Behind the Bastards - We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History
Episode Date: December 5, 2024Robert sits down and explains former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's alt-history novel to Molly Conger. If you've ever wondered what would happen if the Nazis invaded Tennessee well, here it is.S...ee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Call zone media.
It's the podcast that it is on election day,
but you won't hear this on election day.
You know how the election has gone.
You listening have information.
You'll hear this in December.
Yeah, yeah, probably in December.
Which hopefully means the election is over by then.
But who knows?
God willing.
Yeah, God willing, the election is almost certainly over, which means, you know, find
a way to communicate to the past and let us know so that we can gamble on it.
That's that's what I'd like you to do.
Anyway, speaking of gambling,
you know who knows all of the words
to the classic song, The Gambler,
our guest today, Molly Conger.
Molly, do you know when to hold them?
Oh, I know when to fold them.
That's as much of that song as I know.
When to run.
Well done, well done.
Oh my God.
I think I only know that from Infowars.
I do love watching Alex Jones sing that
and the highwayman poncho and lefty.
You know he's just groovin'.
Things are going well for Alex when he's doing that.
That's the most jealous I ever am of him
because we're not allowed to use,
we have no licensing agreement
with any company that owns songs.
Does he?
Yeah, he must.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be allowed to air them like that.
I think there, because there are like, there are like, like,
ways that you as a broadcaster can just like make a deal for access to, you know, they have
X number of songs and we can use them for whatever.
I think that exists.
I think that's got to be what he does.
You were somewhat correct, but I, that doesn. I think that's gotta be what he does. You were somewhat correct,
but that doesn't mean that Alex Jones has a deal with him.
He could totally be grifting,
because that's what you do.
I think he'd have been sued before then about this.
Maybe.
You're so chipper today, Robert.
Yep, I'm chipper.
I'm doing good.
How many hours of sleep did you get, bud?
I had like six last night.
I tried to get to bed early,
but I really couldn't get to sleep before
like 3.30 in the morning.
I don't know.
Well, it's behind the bastards
and we're all trying not to obsess over the election.
And I thought, you know,
we all might be hoping that history goes a different way,
depending on what happens today.
So why not read a work of alternate history?
You know, we love doing book episodes over here
because it's, lets me rest a little bit.
The trouble is finding a book.
You can't just use any book
and it's sometimes hard to figure it out.
And thank God, I got very lucky.
Margaret Killjoy was over at my house recently,
not bragging, although I am kind of bragging.
You know some celebrities.
I know some celebrities.
I know a famous Killjoy, who's also a famous Margaret.
And she brought me a book that a fan had given her
at an event because our fans are unhinged and have just decided
sometimes we should hand one member of the team
an absolutely terrible piece of literature
to give to another member of the team.
And the book that I have received is 1945 by Newt Gingrich.
Molly?
Wow, what if things had been different? What if things had been different?
What if things had been different?
Do you know much about old Newt in this book?
So I did not realize, and this is on me entirely.
I know a little bit about old moon base Newt,
but I did not realize he had written like 30 works of fiction.
He has written a lot of fiction.
Where does he find the time?
I mean, he doesn't spend a lot of his political career
does not take up a lot of time.
Because usually when you see like,
oh, this politician has written a book,
a memoir or whatever.
And it's like, okay, well, like a campaign staffer wrote
that that's for PR.
No, this is his passion.
Yeah.
He's writing these.
Yeah, this is what he really wanted to do.
And my God, I wish we had some sort of program in place
where when we find some guy who has like an artistic dream,
but also weird right-wing politics,
we just kind of like swallow our pride and fund,
like have a government agency buy up copies of their books
so they feel like a success.
Anything to keep them from running for office.
Right? Let Hitler paint.
Yeah, what if, let Hitler paint,
let Ben Shapiro make his dog shit TV show
about fucking law students.
And just like-
So you're presenting sort of like a Truman show
type experience where we encapsulate them safely.
We have to Truman show these people, right?
Run a fake, you know that White House correspondence dinner
that supposedly got Trump committed him to run for office.
Hold a fake one of those where everybody just talks
about how nice he is and how much they admire him.
You know?
Put him in a bubble. Yeah, we really have to put these people in bubbles. where everybody just talks about how nice he is and how much they admire him, you know? Like we-
Put him in a bubble.
Yeah, we really have to put these people in bubbles.
It's the kindest thing for all of us.
Oh man.
So yeah, we're going to be reading 1945.
As you might guess,
it is a World War II alternate history.
No!
Uh, yeah.
Of course, Sophie, what else could it be?
What else could it be? And this is a particularly- You did tell me that, but, what else could it be? What else could it be?
And this is a particularly-
You did tell me that, but I did not process it.
I was like, that's not what it is.
Oh yeah, of course, of course.
And it's a wild one, I'm gonna tell you that right now.
So our author for today,
I'm gonna go through a little bit of a scripted portion here,
is Newton Leroy Gingrich.
Leroy? Leroy, yes. Leroy Gingrich.
Leroy Gingrich.
Yeah, you can't not do the Leroy Jenkins thing,
which is just gonna be incomprehensible
for anyone in our audience
that's younger than their mid-30s.
You don't know who Leroy Jenkins was.
You don't remember the old times.
Pieces of shit.
Sorry.
Anyway, there's a post in the subreddit now
saying that I'm an old man
and all my references are old man references.
And the thing that makes me angriest is they're like,
he never references the Simpsons
from any episode later than the year 2000.
And I'm sorry, I never reference a Simpsons episode
from later than 1998,
because that's when they stopped being good.
You're not an old man.
Thank you, Sophie.
You're used.
But you called me an old man on the show.
Yeah, that's because I'm allowed to.
It's okay when I do it.
They're not allowed to do that.
You are used to them.
To me, you are ancient.
They haven't even seen Alien 4, these scrubs, these babies.
None of them know what SeaQuest DSV was.
Molly, did you watch SeaQuest?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Oh my God, oh my God.
Go get a learner's permit.
Anyway.
I think we're the same age.
We might be.
Mutantly like Ingrid.
But mentally.
Hehehehehe.
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Oh, I know that's right.
Newton Leroy Gingrich was born two years
before the title of his novel on June 17th, 1943.
Newton's father was a career soldier,
but Newton takes a different path.
He's actually an art student.
He gets like an MA in the mid-60s,
and like any guy who could during the Vietnam War,
he gets a deferment from being drafted
by arguing that he was a student and a young father.
Remember that because there's gonna be a funny code
to that a little bit later in this story.
Well, we all know Newt's a family man.
We all know Newt's a family man. We all know Newt's a family man.
We all know Newt's a big not fighting in wars,
but not a big not having wars guy.
Newton is elected to Congress in 1979
in an address to college Republicans before his election.
He said, I think one of the great problems we have
in the Republican party is that we don't encourage you
to be nasty. We encourage you to be nasty.
We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal,
and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words.
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they've done a terrible job,
a pathetic job.
In my lifetime, in my lifetime, I was born in 1943,
we have not had a competent national Republican leader,
not ever.
And it's very clear from that context
that a competent leader is a mean one, right?
Like that's what he's missing.
Like Richard Nixon's just too nice.
Well politics really needs us more vitriol.
Yeah, it needs more real assholes.
I think that's interesting because it makes a case
that I think is an important thing to understand
if you're trying to like puzzle out why we are
where we are now in American politics.
And the basics of that case is well, because Republicans lost their minds when Nixon had to
step down and everything they've done since then has been dedicated to stopping making sure that
no other Republican would ever have to leave office no matter what crimes they committed, right?
And that's clearly- Well, there's no modern precedent.
Yeah, no modern precedent for that.
So in 1985, as a congressman,
Newton told an interviewer,
I think from the Washington Post,
who asked about his deferment during Vietnam,
quote, given everything I believe,
a large part of me thinks I should have gone over.
Oh, if only, Newt.
I do wish you had gone to fight in Vietnam.
Now that same year, when President Reagan held a summit
with Soviet premier Gorbachev,
Newton called it quote,
the most dangerous summit for the West
since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich.
And I love the idea like Gorbachev is a Hitler figure.
This guy who wouldn't even shoot back
during the protests that overthrew his government
is like a Hitler, you know?
Future Pizza Hut spokesman Gorbachev
as a Hitler kind of figure.
All right, Hitler, you would have loved Pizza Hut.
That does tell you where our boy Newt is
on like the political alignment chart, right?
He sees Ronald Reagan as a fucking Neville Chamberlain type.
Now that same year, Gingrich made the news
for comparing a house race that was in question
in Indiana to the Holocaust.
Here's a quote about it.
In what way?
I'm gonna read you the quote, Molly.
Here's a quote about it as relayed by an article the quote, Molly. Here's a quote about it as relayed
by an article in Mother Jones.
And it starts with newt here.
We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the Holocaust,
about the incredible period in which Nazi Germany
killed millions of people and in particular,
came close to wiping out European Jewry.
If someone said to me two days ago,
talking frankly about the McIntyre affair
in which Democrats refused to seat the winner
of a house race until they'd conducted a recount
and the efforts by the democratic leadership
to not allow the people of Indiana
to have their representative, but instead to impose
upon them someone else.
Something in which he quotes German poet, Martin Niemöller.
I have never quite until tonight been able
to link it together.
Niemöller, the great German theologian said at one point,
when the German when the Nazis came for the Jews, I did nothing.
And when the Nazis came for me, there was no one left.
Right. I think, sorry, I think it's Niemöller.
But this like so basically the Democrats are like, well, until we finish a recount,
we're not going to sit this guy because there's questions about the election.
And fucking nude is like, this is the same as the Holocaust
So at what at what point did millions of people die? Did they kill all the voters?
Did they murder everybody it just kind of seems like they were doing a thing that legally is a part of the election
Like having a recount waiting to see the elected leader until you do the recount
Is that the same as killing millions of people
in factories of death?
There needs to be a swear jar
for people who abuse the Neemuller poem.
Yeah, yeah.
You need to put a dollar in the jar
because that was not appropriate.
I think anytime you reference it,
you have to lose like, it should be like a Yakuza thing
where you have to give up one of the joints of a finger.
Right?
And maybe that'll cause people to be like a lot more careful
about when they deploy that bad boy.
I heard it in closing arguments at a trial last month,
a trial for a man who is a white nationalist.
His lawyer's argument was, you know,
with this is free speech or trying him for his free speech.
And it is closing arguments, you know,
he refers to the Niemöller poem,
except, you know, the poem starts,
first they came for the communists and I said nothing because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I said nothing because I was not a Jew.
But he says he's going to quote the poem,
but he says, first they came for one group.
And then they came for another group.
And it's like, what were the groups?
What were the groups, Terry?
Anyone who goes for any group is a Nazi.
What were the groups, Terry?
Yeah.
First they came for the Nazis, and I did not speak out because I was is a Nazi. What were the groups, Jerry? Yeah. First they came for the Nazis
and I did not speak out because I was not a Nazi.
Man, it's very funny.
Okay, so let's get back into it.
Newt served as the Republican speaker of the house
from 1995 to 99.
Gingrich was the architect of the Republican victory in
the 1994 congressional election, which legitimately set the stage for nearly everything the right has
been able to accomplish since. Without the contract with America and his retaking of the house,
it's possible we see, it's possible that we see no George W. Bush presidency, no right-wing Supreme
Court today, and at least a lot less of a
right wing drift on behalf of the Democrats who stumbled to fight him, right?
This is a major move in US politics.
I don't think a lot of folks whose awareness of politics has sort of started since the
Trump years know much about this, but you had slick Willy stop George H.W. Bush from
getting a second term.
It drove these people crazy.
You have briefly the Democrats in control of government.
And then in 94, Newt leads,
I think they pick up 54 house seats.
It's this massive sweeping victory
that comes with this thing called the Contract with America,
which is basically Newt introducing
what becomes kind of the NeoCon platform, right?
And this is like a really, I mean,
it's one of the most important moments
in modern electoral history, right?
Newt is one of the first conservatives
to see a real promise in creating
a right-wing system of education
to push conservative values.
In 1993, he crafted a college course taught
at Reinhart College called Renewing American Civilization.
We're looking at this as like sort of a proto,
what's that fucking guy who does
the little kids TV bullshit?
Oh, like the Prager University?
Prager University, right?
This is a precursor to Prager University, right?
I mean, he was on the Hillsdale track, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and it's eventually televised
in a cable channel called Mind Extension University.
I don't like that.
Yeah, you gotta extend your mind.
Now, obviously, he was a ferocious opponent of gay rights
and the degradation of American values in the modern era.
He talked a lot about how people today,
especially because of Democrats gaining
such cultural dominance are just awful compared to
the glorious greatest generation
who really understood morality.
He also cheated on his second wife with a staffer
who became his third wife while he was advocating
for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over infidelity.
Now, this should not have been surprising
to anyone who knew that in 1989,
in an interview with the Washington Post,
he explained that he fought with his second wife,
not because it mattered to him
what they were fighting about,
but because he had a habit of dominance
that had been stoked by his time in politics.
He estimated to the post that his marriage
had a 53 to 47% chance of making it.
Oh man.
Family values.
53, 47, I mean that's, I wouldn't bet on those odds.
Fascinating odds to give your own marriage.
Now, Newt has a long and fascinating history
and I do recommend reading that.
There's a 2012 Mother Jones article
with some of his best quotes
that we'll link in the show notes.
If you want a better understanding of the man though,
that's a good way of getting it.
But for our purposes today,
we're going to be focusing on the novel, 1945, which-authored it is set in an alternate world where the US defeated Japan
But Hitler never declared war on the US and so we never got involved in a war with Germany
The Nazis won their war with the Soviets. They took most of their European holdings and forced them to accept a peace
They then boxed the Brits into a corner.
A few years later, they carried out a surprise attack
on the United States in order to kill our nuclear scientists
and stop the completion of what in our universe
we know as the Manhattan Project.
Now, because of where this takes place,
I'll spoil it for you, Molly.
This book centers around the Waffen SS
invading East Tennessee.
That's what this book is about.
How'd they get all the way to Tennessee?
They've got their wonder weapons.
They've got these, Newt is again,
he's like a history channel, history buff, right?
So a huge part of this book is like the Nazis
building all of these wonder weapons
that were mostly theoretical during the actual war,
including this like massive,
you know, bombing type plane that they had,
they had kind of been talking about making
that probably never would have worked out.
Like it's all sorts of like nonsense sci-fi weapons, right?
And what did they want with Tennessee specifically?
It's where the nuclear program was headed.
That's not true.
Well, actually I think it was initially
before they moved to Los Alamos.
I think they had, it was somewhere in like the Southeast
before they moved to Los Alamos
that they had like the early stages of the nuclear program.
And I think he's just kind of positing
a much more primitive nuclear program.
But I'm gonna pull up the book, Molly,
because at this point you should see this bad boy.
Look at this, Look at this.
Look at that cover art.
There we go.
There we go. Beautiful cover art.
Look at the size of his name there.
It looks like the book is called Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich, 1945.
Yeah, like it's a book about a two-year-old Newt Gingrich.
And it kind of has like a sci-fi feel to it.
If you're a listener, you know,
if you're not watching this on YouTube,
I don't ever go to youtube.com.
I'm not watching this on YouTube.
No, you should.
The cover of the book is on the book's Wikipedia page
and it has kind of a sci-fi vibe to it.
Yeah.
Now I want you to look at the back here.
First off, Newt's smaller than I expected
when you see him in a photo like this.
This is a picture of him with his co-author,
William R. Forstian, and with Jim Bane,
who is the owner of Bane Publishing.
And we're gonna be talking a lot about Bane Publishing.
I also-
Is that related to Bane Capital
or Bane the Batman villain?
No, not at all.
Spelled differently. Not to either.
Okay.
Has not broken Batman's back.
I do really like the Hitler on the back here.
You can see him here.
He just looks so happy.
Okay, can you hold it up to me?
Yeah, okay, wrong camera.
Wait, wait, one second. Wrong camera.
Other camera.
Ah, it's hard to figure out here.
Toward, yeah, that way.
Yeah, there we go.
Wow!
That's a good Hitler.
Look at him, look at him.
Good choice.
Luke Ingridge is six feet tall.
How big are those other men?
Oh wow, cause yeah, I thought he was actually tall.
So these guys, so I think it's William Forshton
is just kind of a fucking mountain of a man.
Yeah, he's gotta be like six, three, six, four.
It's a big guy.
Jim Bane, not a big guy.
Also has the, and I say this with all love to pornographers.
He has the smile of a pornographer, right?
Like look at that.
That's a man who's looking at you naked.
Like there's no other way to describe
the look on Jim Bain's face.
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But it's also such a gift to be able to sit here and say as an adult woman, I had such
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Yes.
That is a gift.
I know.
She certainly was not like a, I don't know what a perfect mother is
She wasn't a traditional mother. She wasn't a traditional mother
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Oh I know that's right.
And we're back. So I wanna get into the book jacket of this MAMA jamma.
Let's see what this is about.
And you can tell right away on the inside,
this was a 1995, 24 US dollars.
That is way of pricey.
Way too much money to spend on Newt Gingrich's 1945.
Holy shit.
I feel like the 29.99 for that hardback today
would be pushing it.
Yeah, yeah, this is like maybe like a $15 book.
Man, that's a lot.
That's a lot.
So introducing Lieutenant Commander James Martell.
He's the right man in the right place at a very bad time.
The year is 1945.
In Europe, the Third Reich reigns triumphant.
The Soviet Union is a fragment of its former self
and Britain has accepted a dictated armistice.
In the Pacific, after a brief sharp war with Japan,
America is the only significant military presence.
Now the world's two superpowers,
ah-ee each other warily across an Atlantic Ocean
that daily grows smaller.
The big show is about to start.
Who will win?
The Americans with their formidable industrial base
and superior logistical techniques
or the Germans with their science fiction super weapons
that turn out not to be fictional after all
Only one thing is certain if America is beaten this alternative Reich will last a thousand years
Join speaker of the house newt gingrich and fellow historian
William all are forced in in a world that save for Adolf Hitler's inexplicable hot folly and prematurely declaring war on the United States
in 1941 would have been.
Just revisiting the timeline here.
So he's not writing this in his spare time,
like in his retirement or between-
No, this is he's speaker of the house.
This is a year after he like orchestrates
a complete upending of US electoral politics.
So shouldn't he be focusing on like the government?
No, no.
I think we can all agree this was a better use of his time
than doing his job.
I just find it very funny that he describes himself
and his co-author as fellow historians
because as a spoiler, they are not.
Neither of them are historians.
Well, Forstian is a little bit of a historian,
but he's like a historian who went immediately
into writing alternate histories.
He is a professor of history
at Montreat College in North Carolina.
But that's not a real college.
Yeah.
Look, I'll give a partial to Forstian, right?
Because again, he spends most of his career,
like his big job is writing a bunch of articles
for Boys Life Magazine, as well as young adult novels.
And does that make you a real historian?
I'm gonna put that on the cusp.
But fucking Newt Gingrich certainly is not a real historian.
Forsgen's main publisher was Bane,
who back in the early to mid 1990s
was a major purveyor of pulp sci-fi
and alternate history books.
That changed as a result of 1945,
which due to Gingrich's star power
was expected to be a major hit.
You can tell that just by the look of this cover, right?
Newt's name is massive.
They're charging 24 fucking dollars for this thing.
And yeah, it's a catastrophe, Molly.
It's one of the greatest disasters
in fucking alt history publishing.
If you read online forums
where alt history fans discuss this book,
the rumors credible ones are that Newt promised Bane
he was going to devote a lot of time using his platform.
Newt is a famous PR hound, right?
He's constantly talking to the Washington Post.
He's willing to say like shitty stuff about himself to them
as we've kind of covered earlier,
because his attitude is,
I should always be in the post, right?
So Bane is like, well, old Newt,
he knows how to get all the attention we need
to move some real copies.
Let's buy like a hundred000 copies of this fucking book.
No book sells 100,000 copies.
I know, it's so funny.
And yeah, Newt fails to do the actual PR
that he had promised to do.
And as a result, 1945 is one of the biggest flops
in publishing history.
According to the Washington Post,
for every 100 copies of this book
that were sent out by Bane,
81 were returned unsold,
leaving the publisher with almost 100,000 copies
sitting around their warehouse.
The scuttlebutt is that this was such a flop,
it nearly killed Bane entirely.
While I was doing my pre-search for this episode,
I found a thread on a forum titled
alternatehistory.com from 2007.
Users speculated about why the sequel never came to pass.
One user, BCO wrote,
1945 practically bankrupted Bane Books.
They assumed a prominent figure as Gingrich
would lead to huge sales,
printed up a lot of books,
couldn't sell many of them.
The idea of a sequel was out of the question.
Another user, Amerigo Vespucci,
replied with added context,
to make matters worse, there was a falling out
between Jim Bane and Forstian
over creative differences in the story.
In part, Forstian wrote the story as a single volume,
but in order to better capitalize on the name on the cover,
Bane split it into two volumes.
There were other differences as well,
and Bane never really discussed the matter in public.
It left a bad taste in his mouth.
Even with Bane's passing,
I doubt we'll ever see the second volume.
There'd be too many legal problems surrounding it.
Your best bet might be to wait 20 years or so
until Forstin is dead too.
He is still alive.
Enter a law school to become a crackerjack lawyer
and publicist, and then start negotiations
to have the second volume released from his estate.
I love the thought of a man who's that dedicated
to a 1945 sequel.
The New Yorker straights a 30 year plan to get that book.
Does Hitler die?
Hitler is still alive in the end of this book.
That's what I'm saying, like in the sequel.
How does it end for Hitler?
I think the way this book is supposed to explain things
with Hitler is that like he's in a horrible plane crash in 41.
And so he gets all fucked up
and his people are able to like negotiate a peace
with the USSR.
And as a result, he kind of loses his mind.
Like he's just like this damaged broken figure
of a man in the book.
But he was so mentally normal before.
Yeah, he was doing so great before.
Because this is an alt history thing
and because Newt is the kind of dude that he is,
the main Nazi in this is a guy named Otto Skorzeny,
who is a lot of people, he was a real guy.
He was one of the fathers of like modern special forces
tactics, like Skorzeny is a major figure
in the development of like that kind of shit.
I did find in a, there's a fucking Orlando Sentinel
book review that says that he died during an attack
on Crete, which is not true.
He lived until the seventies.
He moved to Spain so that Franco would protect him.
And he lived a fairly long life for a dude like him.
But yeah, I wanted to start here
with one of the most, probably the most famous passage
in this book, right?
The opening scene, which features a high powered
DC politician who happens to be, if I'm not mistaken,
the speaker of the house.
So this is Newt-
We got a self insert, yes.
This is Newt's self insert.
And remember, 1995, this is right around
when Newt Gingrich is attacking Clinton
and saying that he should be impeached.
Because- Does he describe
his self-insert character as like very handsome?
He describes his self-insert character as having an affair
while he, as the real speaker of the house,
was in this moment having an affair.
Okay, we have some honesty.
And specifically, the point of this chapter
is his self-insert character hands over the secret
to a Nazi spy who is the person he's having an affair with
that the US is working on creating an atomic weapon.
Like the inciting incident in this is
his self-insert being compromised
and giving up nuclear secrets in order to get laid.
And he is in the real world, the Speaker of the House.
The Speaker of the House and having an affair
with the staffer.
That just doesn't sound trustworthy to me.
It's amazing stuff.
September 1st, 1945, Washington DC.
Also, I don't know why they do this,
but they spell prologue wrong.
That's not one of the ways to spell that.
At the end of this, I've only ever seen it spelled
with an E at the end of it.
I don't understand why they're doing it this way.
But darling, Germany and the United States are not at war.
What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of gossip?
Surely you don't think that I, a loyal Swede,
the question trailed off in a lethal pout
as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress
stretched languidly, mock innocent appeal in her eyes.
Still, he mustn't let her see just how much she moved him.
A relationship had to have some balance.
He stretched in turn, reached out for his cigarettes,
and gold-plated Ronson on the Art Deco nightstand
with its Tiffany lamp.
Since he wasn't sure what to say, he made a production out of lighting up his cigarettes and gold-plated Ronson on the Art Deco nightstand with its Tiffany lamp.
Since he wasn't sure what to say, he made a production out of lighting up and enjoying
that first luxurious after-bout inhalation.
What an unsexy way of talking about the aftermath of sex.
Just to say, Prologue Noe is a declarative programming language designed for developing
logic-based AI applications.
I think that, okay, so this is,
oh, maybe this is what open AI used to create their AI.
Is it all based on Gingrich's 1945?
That's exactly what I'm saying, yeah.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
What a nightmare, what a hideous, hideous nightmare.
So he's having after sex smokes with this lady
who's very obviously a Nazi spy.
Yeah, she's not even being kind of sly about it.
She's like, what if we just,
I mean, if you really love me,
you'd tell me national defense information.
Yeah, yeah.
Now here is Newt not at all talking about his actual marriage
and actual infidelity.
Playfully to drive home the potential loss,
she bit his shoulder then kissed it better.
Oh hell, I don't want to. I wish
I could just divorce Miss Little Goody Two Shoes. I like this arrangement. She laughed softly.
Mistress to the Chief of Staff of the President of the United... Oh, sorry, the Chief of Staff.
So it's not exactly him, right? It's just basically him. Nice title, don't you think?
Such a book I could write. Mayhew shuddered at the thought.
Don't even joke about it.
But he could trust her to be discreet.
He was sure he could trust her.
More to cover his moment of doubt
than for any other reason,
he harked back to her initial gambit.
One thing we really don't have to worry about
is a war between Germany and the United States.
It just isn't in the cards.
There's no way it could happen within the next year or so.
And after that, we, take it from me,
but nobody is going to dream of messing
with the United States, not even Adolf Hitler.
I don't think there's going to be a war either,
but you seem so sure.
What is your big secret?
You were so excited about it when you came in here
and now you won't tell me.
Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way
to Diana the Huntress.
Tell me, she hissed.
Mayhew looked at his delicious interrogator.
For a moment, her intensity almost frightened him.
Then he was overcome by it, by her.
His had been a strict and starchy upbringing,
and his marriage had not been born of love,
but of political opportunity,
though his wife didn't know that.
So he capitulated.
Besides, he wanted to tell,
what good were secrets if you couldn't share?
Okay, I surrender.
Lucky for you, she purred then laughed.
Such games we have, she whispered in his ear.
You play wonderfully, now tell.
Having given in, characteristically he stalled.
Sure, you're not looking for a story
for your Swedish newspaper?
She just looked at him.
He could tell she was tiring of the delay.
And then he tells her that we're making a nuke.
He must have missed the annual training
that they give men in the government
that like beautiful women do not want to talk politics
with you with their tops off.
No, no.
Beautiful women just aren't doing that.
Yeah.
No, they never would.
I think that's very funny.
I think there's so much off-putting language in this book.
Like thinking of Newt Gingrich writing the word sex kitten
gives me like physical shivers up and down my spine.
And it should do the same to you.
But you know what doesn't make me shiver?
How cute my dog is in the background of this video?
Oh, Anderson is looking very good down there.
That gives me a little shiver.
That gives me a little shiver.
But like a joy shiver, right? Yeah, joy shiver, you know, me, that gives me a little shiver. That gives me a little shiver. But like a joy shiver, right?
Yeah, joy shiver, you know, sure, why not?
The products and services that support our pod.
But do they support my dog?
No, they're neutral.
They're neutral, they're cat people.
She left.
The second you said no, she left.
Yeah, wow.
Stand your ground, Anderson.
Stand your ground.
In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy Akron seemed to have it all.
A whirlwind romance, a new home and twins on the way.
What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret.
So shocking, it would tear their world apart.
One woman, two lives and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine.
They had her as one of the suspects but they could never prove it.
You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now.
Throughout this whole thing I kept telling myself Nobody's that crazy
Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything a story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets
She went bashing crazy shot and killed all her farm animals
Slaughtered him in front of the kids tried to burn her house down
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But it's also such a gift to be able to sit here and say as an adult woman, I had such
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Ooh, I know that's right.
And we're back.
You can really tell this is election day.
Yeah, I, yeah, we're really,
we're half-assing our 1945 episode.
So- I can't wait to find out what happens
when she doesn't do anything with that secret.
Yeah, well, she does and Hitler invades East Tennessee.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Which is funny because there is a guy who does love Hitler
who has a compound in East Tennessee.
There's a lot, Molly, there's more than one guy
who loves Hitler and has a compound in East Tennessee.
God.
So there's a Gizmodo article I found called
Newt Gingrich Should Go Back to Writing Science Fiction.
Yes, he should.
That was kind of urging him to finish this book.
It has some interesting stuff to say
about this piece of fiction.
In any case, whether 1945 is as historically dodgy
as many have claimed,
it contains several vital elements of total awesomeness.
For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany
spends its time developing what the back cover describes
as science fiction super weapons.
You think I'm kidding?
How about rockets that are remotely guided
via television cameras or super jets with drop tanks
to provide ground support plus super rockets
and hydrogen powered submarines.
Plus every villain-
You can't just put super in front of a real thing.
You gotta stick super in front of it.
Otherwise people won't know that it's better
than the normal kind of thing.
Every villain in this book is hideous and crazy.
At some point, Scorzeny gets injured and loses an eye so he can get an eye patch or maybe some kind of cyborg eye.
In this passage, our hero, the square jawed Jim Martell
tries to shoot down Scorzeny's plane and fails.
Now, ammunition gone.
He can only watch as the second and the third plane lifted off.
Unlike the second plane, the third stayed low
as the pilot pushed it in just enough left rudder
to cause the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass strips
that it passed by not 20 feet away from where Jim stood.
Otto Squarzeny looked down, grinning demonically,
and James Martell finally understood the meaning of hatred.
There's apparently like three or four times
where a character learns the meaning of hatred,
and that's because Newt Gingrich as an educator
likes it when people expand their minds.
For a little bit more coverage
of some of the awkward lines in this book,
I'm gonna turn to an Orlando Sentinel piece titled,
As a writer, Gingrich makes a good politician.
Good title for a book review.
1945 is cluttered with awkward lines like,
the exhaust vapors that swirled in through the car's
open windows stank like hell itself.
Then there's this, the scene brought to Martell's mind,
the absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby.
Much of the pre-pop-
Why would-
What's bringing that to mind?
Why would that bring that to mind?
Have you ever seen that?
Is that a thing you can picture because you've witnessed it?
You know what this reminds me of.
Yeah, you know what this reminds me of?
A thing no one's ever seen.
Yeah, it's very funny.
Much of the pre-publication hoopla surrounding 1945
involved its supposedly steamy sex scenes,
some of which were exerted last year
in the New York Times Magazine
when the book was still in draft form.
Gingrich vowed to tone down the sex.
He succeeded, for example, in bed with his,
yeah, I mean, we just read that passage,
but I love that there were leaks of this
that were too horny and he had to change the final draft.
There's also a lot of-
Who was leaking these?
It's gotta be Newt, right?
Who else would leak these, right?
He's just testing the water.
How horny can we get?
A good amount of George H.W. Bush slander in this.
Gingrich talks about, like has a character who knew him
when he was a pilot,
because George H.W. Bush fought in World War II,
who says, if you needed someone to lead a group straight
into enemy flack, he was your man,
which is funny because he was in fact shot down
during the war.
And he had to also edit those portions
to be nicer to George H.W. Bush, which is cowardly new.
Like you've blown up any sort of legitimacy your book had
when you do stuff like that.
Anyway, I wanna move to a passage midway through the book
that's set in Winston Churchill's office
because one of the things that happens,
while the Germans invade East Tennessee,
Rommel conducts a landing in Scotland.
Of course.
They're moving down through Scotland.
The desert fox is going to the moors.
No one's better to conduct a war on the Scottish Moors
than the Desert Fox.
Just port the Africa Corps right on over.
They'll appreciate the breeze.
So I wanna talk about this just because there's a little bit
here that's kind of relevant to modern politics.
Here's Winston Churchill talking.
One of his aides says-
Molly and I both made the same face,
but we're like, oh no.
He's talking to one of his aides, a guy named Andrew.
For my part, I've ordered a secret alert
for the Royal Air Force starting at midnight.
Also, the army will move on spring maneuver schedule up
so as to increase troop strengths throughout England.
I'm also going to make a speech before the House next week
accusing Hitler of preparing to launch an attack against us.
Winston, I wish you wouldn't do that.
Why?
Because the America First crowd will go to town on you.
That's why.
They'd claim it was part of an ongoing plot
to drag us into yet another European conflict.
They'll say it was a repeat of what you and Roosevelt
tried to do in 40 and 41.
They'll say you're deliberately trying to provoke Hitler,
that you came back to office intending to do just that, to finally drag us into a
showdown with Germany. If you make that speech, I won't be able to back you up."
A cold, static, latent silence was the only response.
Even Roosevelt didn't start to move openly until after the 40 elections, you know, Andrew
continued after a moment's pause. You know that I agreed with him 100%. I could see the threat as far back as the denouement of Versailles and the move into
the Rhineland.
I knew then, and I know now, that the maniac son of a bitch would never stop on his own,
and that nothing short of a full-scale war with the United States could stop him.
We should have been in it back in 41.
If it hadn't been for that damned accident, he'd have declared war on us after Pearl Harbor.
He all but told me that himself.
In 41, we'd have won easily now
He's ten times more dangerous. I just love that the America first guys are the bad guy at
1995 and fucking Gingrich is absolutely going to wind up on that side here. Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple other fun
Moments in another chapter not long after this
We go to Rommel talking with some of his people.
And there's a line here that's very funny.
Americans would be startled to discover the degree of camaraderie that existed,
not just between different ranks within the German officer corps, but between
officers and rankers, that the practice had its roots in the mutinous conditions
prevalent in the German military at the end of the great war, perhaps Germans
could afford the informality because German society was so thoroughly status conscious.
Whereas Americans, so unready to grant superiority
to anybody, needed the outward manifestations of rank
because otherwise they would lose track
of who issued orders and who took them.
It's an interesting description of American culture.
Oh, Newt.
A strange read of Germans.
I don't know that there was informality in the ranks.
Yeah, informality in the German military.
I think he's trying to talk about like
Aufstregs-Taktik, which was this kind of anti,
it was this kind of flattening of military hierarchies
in certain specific ways that came about
as a result of like combat in World War I, where you were saying basically
like unit leading officers should have a lot of freedom
to like conduct advances and kind of carry out attacks
in a way that sort of they see fit
rather than having to follow orders
to the letter from above, right?
It was-
I just don't know that that translated
into sort of the social culture of the German people.
I don't know that I would say the German military
was particularly informal between officers and civilians,
especially since like the Prussian younger officer class
was still a major part of the German military
in this period.
So what happens when they get to Tennessee?
Is it like a ground invasion?
I think they, I mean, they come in from the air, right?
Of course, yeah.
And then, I mean, I can tell you what happens,
which is that Sergeant Alvin York
and a bunch of elderly veterans form a militia
and stop the Nazis.
Largely that's who saves the day.
Cause Newt's got to have his like pro second amendment stuff.
So he like puts it in the mouth of like
an elderly Sergeant York fighting off the boffin.
So just the old men of Appalachia just like SS. So just like the old men of Appalachia
just like band together.
Yeah, the old men of Appalachia.
Look. Okay, I can buy that.
I can buy that.
I mean, the Waffen SS. I feel that.
The Waffen SS proved in the actual World War II
that they were not very good at fighting an insurgency.
And I think that Appalachia is worse terrain
to fight an insurgency than anywhere in Western Russia.
So I'm gonna say, yeah, probably.
Probably that would have gone bad for the Nazis.
See, this could conceivably have been
an interesting alternate history.
The Waffen SS trying to like fight their way
town to town through Appalachia
and just getting their shit wrecked.
Well, the problem with this book,
cause that isn't it.
That's a book I would read, especially if someone-
I would like that.
Someone less problematic,
like Harry Turtledove had written the fucker.
But that's not like,
Newt and Forsgen kind of fall for a standard pitfall
in writing fiction here,
writing particularly like speculative past fiction,
is you have this point that's the actual thing
that you wanna get, that's actually interesting,
which is like an insurgent war in Appalachia
between the Nazis and like elderly American
World War I veterans.
That's a fun premise, but you don't get to it
until the very end of the book, right?
By the end of the book, Hitler's, you know,
geared up for a full-scale invasion
and we're actually getting ready to have like,
you know, he set up for a full-scale invasion and we're actually getting ready to have like,
he set up like a naval conflict between like
US carrier groups and Nazi, like the German Navy.
Like there's a lot of cool stuff that's happening
by the end potentially,
but it's not really a part of the story
because he feels the need to like go back much further.
Like you should always start a book
at the thing that's most interesting to you, right?
You don't actually want to waste a lot of time
building up to that, even if you're like,
well, people are gonna wanna know how we got here.
No, they're not, they don't give a shit.
Start at whatever's most interesting.
It's a rookie mistake.
Maybe if Newt hadn't been so busy
being the speaker of the house,
he'd have been able to get it right.
So what you're saying is the sequel is probably a banger
and we need to get it.
I think the sequel is a banger.
It was all apparently intended to be one book
that's too long.
But yeah, you know, I don't know.
We probably don't need to go through this whole thing,
especially because it's the election.
I do like that he named his protagonist Jim Martell, right?
That's Barry Charles Martell.
Yeah, it's a fine name.
Yeah, it's a fine name.
Is it, Sherlock means dad?
Yeah, yeah.
Also played by Christopher, what's his name?
From the Lord of the Rings.
I don't know.
I think I'm good on this book.
We hit 45 minutes, right?
That's all we owe you on our off week.
This is an off week.
We're taking a breather.
We're trying not to focus too much on the news
because nothing interesting is going to happen yet.
You in the future know.
So just scream at past Robert and Molly about what happened.
And if I don't get any message from the future,
I will assume that we all die this week.
So please do send a message.
This is it for the whole world.
Thank God.
Thank goodness.
Anyway, Molly, how do you feel about the alternate past?
What's your favorite World War II counterfactual?
Do you spend much time thinking about,
like for example, what if the Germans hadn't invaded Russia
but had focused all of their military might
on North Africa, you know?
As a woman, Robert, I'm going to say no.
I have never thought about that in my life.
Oh, that's a shame.
I spent a lot of time doing World War II counterfactuals.
No, I could run get my partner.
I think he probably could talk about this for hours.
I think this is a thing that men like to think about.
Oh yeah, of course.
But no, I have never considered this.
So are you more of a World War I counterfactual guy?
Like what if Serbia had taken over
the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
What if by World War II, the great land power in Europe
was the Serbian Empire?
What if-
I'm always asking myself like that.
Sophie, aren't you always asking about that?
I'll tell you one thing.
We never would have stopped putting cigarettes in movies.
If Serbia is like a China-sized market
for American television and film,
cigarettes don't ever get cut out of Hollywood, you know?
So that's good, that's my prediction.
Anyway.
Molly, do you have anything you wanna plug?
Yeah, you should listen to my podcast, Weird Little Guys.
Assuming no acts of terrorism happened this week,
I won't have any new news to cover in there,
but each week we-
Hey, there have already been five bomb threats
against polling locations in Georgia.
They did pick up a guy the other day
with an armed bomb about to blow up
the power grid in Nashville.
So it does keep happening.
I never went off guys.
I'm not gonna say there will be no acts of terrorism.
Yeah, well, you can tune into weird little guys
to hear about these kind of weird little guys
who do things like that.
Yeah, speaking of weird little guys,
Newt Gingrich, probably a lot littler
because he's extremely old now.
So he's weird.
Oh yeah, check out Newt's wife's Instagram.
She Photoshopped her face to be completely smooth
in every picture.
It's incredible. Beautiful, beautiful.
And presumably if this book is true,
she's plying in for nuclear secrets.
Hey, you know what?
The ambassador to the Vatican.
She's not anymore.
Wow, what a do nothing job.
I know.
Make me ambassador to the Vatican.
Cause you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna get into those catacombs.
I'm gonna steal some saints bones, you know? I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get into those catacombs. I'm gonna steal some saints bones, you know?
I'm gonna have a whole necklace made out of the bones
of saints.
Dream bigger, I'm getting the chronoviser.
Oh, oh wow.
Yeah, the Pope's time machine.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Anyways, hopefully.
The Pope has a time machine.
Hopefully things are.
I love the idea that the Pope has a time machine. Hopefully things are. I love the idea that the Pope has a time machine
because my imagination is rather than doing
like anything that would help the Catholic Church,
he just repeatedly goes back in time
to like put a thumbnail on Martin Luther's chair.
Like he's just constantly fucking
with Martin Luther a little bit.
I don't think the Chronovisor allows you
to manipulate the past only to view it.
Oh, well then I would go look at dinosaurs. The Chronovizor allows you to manipulate the past only to view it. So. Oh.
Well then I would go look at dinosaurs.
Obviously.
Obviously Robert.
That's the only thing I would be interested in.
I'm proud to say I wouldn't stop any historical crimes
with a time machine.
I'm doing nothing but dinosaur related stuff
if I get access to a time machine.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. That's what I'm doing.
Go have sex with Newt Gingrich and get secrets from him.
It's apparently easy.
He doesn't have any secrets anymore.
Yeah, well, there's only one way to learn.
I hope the future everybody is okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
And you know, wear a rubber.
You don't know where Newt's been.
Jesus Christ.
Newt doesn't know where Newt's been at this point.
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.
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From audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring comes The Unborn, a shocking
true story.
My babies, please, my babies.
One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect.
She went crazy and shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of
the kids, tried to burn her house down. Listen to The Unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.
You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with
celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.
After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys,
and the thoughts that arise
once we've hit the pavement together.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Join iHeart Media Chairman and CEO, Bob Pitman,
for a special episode of the hit podcast,
Math & Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews the iconic and
prolific Martha Stewart in front of a live audience in celebration of her 100th book.
Did you ever think you were gonna wind up writing a hundred books?
Yeah.
You did?
Yeah, it's just a minor goal.
Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chelsea Handler here. This
week on the Dear Chelsea podcast, Riley Keough discusses the memoir she co-wrote with her
mother, Lisa Marie Presley. But it's also such a gift to be able to sit here and say
as an adult woman, I had such a good mother. Yes. That is a gift.
I know.
You know, she certainly was not like a, I don't know
what a perfect mother is.
Well, she wasn't a traditional mother.
She wasn't a traditional mother.
I am so grateful to have had her as a mother.
To have that kind of love.
Fine.
Dear Chelsea, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, everyone.
It's John, also known as Dr. John Paul.
And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho.
And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast.
A podcast where all the intersections
of identity are celebrated.
Oh, chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people
on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison,
Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show,
Angela Carras and more.
Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast
on the iHeart Radio app, Alpha Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts, girl.
Ooh, I know that's right.