it is basically

a very small taser. Oh, that's amazing. But it just doesn't make a big scene. It's beautiful, and it all comes descended from the mind of Eddie Bernays. So in his quest to get more women smoking, he went directly to hotels and restaurants

and encouraged them to add cigarettes to their dessert offerings. He oversaw print ads, like this beautiful piece of propaganda I'm going to have Sophie show you. Uh, it says on the top, well, actually, Jamie, why don't you, why don't you describe that ad for our listeners? Okay, so

in a, in a nice little serif font at the top says, keep a slender figure, no one can deny. And then it's a horny looking woman and then it says, reach for a lucky instead of a sweet. And then it says

the thing that we all know from the Mad Men episode, which is, it's toasted. It's- No throat irritation, no cough, yeah. Oh my god. They're, I mean, and they were right. And they were right. This is such a weird, yeah, this

is so weird. And were these the first advertisements of their kind? Yeah, this is really the first guy to start pushing this in a big way. Like, obviously they're in products advertised for women before. Right. But not like this. No one had thought of taking something that was

a mass product and then specifically gendering it in order to sell more of them to a specific gender. Right. Um, yeah, like, Bernays is the fucking king of that. Uh, he's, he's the real king there. He's using his feminism for evil.

Yes, exactly. The Bernays office sent out a series of suggested menus to restaurants arranged to save you from the dangers of overeating. Inevitably the after-dinner menus advised reach for a cigarette instead of dessert. Bernays pushed articles that advised wives to hire cabinet makers to add in special

cigarette holders next to the flour and sugar holders. He sat down with home-ec textbook writers to stress the importance of cigarettes in homemaking, just as a young and inexperienced housewife is cautioned not to let her supplies of sugar or salt or tea or coffee run low. So should she be advised that the same holds true of

cigarettes. No. I desperately want a house with a cigarette holder built into the cabinets. I will start smoking just to be able to use that. That sounds fucking awesome. There, I mean, the way, it's crazy to think of NEPA that's like there, yeah, like cigarette use used to be like kind of

a given and like built into, it's still kind of like built into cars just like became ugh. If you want to know what it was like if you want to know what it was like to grow up in the 20s in America go take a vacation

to Serbia because they all still like, you'll have waiters walk to your table with a plate full of food with a cigarette in their mouth like it's so fucking crazy. They still smoke that way over there and it's amazing. Why not?

Yeah, it really takes you back. Yeah. It's retro, Robert. It's retro and they have nightmarish rates of cancer but I don't think anyone gives a shit. It's Serbia, man. Like, they've been through worse. That's the national slogan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You notice that the places where like shit has gotten real most recently are the places where no one cares that cigarettes are bad for you. Like everybody smokes in Iraq and it's like, why am I going to give a shit about lung cancer?

Have you seen what's going on here? Yeah. Now, Jamie, have you ever heard the phrase a moment on the lips and a lifetime on the hips? Ew, no. You've never heard that? What does that mean?

For a couple of articles I wrote years ago I spent several weeks in pro-anorexia chat rooms just like listening to the conversations pro-anorexia people talk about better and you run into that quote all of the fucking time. It is very common. I kept my anorexia offline

which is powerful. That's good. Yeah. It exists solely in journals. Yeah. I'm glad that I did the same with my eating disorder otherwise it would have been a real problem. Brave. Or more of a real problem than it was.

Yeah. But that phrase, a moment on the lips that anthem of anorexia originates from a quote cooked up by Edward Bernays. His version of course was a moment in the mouth and 10 years on the hips. Which I guess is less

extreme than with the way the quote a moment in the mouth and 10 years on the hips. It's a good line. It's a good line. He got that line published in pieces in the New Yorker Life and other magazines right next to cigarette ads. Now, at this moment in the late

1920s, most of the resistance to Bernays' tactics came from the fact that he was hurting the candy industry. Not that he was, you know, encouraging horrible rates of cancer. Representatives of the sugar industry in particular were livid, which prompted Bernays to respond in a letter that quote,

a battle carried on fairly in this manner can serve the public in presenting both sides of a discussable question and in bringing the underlying democratic principle of free competition fairly to the front. Which really, that says a lot about capitalism right there. Yeah, we need a fair discussion. Should you eat a shitload of sugar?

Or should you smoke cigarettes every 10 seconds? That's the question. Are both of these things bad? What should we be doing either? It's just like which is the more profitable right now. Yeah, which poison will sell better is the question we need to have a free

and open discussion about. I mean, it is crazy to me that he was able to convince people that cigarettes are more fun than eating garbage Yeah, it's incredible. That is an achievement right there. I like how cigarettes were like, they're like, oh no, this is how you make friends.

Oh, okay. This is how you get men to like you ladies. Smoke a lucky strike. By December of 1928, the first year of Eddie's pro-cigarette campaign, American Tobacco's Revenue grew by $32 million, which $32 million in 1928 money

is equivalent to roughly every dollar in 2019 money. Most of that additional sales came, of course, from the increase in sales for lucky strikes. So this is almost all attributable to Bernays' ad campaign. And of course Edward Bernays had no issue

in capitalizing off of the women's liberation movement to sell cigarettes. Since cigarette smoking came into vogue right around the same time women got the right to vote, Bernays tied the two together, running ads suggesting that emancipated women ought to smoke cigarettes. He took advantage of his famous uncle

psychoanalyst, Dr. A. A. Brill, who had studied under Sigmund Freud and paying him to consult on his ad campaign. Brill wrote, quote, it's perfectly normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes. The emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires. More women now do the same work as men do.

Many women bear no children. Those who do bear children have fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom. Oh, this, I, it makes total sense that this works. It makes total sense that this works.

It's wildly successful. Women can do anything that men do. Include accidentally killing themselves. Include poisoning themselves with tobacco. Yeah, I get it. Well, you know, you got me. That's why all of our great aunts are dead.

Wow. That line from Dr. Brill, torches of freedom, inspired Edward Bernays to create what some people call the first modern PR campaign in history. That might be overselling a little bit, but it was very influential.

Bernays decided that American Tobacco should pick out a handful of stylish young ladies with social cachet. You might call them influencers. Yeah, yeah, he's that fucking guy. So he hires these ladies to show up at the 1929 Easter Sunday parade in New York and walk around

smoking their cigarettes flagrantly in public as a protest against women's poverty. He's like Bella Stone and get over here. We're smoking cigarettes now. We're smoking cigarettes out on the street. So his office put out a press release which they disguised as a message

from one of the lady activists organizing the event, but was of course actually written by Edward Bernays and his colleagues. In the interest In the interest of equality of the sexes and to fight another sex taboo, I and other young women will light another

freedom by smoking cigarettes while strolling on Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday. We are doing this to combat the silly prejudice that the cigarette is suitable for the home, the restaurant, the taxi cab, the theater lobby, but never, no, never for the sidewalk. Women's smokers in their escorts will stroll from 48th street

to 54th street on Fifth Avenue between 1130 and 1 o'clock. So they did. In capitalism, a motherfucker. It really is. This is like jeweling for like pro-choice. Justice. No, this is okay. I'm with you. I understand

why this worked. Now, the event received massive newspaper coverage and was one of the biggest stories in the country for days, even though only 10 women actually showed up to march. Here's an example of how a local New York paper covered the event. Quote, I'm going to try to do my best

New York old-timey journalist accent here, so. Go for it. Just as Miss Frederica Frayling who housing conspicuous in a tailored fit of dark gray pushed her way through the jam in front of St. Patrick's. Miss Bertha Hunt and six colleagues struck another blow on behalf of the Liberty of Women. Down Fifth

Avenue they strolled, puffing at cigarettes. Miss Hunt issued the following communique from the smoke-clouded battlefield. I hope that we have started something in that these torches of freedom with no particular brand favored will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.

Wow. Was that good? Yes, that was beautiful. I'm also imagining all the women that are advertising this being forced to act like sexy babies in the way that women in advertising were at this time and still are but in a different way where they're just like, who me? Smoke a cigarette?

Like they're like the sexy the freaky sexy baby trope that I love and wish I could do myself. I think this was more like the boundary breaking provocative flapper girl sort of thing. Yeah, they all act like little babies. Well, I don't know.

I don't know. But you can have sex with me. That's the twist. I get the I get the idea that they were more acting like the stereotype of the feminist college student in that earlier episode of The Simpsons where Homer grabs the candy off that lady.

I think they're acting more like that. Okay. But that's just the impression I get from the quotes in the newspapers and stuff. I don't know what voice they said them in. They were all dressed to the night. So they're the flapper. I mean, yeah, the flapper

in the cigarette are, makes sense. Yeah, very entwined. So Eddie's secretary Bertha was one of the marchers in the Tortures of Freedom rally. She gave quotes to numerous newspapers and told the New York Evening World that she first got the idea for this campaign when a man with her in the street asked her to extinguish

her cigarette as it embarrassed him. I talked it over with my friends and we decided it was high time something was done about the situation. Bertha denied being associated with any ad firm or agency in interviews, which was, of course, patently false because she worked directly for Edward Bernays. Right.

The Tortures of Freedom campaign was an influential moment in PR history. Bernays would in true fashion go on to massively oversell the impact it had on national smoking habits. Later, academic work suggests that it alone was not responsible for making women feel okay with smoking cigarettes.

But it's pretty much beyond debate to say that his overall impact on the tobacco industry was enormous and groundbreaking. Before Edward Bernays, women who smoked were seen as whores, trollops, and criminals. After Edward, fucking everybody smoked. Observing the change he had wrought later in life, Edward wrote,

age-old customs I learned could be broken down by a dramatic appeal disseminated by a network of the media. Which is true. Yeah. It's hard to quantify the exact cost in public health of Bernays' tobacco marketing innovation. I found a 1999 article in the British Medical Journal that credited

Bernays with a formative role in marketing tobacco to women. And noted, quote, the World Health Organization estimates that the number of women smoking will almost triple over the next generation to more than 500 million World Health Organization in 1999. Of these, more than 200 million will die prematurely from

smoking-related diseases. So, sizable body count that he's a part of here. So how are we feeling about the feminist icon label at this point? Definitely a feminist icon, but I think we can agree that icon is not an inherently positive term.

Definitely had an impact on the lives of women. That's my spin. Very impactful in women's history. I gotta say, to be fair, contributing to 200 million smoking deaths via marketing would not necessarily make Bernays a bastard. Because

you have to consider someone's actions based on what they and the medical community knew about cigarettes at the time. Like, if I sell my listeners belts, and then 20 years later, scientists realize that belts cause aggressive waist cancer, I can't be blamed for that. But, if

Sophie had handed me, right before reading that ad, pieces of a study that suggested that belts might cause aggressive waist cancer, and then I covered that study up, then I would be a bastard. So, this leads me to the question, what precisely did Eddie

Bernays know about the health consequences of smoking in the 20s and 30s? Well, for one thing, it's worth noting that unlike Don Draper, Edward Bernays did not smoke tobacco himself. He hated the taste, and ironically, preferred chocolates.

Now, first off, this guy's yet not comfortable smoking himself. For another thing, Edward Bernays had to bribe medical experts to brag about the supposed health benefits of smoking. It was obvious, even to people in the 20s, that cigarettes were bad for your throat. People got smokers coughs then

as they do now. To combat this obvious fact of reality, Bernays created the Tobacco Society for Voice Culture, whose goal was to improve the chords of the throat through cigarette smoking that the public will be able to express itself in songs of praise, or more easily to swallow anything. Society's

ultimate goal was to provide what they called a smoking teacher for every singer. Now, you could argue that Bernays didn't have much data on the health effect of cigarettes, but again, it was obvious to people that, you know, cigarettes had harmful effects on your throat, and Bernays spent a lot of his career

finding ways to get people to deny this evidence of their senses. One way he did this was by finding ways he could market specific products in a way that seemed to encourage public health. When he was hired by Cremo Cigars to improve their image, he suggested they launch an anti-spitting campaign, and basically focus on improving

hygiene through stopping people from spitting to kind of cover up the fact that cigarettes are obviously bad for your health. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the early 1930s, a scientific study revealed that a rabbit exposed to tobacco for three years had developed a carcinoma. The study stated for the first time

that tobacco had cancer-producing properties. Now, this is in the 1930s, about 60 years before this information is common knowledge. And then how long has he been pushing cigarettes, or is this pre-him pushing cigarettes? Oh, this is while he's pushing cigarettes. It's in the middle of it.

He starts pushing cigarettes in the late 20s, but this is like he becomes aware of this data in the middle of his time in the tobacco industry. And in May of 1933, he attached an abstract of the study to a letter he sent to one of American Tobacco's executives. He wrote, as you will see, certain of the material

in these articles is unfavorable to tobacco. However, I do not feel that there is anything immediate to be done. I do feel that serious attention should be given to the problem of having ready a strong offensive in case the press should give prominence to the recurring articles, which I note, from time to time on the relationship of smoking and carcinoma.

I believe that the American Tobacco Company and the Tobacco Interest generally should be fully prepared with authentic information, if as when the need for such information occurs. So, Edward Bernays knows that cigarettes are associated with cancer and his first step when he becomes aware

of that is to send warning to the company hiring him that they should have a counter offensive ready in case newspapers pick up the story. Okay, so he's fully a bastard. Which to me, he's he's fully a bastard. And further evidence of that is that he was deeply concerned about

the health impact smoking would have on his wife Doris. She was a pack a day smoker and Eddie needled her about her habit until she quit. Their oldest daughter Doris later recalled to author Larry Tai, he used to hide my mother's cigarettes and make us hide the cigarettes. He didn't think they were good for mother.

His daughter Ann added, he'd pull them all out and just snap them like bones. Just snap them in half and throw them in the toilet. He hated her smoking. So Edward Bernays while he is getting America hooked on cigarettes is committed to stopping his wife from smoking because he

knows they're going to kill her and he loves his wife. Okay, so yeah, this I mean this is like basic Game of Thrones logic of just like if the person is not willing to drink their own wine do not purchase that wine. You goof is it's poison.

All right, well, he's bad. Just started watching Game of Thrones, didn't you Jamie? I started watching the throne game. You did. You did watch the throne games. And now I'm smart. Yep, yep, yep, yep. It's a good show. It's fine. Whatever.

I like the guy who says the things. Anyway, that's part one of our story. Oh yeah, the guy with the hair is fucking hot as hell. I mean Jamie Lannister. Oh boy. Let's just say I would light

that torch of freedom. Wow. That doesn't really actually tie in to the context of how that was used, but I said it. No, you had set him on fire. Yeah, it set him on fire. That's what I do. That's how I flirt with fire.

Yeah. So that's part one. I think we should all be clear on Eddie Bernays as a bastard now. He got America hooked on cigarettes after he knew that they were killing people. So, there we go. How do you feel after this episode about our

unheralded founding father, Edward Bernays? He seems more complicated than your average bastard. He is, he is. I hate when the bastards do something good every once in a while. It makes my life harder. Yeah. He's really complicated.

He's not your Hitler or your Saddam. Yeah. Because he does do some good stuff. He has, he clearly has some good impulses behind him, too. Yeah. But also he also gets people hooked on cigarettes when you know it's going to give him cancer.

Classically cartoon villain. Yeah. This is, he's a challenging one. I'm stressed out by this. Well, you're going to be even more stressed out in part two, because in part two we're going to talk about how Edward Bernays popularized bacon, inspired the Nazis and helped launch a brutal

40-year civil war in Guatemala. But it, okay, great. Quite a career this fellow had. Why did he live so long? Why, he lived for fucking ever. He lived so long. Yeah, he really would not

die. It's like, your wife dies in 1980. Take the hint, Eddie. Yeah. Like, but no. Hints are not something Edward Bernays takes. I wish he had smoked. Yeah. So do I. Well, Jamie,

do you have any pluggables to plug? Yeah, let me pluggy. Let's see. You can listen to the Bechtel cast, my podcast with Caitlin Durante every Thursday. You can follow me on Twitter at JamieLoftisHelp, or

if you live in the UK, I'll be at Edinburgh French Festival all August. And you can find me on Twitter at IWriteOK. You can find this podcast on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com where we will have all of these sources for this episode, including the wonderful

book, The Father of Spin, which is a really good and balanced look at Bernays, although he comes to a bit more positive of a conclusion on the guy than we are in this episode. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at AtBastardsPod. You can buy T-shirts

at T-Public, Behind the Bastards. You can also buy our branded Raytheon gear, including guidance systems for your own missiles if you want to build the missile yourself, but have Raytheon equipment, launch it into, say, an apartment building. I do.

We all do. We all do. That's why Raytheon is such a good sponsor of this podcast. Yeah. So everybody have a good day, go out into the world, and remember the Raytheon company motto of fuck it, we make money either way. Yeah.

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 was like a lot of guns.

But are federal agents catching bad guys 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. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcast, 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

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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.