Behind the Bastards - What We Learned From Ben Shapiro's Racist Novel

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston for a reading of Ben Shapiro's book. 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. What's doing something he didn't think he would do? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, and I'm here looking at Sophie's horrified face. You know, Sophie, my grandpa had a saying. My co-host today are Katie Stoll and Cody Johnson. How are you all doing today?

It was weird. We all thought he was going senile when he would just shout that out. No, he was just president. 20 years ago. But then I met you both. We are. Sorry, Grandpa. Evans. How are you guys doing today? I'm all right. I'm A plus. Cody's right on time?

Cody is only 37 minutes late to record, which I love. I have to say, normally there is a calendar invite that tells me what time we are recording, and there was not this time. And so I did not know there was another calendar invite that said 130, which is what I was expecting. Cody is ready for the coming collapse of infrastructure. Just quick check. Katie, were you on time? I was on time. Hey, Robert, quick check. Were you on time? Maybe.

Here's the thing. I checked Chris. Were you on time? No. Wow. I do normally give Cody a little reminder, and that is my fault. Oh, no. Please do not. No, no, no.

It's not about your reminder. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No. Sophie, there's nothing woker than letting a woman take the blame for a man's very clear and obvious. I want all of our listeners to know I did not mean that seriously. Yeah, it was Katie and Sophie's fault. Absolutely.

They collaborated. Yeah. Like Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg. Katie called Sophie and was like, should I remind Cody? And Sophie was like, no, should I send an email invite like I normally do? And Katie was like, no. And then they laughed and laughed and laughed. I was on the email thread with them while they did it.

I thought it was messed up. Or perhaps he fucked up. Continue, Robert, with your show. So guys, do you remember how last year we had a couple of fun moments where we got together as friends, as colleagues, as comrades, and we randomly paged through terrible books? How could I forget? We learned about what an egregor is, which is the collective Satan that the Jewish people have created with their own.

Seared into my memory links. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, I remember the science book we read. The science book we read. You remember the QAnon book we read? We learned a lot of good information. Science part two. Science part two.

Today I got a little bit of a different book. Because sometimes reading through random books at random points in time means I don't have to prepare as much, which can help us to get ahead over here. And I love that for you and for us, for our show. And today we're going to read a book called True Allegiance. Now, this has been described by the New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor as a blockbuster debut thriller ripped straight from the headlines. And his author is a fella y'all might know.

Oh, Benny Shaps. My favorite. Ben Shapiro. Yeah, we are doing the Ben Shapiro book today. This is fun because I've... Novelist Ben Shapiro. I've been muting him or avoiding him on Twitter, so it's been a minute. You've been taking care of your mental health.

And I'm ready to just tarnish it right now, just light it on fire. I also have let Ben go. There's only so much room we have in our day to day. That can't have been easy for you. It wasn't. Everything he says is wrong. It is wrong. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit before this about what we do when we have a book by a terrible person

that I don't want to support financially, but I want to read because there's a trick. And I wasn't telling people the trick before, but now like, fuck it. What's the worst that could happen? The key is. As far as I know, this isn't illegal. The key is. You purchase the book on Kindle, right? You download it to your device.

You disconnect your device from the Internet. You apply for a refund from Kindle. And then you finish doing what you're going to do in the book before you reconnect it to the Internet and removes it. Great. Love that. That sounds legal to me, actually. It does sound very legal. Yeah.

So a little bit of advice. Now, True Allegiance was a book published in 2016 by Post Hill Press and, of course, author Ben Shapiro. And I want to read you all the Amazon description so we can know what we're going for here. New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro's new novel asks, how close are we to our country's collapse? And we will be able to stop it once it begins. America is coming apart and a legal immigration crisis has broken out along America's southern border. There are race riots in Detroit.

A fiery female rancher turned militia leader has vowed revenge on the president for his arrogant policies. And the world's most notorious terrorist is planning a massive attack that could destroy the United States as we know it. Meanwhile, the president is too consumed by legacy seeking to see our country's deep peril. Brett Hawthorne is the youngest general in the United States Army, and he's stuck alone behind the enemy lines in Afghanistan. He's the last lost soldier of a failed war, fighting to stay alive and make it back home. But will he be able to stop the collapse of America in time? Sounds like a real thriller.

I have a question. Is there an audiobook version of this? Ooh. Oh my god, yeah. True allegiance, Vince. Yeah, it's free with your audible trial. Does he read the audible? I have to know. There's no way they would let him do that. Because it just sounds way better than in your voice than it does in his voice, and I feel like it's... So could you look it up?

Because I'm disconnected from the internet. Do you know this book from Vince? So, I bet there's a forward. Oh my god. Oh my god, you guys. There's a forward. It's not even the forward. You know how books will have a praise for this book page? The first quote on the Praise for True Allegiance page. Meet our new Ayn Rand. Salon.com

Salon? Ew. Oh my god. It's so good. I'm sure he loves that. Ooh, there's an Ann Coulter quote, provocative, intense, and about five minutes from becoming reality. Ben Shapiro's True Allegiance is a riveting thriller about what happens when America falls apart. This sounds rooted, in fact, not feeling. He's got an Alan West quote in there. That's good.

That's really good. Oh boy. And then some people that I don't recognize. Okay, so cool. We're on a good start. Yeah, it sounds like it's a good book. Sounds like it's a good book by good people. I'm very excited for this. Yeah, okay, so... Does he read it, Sophie?

Oh my good gracious. That's the right side of history. Which book are we doing by Ben Shapiro? We're doing True Allegiance. Oh, I don't think he does. I'm sure they've got it. It's just not him. Narrated by somebody who is not Ben Shapiro. That's a good call.

Because you might not believe what you learn about Brigadier General Brett Hoffman. Brett Hoffman. And the president who only cares about Obama. I mean, not Obama. He's a different president, right? Alright, I'm going to start with... I think chapter one looks like it's opening with like, you know, we're starting with like a terrorist attack going on in New York City. Wait, what year was this? Did you say that?

2016, this came out. Yeah, it would have had to. Right, so the president obsessed with legacy would be Obama, not the president. Yeah. He's also obsessed with his legacy. Is it a different way? In a different way. Oh, no, it doesn't start.

Okay, so the first episode doesn't start with a new terror. It starts with like 9-11. And I think the character who's going to grow up to be our ranch militia leader in New York at 9-11 is seeing the towers at the building. So that seems like what we're going on with this prologue here. So that's good. Let's start off with a 9-11. And then we move right in with chapter one to Brett Hawthorne in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Brigadier General Brett Hawthorne looked at his M9 magazine and cursed to himself. Empty. He was sat up against a mud brick hovel in the city's poor part of town. Even in Kabul, there was a large income gap and felt the sweat trickle down cold between his shoulder blades. He hadn't been alone for years. Generals always had a personal security detail, but things had gone hellishly wrong. Hawthorne was a bear of a man. He was 6'3 in his bare feet and 250 pounds in his underwear. Let's talk about this a minute.

I've gotten criticized in the past for making fun of Ben Shapiro's shortness. And it's true that you shouldn't make fun of people for being short. Some people in this very room are short. Most of us. Most of us. Most of us. Except for you and myself. Yeah.

I'm not tall. I'm wearing tall shoes right now. There are taller people than me in this room. I think is whatever it is. Fine. There's nothing. Nothing. It says nothing about the percentage.

But also. So like. Well, so here's the other thing for many, many, many, many years. Ben Shapiro claimed that he was my actual height, 5'8". Oh, really? I did. I was unaware of this. He is not.

As we all know. So it's just one of those things where, okay, you're going to lie about this a lot. Clearly. What is his real height? I don't know. Like 5'4". Okay. I don't know.

I'm making that up. But I've heard that. But he's been lying about his height for years. Yeah. It is funny. And it's funny that his clear self-insert character, Brett Hawthorne, is a bear of a man. 6'3". And his bear feet in 215 pounds.

And 215 pounds in his underwear. So. Yeah. What I'm struck by this is like, there's all these stories. Ben Shapiro. Sorry. No, no. It's fine.

What a beautiful laugh. Ben Shapiro wanted to be a Hollywood screenwriter. He sure did. Yes, he did. And he's flunked out of that. Yes, he did. There's just these few sentences. I just can feel him being like, this would make a great movie.

Like he's writing it like, fuck those guys. A Hollywood won't make it. I'll write this. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So the M9 is the 9mm Beretta sidearm that was up until recently, the standard sidearm of the military.

It says he looks at his M9 magazine. Now, there's a couple of things that that makes me think. So if you're actually shooting a handgun like that and it's empty, the slide locks back and you can immediately tell that it's empty because the slide is locked back. At no point, if you're in a firefight, would you eject the magazine and look at the magazine to determine whether or not your weapon was empty? And I'm not sure how Brett Hawthorne, combat general, that doesn't make any sense as an opening.

You know what? It would make sense if he looked like the slide locked back of Brett Hawthorne's M9 magazine and he cursed to himself, empty. Like that makes gun sense. Yeah. This is not. I can explain this to you. Okay.

Ben doesn't know who he's talking to. No. Thank you for that, Katie. I have to back up real quick. We made it one sentence. I know, I know, I know. We're about a paragraph. I know.

We're doing really well. I need you, Robert, real quick. Okay. To read the blurb at the beginning one more time about Ayn Rand. Oh, about Ayn Rand. Okay. The whole thing. We're scrolling back.

What does it say? We're scrolling back. True Allegiance. Meet Our New Ayn Rand by salon.com. Okay. That's it. So here's the thing, folks. If you were to go to salon.com.

Salon.com. Salon.com. And you were to look for that phrase. Mm-hmm. You'd find an article. Mm-hmm. And that article is called. Meet Our New Ayn Rand colon.

Ben Shapiro's ham-fisted propaganda fiction is even worse than you guessed. That is? Subheader, the wingnut pundit resents the liberal tone of TV but turns out cartoonish right-leaning prose. Unreal. Thank you for looking that up. Cool stuff. That is that legal?

Right. So just like part of somebody's, the title of something. You can do whatever you want. It's amazing. It's the funniest thing I think Ben has ever done. It's everything about him. We need regulation of book blurbs. Taking that blurb.

Like, no one would want to be like, oh, I'm the new Ayn Rand already. It's like, well, that's not like praise that you would want to promote. But the fact that it's just pulled from this really, really main headline is so good. You guys, there's so much more to say about Combat General Brett Hawthorne. Okay. Okay. Oh my God. Okay.

So Brett Hawthorne, who is at 215 pounds in his underwear, has a grain-blonde crew cut and a face carved of granite. Not a face that looks carved of granite, but a face carved of granite. It is. What a horrifying reality for him. I know. What a nightmare for Brett Hawthorne. I mean, I'm kind of into this.

It's like a fantasy thing now, right? Toxic masculinity. He can never change his face or show emotion. I feel like he's touching himself when he writes about Brett Hawthorne, Combat General, and not at all a Ben Shapiro stand-in. So Brett is looking up at the blown-up buildings of Kabul, and he could see the Kabul Serena Hotel burning. The new coalition government had bragged about the hotel as the standard bearer for the modernization

of the city, with its historically imitative Islamic architecture, satellite TV, and wireless internet. Now the flames looked at the windows as ashes floated down on the city. And I feel like he brings up that it's Islamic architecture for a reason to make it seem like even more of a bad idea to try to find a nice group. No, I'm just being specific in my prose. Like I'm sure that if you were to- I'm sure Ben knows what Islamic architecture looks like for one thing.

No, I'm sure if you were to control F that file and just type Islamic, it would come up as like a descriptor for so many things that do not need that word. I bet you're right. We're indexing right now. I'm going to move right along to- So it goes on to him talking about how a few short- This is pretty great too, actually. A few short years ago, Afghanistan had seemed to be on the upswing.

The Taliban had been on the run, hiding in the mountains of the Dora Bora region, sallying forth every so often to hit a supply chain. The coalition forces had been systemic. So a few years ago, everything had been great by Afghanistan. But the arrogant president- Hawthor knew all this because he had designed the strategy, and now the strategy had gone to shit. Well, Brett Hawthorne thought to himself, at least I can tell those stupid bastards.

I told you so. Oh, my God. It's so good. It is delightful to see who Ben thinks that he is. Oh, boy, you guys, typing in Islamic is- Painful. Fewer times than I thought, but I'm already seeing some religion of peace talk that I'm sure is going to be-

Fun. Oh, boy. All the words that are available in like the little search, because you only get the few words around it, that late stage Islam is peace pussy shit. Oh, that's a sentence for you. I don't know the context yet, but I'm sure we'll learn. I love the idea that as Ben is writing this, he's typing and he has a cigar in his mouth that he will never light, but he's just like-

Because it hurts his lungs. Yes, exactly. Yeah, he hates the taste and he hates what it does to him. It makes my tummy numb. But he knows that like, I need that. He's got to have the cigar. And like a glass of scotch that is mostly ice that he doesn't sip from- Yeah, it's melted.

Pussy shit. Cost him $300. Yeah, exactly. You've got to savor it. So we're going to talk about Brett Hawthorne's background now, because you know, we start like a great writer. He starts in the action scene, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Brett Hawthorne pinned down under fire. Islamic hotel is burning. Yeah, he grips you right away. He grips you right away. You're like excited. You're like, oh yeah, it's like die hard, but I ain't rant. Yeah, dying rant. And now we go back to let's learn about Brett Hawthorne's background.

Brett Hawthorne was the youngest general in the American military. He'd grown up lower middle class in Chicago. His mother a teacher. His father a salesman for the local phone company. Oh wait, I'm sorry. At some point you got to search how many times he mentioned Chicago. Oh boy, is that a thing for him? It's a thing for him because of Obama.

It's a thing for him because of guns. It's a thing for him because of black people in general. Boy, so half of the time Chicago's mentioned in this book, it's the south side of Chicago. Of course it is. Which is the baddest part of town. And if you go there, you better beware for a man named Leroy Brown. Bad Bad Leroy Brown. Bad Bad Leroy Brown.

He's the baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than the whole King Kong. Old King. Yeah. Madder than a junkyard dog. That's right, Katie. That's absolutely correct. What?

It's a great song. So he'd been a shy, gentle, quiet kid, built like a reed, but he learned one skill pretty quickly at Thomas Edison High, had to talk his way out of a bad situ, oh good lord. Okay, so he learned this from Derrick because Brett- Derrick. Yeah, I think Derrick's gonna be a black inner city kid who teaches him how to be cool. That's my guess. He definitely is.

So Brett sat by himself a lot at lunch because he wasn't one of the Irish kids. He wasn't one of the Italian kids. He'd made the mistake of trying to befriend a couple of black kids that hadn't gone well. He'd ended up with a black guy and a few new vocabulary words to add to his dictionary. I'm sorry. Okay, it is, it is, this is, it's every single thing he says you're like, so did this literally happen to you? You had a bad experience in this in your life.

No, I don't think this actually happened to him. I think he imagined that if he had tried to talk to a black kid at school, that's what would have happened. It's the thing that you do where you like imagine conversations with people and you get into an argument about them and you're like, well, this is what I would say then. That's what this is. This is his. Yeah.

Okay, so because I'm trying to befriend black kids is a bad idea. He said the words you'll learn, because of the words you'll learn. He sat alone until he made the mistake of looking up one day and standing, standing above him glaring at him was a behemoth, a black kid named yard. I hate this. Nobody knew his real name, everybody just called him yard because he stood on, played on the school football team, stood six foot five, clocked in at a solid 280 pounds. He's obsessed with height.

That's very funny, but I'm sorry. Nobody knows his name, but he's on the football team. Yes. No one knows his name. What's on his jersey? No one knows his name yard. No one knows his name. Unbelievable.

Then he just number 12 nobody knows the star football player's name. No, he's yard. Okay. That's all. All right. I'm not mad where he goes and nobody even cared to find out where he got that nickname. I'm not mad. You're mad.

You're the ones. How are we all doing? Great. Never been better. So yard stood six foot five, clocked in at a solid 280 pounds and looked like he was headed straight for a lifetime of prison workouts. Oh, Jesus Christ. Are you fucking kidding me?

Excuse me. What does that look like then? Excuse me, don't be off put by his laughing. This is just how we deal with this pain. We're not even two pages into the chapter one. This is absolute trash headed for a life. Why is he headed for life? Because he's a tall black man.

He's the star football team, Ben. Maybe he's not for prison. The coach loved him. Everyone else feared him. Okay. All right. Yeah. So Brett looks up and this causes yard to attack him.

Oh, but oh my God. I thought that Brett was a behemoth of a man as well. I thought he was a big, strapping man made of stone. That's a good point, Katie, but he was small in school. Okay. He had a growth spurt. He grew once he started using guns. Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. At some point he turned from Ben Shapiro literally into war general. Right. Like this, like eventually he turned into a bear, right? Ben's just waiting. Like he's just watching guys. My dad didn't bro till he was 50.

He's just watching Brave on a loop just like, that's going to be me one day. I'm going to be the bear. No, that's liberal propaganda. Also frozen. Definitely liberal propaganda. So guys, this is, I looked ahead and it's very bad. So Ben's, Brett is sitting down at school and Yard looks at him and he makes the mistake of looking up and then Yard mumbles something in his face.

What said Brett? I said Yard growled, growled, did you just call me inward because I just heard you call me inward. What the fuck? Yeah. Did he call him inward? No. I don't think he did, Katie.

But I mean, in his head, Ben Shapiro did when he came up with this character. Yeah, right. Absolutely. And Brett is thinking this and oh my gosh, okay. You know what isn't headed for a lifetime of prison workouts? I can't begin to imagine. The products and services that support this podcast. I was going to guess Yard actually.

Yard probably makes millions of dollars as a talented football player who just got angry because Ben Shapiro absolutely called him the inward. Yeah. Cool. It still counts even if it's under your breath, Ben. Yeah, even if it's under your breath, every waking hour of the day. All right. Oh.

Products. Yeah. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. Because the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters

in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And on the gun badass way. And nasty sharks. 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? 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, and we are just slowly making our way through this book. We did the blurbs, we got the description, the physical description of the main character.

I don't think we're going to get far through this book, you guys. You know what? I don't care. Because the next chapter is the president. But I want to know how this situation with Yard works. Oh, good God. Yard's hand came down on Brett's shoulder, heavy his doom. Brett could feel his bowels begin to give way when a smallish hand emerged on Yard's

shoulder. Oh my God. What a bad writer. I'm so sorry. I felt like that's so bad. You remember when we all had a hand emerge on us, it just punches right through like the chestburster. Oh my God.

Ben Shapiro writes the way monks fuck, just like badly, it's badly. But also constantly, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Boy. Okay. So a hand emerges on Yard's shoulder, a black hand. Yard swiffled ponderously to face down the person connected with the hands.

Ponderously? Ponderously. All right. Ben. Yeah. This is his black friend, Derek, who defends Ben Shapiro for not saying the n-word. Out loud. Out loud.

This time. Yeah. So it's good. It's good. So Derek, Derek is his friend. Who teaches him. Brett is such an obvious stand-in for Ben. Yeah.

Brett is incredibly obvious. And Derek is a stand-in for the friend that Ben, the black friend Ben Shapiro has never made in his entire life. Yeah, I wish that he had so that these situations could be avoided. And who would stand up for him every time on Twitter he got called out as a racist. Actually, my friend Derek defended me when I thought the n-word a couple of times at the definite future prisoner. Unbelievable.

Oh my gosh. Okay. So. One thing I want you to do at some point is do a search for the word honky. Because I feel like. Yes. Definitely. But first, we have to talk about Brett's growth spurt.

Yeah. It's going to happen. Between his junior and senior years of high school, Brett finally hit his growth spurt. Like his dad, he bloomed late. But when he did, he put on muscle and height like a race horse. He sprouted five inches to six foot two. He broadened through the chest, filling out to a healthy two-fifteen. The coaches had ignored him in high school, but at the Citadel, he goes to military school.

He quickly became their favorite. This is so sad. Yeah. It's a real bummer. This is such a sad insight into his psyche of what he desperately wants. I feel like I've learned so much more about Benny Shapps just from the first couple of pages of this book. Yeah.

Let's not hate him. Let's pity him. I mean. He'll hate that even more. Yeah. It's sad. We're all suffering from the same problem. We just express it in different ways.

And Ben has done this instead. I've thought about this before, specifically with Jordan Peterson. Dr. Balthazar. Yes. Jordan Balthazar Peterson. Yes. Jordan Bumblebee Peterson, so he tries to explain things to people and he slips in some, I think, odious views.

Yes. If he does it in language that seems academic, but is also kind of contradictory. If you parse what he says, it's not great, and he just sort of talks and talks and talks. I've always wanted him to stop what he's doing and write a novel, because I know that if he writes a novel, then his views will be very clear. It will reveal a tremendous amount of it. And here we are. Not intentionally, necessarily.

It'll ooze out of him. Here's what I think about everybody on the page. He will write a novel that he thinks is about a decent man running for president and saving the country, and everyone will point out 10 minutes after its release, like, oh, you wrote Mein Kampf. Exactly. You'll be like, oh, all these emotions and feelings you're talking about and what you think needs to take the chaos and turn it into order, everything you're writing about.

There will be a three-page part where Jordan Peterson talks about seeing his first acidic Jew, and it will be word for word almost what they wrote in Mein Kampf. It's going to be uncomfortable, and yeah. And no one will know it until it's published. He won't know it, and I desperately want him to do that, and I'm glad that Ben has done that. It shares a lot. So I'm just going to skim the next couple of pages, because we've got to move on to

the president. But yeah. So when he was 22, he got sent to Saudi Arabia and missed Operation Desert Storm for the most part, and he was really bummed that we let the Kurds die, which I didn't hear Ben speak up a whole lot when we abandoned them in Syria. No, no. It's supposed to be in a position he's changing. Yeah, interesting.

He meets someone named Ellen, who I don't care about. They have a kid together. He's in Kosovo as a captain. By September 11th, he's a major. By September 11th, he was a major, a major who, by simple coincidence, knew Pashto. So one of the most complex and difficult to master languages on the face of the planet, just as a coincidence, like you do. I was just drawn there.

There was no reason. Here's the best part. He's one of the first men on the ground in Afghanistan, and he knew little of the country's culture, but his knowledge of the language made him a valuable commodity. So how do you know a little of a culture but know a language? That language. How did you learn that language? Yeah.

How do you learn Pashto and nothing about Afghan culture? Ben's view of the world. It's amazing. It's like, yeah, he did like a matrix. He like jacked into the matrix and he learned the language, but nothing, nothing at all. Not a goddamn thing about Afghan culture. So he hangs out with the Northern Alliance some Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone, the Pashto Rosetta Stone.

Simple coincidence. Missed all the culture stuff. Cool. Yeah. He hung out with the Northern Alliance and it was all very Lawrence of Arabia, Brett thought, except that Peter O'Toole had never had to deal with roadside bombs or donkeys laden with explosives or the lure of the opium trade. Such a good point.

And it's interesting. He describes it as the lure. Is he like. Hey, Ben. Is he tempted? Right. There's like half of it where it's like, this is what I think about the world and half it's like, what if it's like, could I do opium?

Yeah. Oh, no, you couldn't. I'm sorry. It's so good. It's so good. Okay. So yeah, the administration makes a terrible deal that dooms the effort in Afghanistan and Brett Hawthorne is there as it's all falling apart and he's with a CNN crew and

he saves the day. He'd been ushering the CNN crew around because as he told his wife, got to keep those schmucks from reporting that we eat Muslims. What? What? Mm-hmm. Wait. Wait, Robert.

Wait. Yep. He's digging, he's making a dig at the mainstream media. Yep. Obviously. But. Admitting to cannibalism? Yeah.

But like, yeah, like doing, saying the awful thing as like a good thing. He doesn't because CNN would report that American soldiers eat Muslims because they hate American soldiers and don't, for example, respond worshipfully when we fire missiles at an empty air base in Syria and talk about the beauty of our weapons. They don't do that. They hate the American military. Oh, then I hate them. Exactly.

All right. So a little dig in here about how lazy the CNN people are. And then Brett turned to speak. This is after the camera and says they've got enough footage. Brett turned to speak and from behind the cameraman, he saw a child on a donkey about 300 feet away. His service weapon, a Beretta M9, was in his hand before he even felt it leave his shoulder and he sees a kid on a donkey and she pulls a gun, a little racist.

So I mean, it works out though. I bet he's right. I bet he's right. Oh, he's absolutely right. And the evil CNN cameraman zooms in eagerly as the situation degenerates because he wants to, he wants to capture the kid being shot by. Yeah. Okay.

We're going to go on to the president here. I don't need. I don't need more of this. You don't want to hear the description of the child's dying. No, I don't know that the child, I'm sure he saves the child and the evil CNN cameraman is angry at this. President Prescott. Okay.

That's a good name. That's a, I mean, that's a solid president name. Yeah. We simply surprised he didn't do like a very like African name for a while. Rock, Boba, something like that. President secret Muslim. Yeah. President black man.

Oh boy. No, it's Mark Prescott. All right. Okay. Solid. Solid. We simply can't pay for it, sir. White House chief of staff, Tommy Bradley was standing over the president's desk in

the Oval Office, a chief of budget papers in his hand, crumpled wrinkled papers covered in red notes. The numbers just didn't add up. President Mark Prescott didn't care. Listen to me, Tommy. Oh my God. Oh, how transparent can you be? Yeah.

So that's like that. It's also like really poorly written. Oh, so good. It is because we go from like, yeah, the president's chief of staff standing over a chief of budget papers in his hand, crumpled wrinkled papers covered in red notes. That's not even a sentence. Yeah. Yeah.

Crumpled wrinkled papers covered in red notes is not a full sentence. There's no action in that sentence. It's just a description of a noun. It is a creative liberty. Yeah. It's like a, it's like Palinook style. Yeah. It's like it's like two word sentences, you know, and yes, I was going to say this has

a very Palinookie. Palinookie, right? Yeah. Yeah. Palinuk-esque. Palinuk-ish. You are way too generous. So listen to me, Tommy, said the president, my reelection relies on our ability to secure

funding for this action. You know that. I know that. The poll show it. We don't have a choice in the matter. Okay. So what's this, what's this action about? Yeah.

We're also coming at Jimmy Carter. Also, like what's he alluding to with like, like regards to Obama? I'm, I'm still, we're a while into this and I can't figure out what they can't pay for. Right. I wonder if we'll ever find out. I got it. Oh, there was a stock market crash that's apparently this Democratic president's fault. Just like the stock market crash in 2008 didn't start in the Bushid minutes.

It was his fault. Stration. Because it was Obama's fault that it crashed in the Bush administration. I mean, it's Obama's fault or being black. That is absolutely true. And I bet if they'd, he'd been at high school with Ben Shapiro, they would have had an interaction. Yeah. I bet if Ben Shapiro saw, saw him in high school, he'd be like, you're going to go to prison

one day. Prison one day. And nobody knows your name. And nobody knows your name. Star football player that everybody knows. Unreal. So good. The unemployment rates climbed beyond 10% and has headed towards the 15% mark.

If you counted those who had stopped looking for a job, the real unemployment rate was closer to 25%, which was the unemployment rate during the Great Depression. And never was close to that during Obama's administration. Interesting. Cool. Leeches. So Prescott did what Prescott knew how to do. He survived.

The easiest way to survive in his predecessors wars, no matter what the cost, and then pump up the spending at home. There was no glory to be won on the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Everlasting glory didn't come in the form of military victory in this day and age. It came in the form of everlasting social programs that grew in a year to the benefit of all Americans. He's saying that's bad. The benefit of all Americans.

He's saying, he's saying not fighting a hopeless wars that waste all of our money and benefit national security, not one iota and instead spending the money to help Americans is bad that it's cowardly. This is unbelievable. Every pundit should be forced to write a novel. Like I want to know what's in your soul. I want to know what's in there. And let's expand that.

Would you be able to do that? Yeah. I've written one and it's bad. Damn right it is. But if I run for president, I will publish my bad novel. Get it out of the way. Mine's just like spooky stories and animorphs parodies. Cody, it's not fair to call them animorphs parodies.

They are animorphs erotic fiction. And I, you know what? I will say erotic literature. I don't. Wait, you've read it and I haven't. I, all right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for saying that.

It is. My book is going to be just for kids. For kids. About being a good friend. So also animorphs erotic. It's going to be a girl and her imaginary friend donkey. That's a good size. That's a good idea for a book.

Yeah. And it sounds less thirsty than Cody's book, which is drier than the Sahara. Aw. Aw. Aw. It's desperate. But. He was 37 minutes late.

We can, we can razz him a little. One note, Cody. There's actually no such thing as a fuck panther. Prove it. I dare you to prove that somehow. I think there's a fuck panther in this book. Yeah. Several.

Couple of them. Yeah. Type in fuck panther. Let's see how many times. There's a fuck panther. I wonder if the word fuck does appear in this at all. I bet not. I bet he.

Oh my gosh. No. 19 matches. Brett, Brett. Asterisk. Brett Badass is a military guy. I mean, he's a loose cannon. He'll fire up a fuck.

He doesn't give a fuck. Oh boy. Fuck you, motherfucker. Get the fuck out of my hood to get his men the fuck off my border. Fuck these animals. There we go. That's what I was looking for. Oh boy.

Unless he's actually talking about fucking animals in which case I'm not looking for that. No, no. I'm going to pop right over there and see if it's. Animal morphs erotica. Oh. Oh. The Taliban had used the hanger as an execution post.

There was a line of bodies lying on the floor, many of them wearing American uniforms. Those bodies had been mutilated obscenely. They'd done it slowly. They'd enjoyed themselves. The animals, he said softly. Fuck these animals. Uh-huh. Okay.

So not actually fucking animals in the racist way. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. I was going to comment on the poorly written aspects of that. Yeah. It is badly written. All right.

Yeah. More about the president. Okay. FDR was worshiped not because of World War II, but because of social security. Wait, who's speaking right now, the president? This is just a rant, Ben's going on it again. About the president who can't afford something that we haven't been told what it is yet. Uh-huh.

Yeah. This is just like one of his townahall.com essays that he's like, ah, they're not going to publish this. I'll put it in my book. Oh my God. So Prescott spent. He spent on green technologies, on education programs, on food stamps, and highways, medical mandates.

Can't stand it. Who needs a fucking highway? Who's going to use this? So the poor's can drive to work? The Pavos. I love that so far, the message of the first page of the president Prescott chapter is that he's a coward for spending money on highways and not Afghanistan. Because he doesn't want to do any more war, and he wants to get a bunch of money.

So are you scared of the guns? I am in love with this level. Why don't you invest in human beings' lives? Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So yeah, this obviously is spending money on Americans rather than Afghanistan destroys the economy.

He's making a great point. Yeah. He is making a very important point. Um, and yeah, and so Prescott starts to doubt whether or not he's going to win a second term, and then a miracle. In the middle of the night, Prescott woke up with a phrase ringing in his brain. Over and over. It was as though a higher power had placed them in his mind.

He grabbed a pen from his bedside drawer and wrote it down. Work Freedom. The Work Freedom program. That's how Paul McCartney wrote, uh- Oh my God. Yesterday. Yesterday. Yeah.

He woke up with the melody in his head and he had to write it down. So. Yeah. He kept going to all his friends and being like, is this, is this anything? Am I making this up? Oh my God. Okay, wait, what? This is like a really gross, Ben thinks he's being smart, but this is a Holocaust reference

that he's making. He's comparing social welfare programs to the Holocaust. Of course he is. Of course he is. Let me, let me read you this paragraph. Everyone recognized the value of freedom, but what did that mean other than the right to a job? Freedom at nothing if you couldn't put bread in your children's mouths at night.

In America was a country of workers. Freedom was work and work was freedom. Work Freedom. Simple. Easy. Repeatable. Genius. What was stamped on the gates of Auschwitz and a number of other death camps was, uh,

Arbite Mocked Free. Work brings freedom. Yeah. He is literally comparing a jobs program. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Un-fucking-believable. Yeah, he's a-

It's believable. It's believable that this little- That he would say that. Yeah, this little gremlin doing, yeah. You know who won't make ghoulish Holocaust comparisons to score a cheap political point against a fake president? I'm going to get this right. Jordan Peterson, wait, never mind.

Ayn Rand. No. Shit. Uh. We're close. Uh. Would it be? Stephen Crowdy.

Crowdy. Products and services? Katie got it. Ooh. I can't believe that was right. That was a real stab in the dark. You nailed it. You nailed it.

These products and services will, in fact, bring freedom to you. Work freedom. Work freedom. The work freedom products that advertise on this show. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right.

I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. He didn't inside his hearse with, like, a lot of guns. He's a shark.

And not in the good and bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then, for sure, he was trying to get it to heaven. 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?

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. In gang, it's time for me to admit something now, 40 or so minutes into this, which is that when we decided we were going to do another one of these, I really agonized over which book to choose. And I really frustrated Sophie by going back and forth. We had a number of contenders for this, and I was worried that the Ben Shapiro book wouldn't

be a good idea, because I was like, it's probably just like a really lame thriller. He had a script for a generic action movie, and he wrote it. And we're just going to be reading through turgid prose about shooting people, and it's just going to be very boring. I would have to be 20 minutes and be like, okay, guys, I'm sorry, we got to revamp and figure out something else. I've learned so much about Ben. I believe that this was a script he pitched around.

Yes. He pitched around novel. And I am certain that in his head, his dream was that like, I'm going to pitch this script and myself as a screenwriter, but once they meet me, they'll be like, the only person who can play Brett on it. Oh. Right, right, right. All right, we love it.

He's like, John Wayne was short, and he's built the sets around him. You got to change it, so Brett's actually a short, obnoxious guy. It's actually better if you're short on camera. It's better for lighting purposes. Ben, Ben, we love the script, but the protagonist needs to be more unpleasant to listen to. All right. Give us some more. All right.

All right. We only have time. We will not get through enough of this. You know what, Robert? That's fine. You know what? Is it fine? Robert, I think it's disgusting.

I think it's embarrassing that we haven't gotten through this whole thing. I think it's fine, but we got to do like a 10-part series, so we finish it. Okay. So what should we go through next? I feel like going through chapter to chapter, we're just going to get bogged down. Is there anything you want me to search for? Well, I have a question. So when he ran into that future prisoner, and he didn't say the n-word, but he thought

the n-word, was it typed out? Was the word typed out? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So I would say search for the other instances of that word. I also wouldn't mind hearing about this. What was the woman character?

What was her description? What did she do? Oh, do you mean the militia leader? Yeah. I know that her first chapter starts with her baking cookies for a SWAT team that's coming after her. Are you kidding me? Yes.

No, no. I mean, I wouldn't mind checking that out. All right. You liar. You absolute liar. There's no way. I will lie about a lot of things, Cody. The coronavirus, for example, but I will never lie about Ben Shapiro's prose.

Soledad, Central Valley, California. The SWAT team didn't expect it the first time she brought them cookies. Nobody brings the SWAT team cookies. It's Soledad Ramirez. But the lady does. Well, Soledad Ramirez knew the value of good press and she baked mean chocolate chip cookies. No oatmeal raisin here, she said, good-naturedly handing out the meltingly hot treats to the men wearing full military gear and carrying M4 set to burst.

Oh, my God. Number one, Ben. Does he mean they were about to come? No. Military-grade M4s and similar weapons based off the AR platform have burst fire mode, which does a three-round burst in addition to semi-automatic. No one would use it in that situation. Semi-automatic is primarily for killing, like for actually trying to take aim shot.

So if you are entering a building in the thought that you might have a gunfight, you're not going to have your rifle set on burst. Sorry. It's just very. Yeah, also, if just this is nitpicking, meltingly hot, if something is melting, we as the reader would assume that they're hot. You don't need to say that. You don't need to.

Also, meltingly? Yeah, it's very awkward. It's fine. It's fine. Not important. They all eat the cookies. I feel like it's a bad call for a SWAT team entering a hostile situation to just take the food that they eat to you.

The person you're rating, is this, wait, so, okay, so this woman is the cookie maker. So wait, what militia is she a part of? But because also, there's the other woman, right? There was like his wife, that a kid. Oh yeah, she's un-consequential. Right. So that's what, like, there's nothing else about it. No, this is the militia leader.

So she's a right-wing militia leader? I am going to guess. But she also knows her gender role and knows her way around a kitchen. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For the meltingly hot cookies. So it seems like she's a ranch owner, and there's the EPA ruled that there's a type of rare fish that was in danger from water overuse in the river, and they were stopping

her from doing her important farm work. And we're going to confiscate her property if she didn't start stop watering her plants. So that's a way to frame it. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think it's a mix of that and like what happened with the Bundys. Oh my God. Yep. Cool.

Yeah, but she does know how to bake, and that's important for a woman. She protested. She sued. It didn't matter, according to the government, that her husband's father had bought the farm, worked it up from nothing. It didn't matter that her husband had worked his heart out, almost literally on the farm, keeling over at the ripe old age of 52 while grazing those damned cattle. It didn't matter that she had 50-some employees and their families depended on her.

All that mattered was the smelt, that damned fish. It's definitely the Obama, exactly that. Yeah, it is. It is. And it kills all her cows. It's just so embarrassing, Ben. Oh my God. There's even a reference too.

You guys have ever done like a lot of driving up the five from Los Angeles North? You know how they have all those like, Congress made, Dust Bowl, Palosita. There's even a direct reference to that. They're making her the character who put those signs up on the side of the five. You know what? I've always wondered. I have to drive up there frequently because my family lives in the Bay Area, so I make that drive a lot.

A lot. A lot. A lot. This is her. Oh, it's her. Soledad Ramirez. Soledad Ramirez. Are there any ones that say, stop by for my meltingly hot cookies?

Nope. Okay. I wonder how Soledad Ramirez feels about immigration. Oh boy. No, I don't. Well, good news, Katie. She was a week away from filing, I think, for bankruptcy, yeah, yeah, filing for bankruptcy. When she received the letter, it came from one of her former employees, Emilio.

He'd immigrated from Mexico decades before, crossed the border illegally. She'd paid him well, sponsored his citizenship, and brought his family over to join him. He's a valuable employee, she told her skeptical friends. If you were living on that side of the border, wouldn't you jump it? He's not taking money from anybody except me, and I'm paying him for work. He was one of the last men to be laid off as the ranch died. She cried the night she told him the cash had run out. He thanked her, hugged her, and moved his family to Los Angeles.

He writes her a letter. Well, that's a good immigration story, I guess. I mean, well, I feel, I feel like if you do a search for Emilio. Oh, good Christ. Oh, no. Did he become a gang member? Oh, no, he became a gang member. Almost, almost.

So he and his family had been forced to take a small apartment in East Los Angeles, and Emilio had gotten a job at a factory, a local, one of those classic East LA factories. Yeah. Just guys, East LA is teeming with factory. It's factory time. Oh, God. So their son, Juan, had been enrolled at the public high school. That's where he'd been killed.

One of his classmates, apparently, had tried to recruit him into a gang. When he refused, several of the gang members found him in the bathroom. They started punching him. Yeah, they beat him to death for not joining a gang. Yeah, they did, uh, football, gangs, and factories. It's just so, he's so simple. He's such a simple boy. So she, uh, she refuses to pay her tax bill, uh, and instead sends the money over to Emilio

so he can bury his, his, his boy, um, who didn't, he said no to gangs. Yeah. And then that's why the SWAT team comes after her, because she's not paying her taxes because she had to help Emilio bury his gang killed boy. And that's what starts the standoff. Okay. That's a stand in for the Bundy standoff that happened when the Bundy's refused to actually pay mandatory grazing fees that were very clear and very fair for more than a decade

until finally there was an action that was then stopped because the government got scared. Because we don't, or at least didn't live in a, uh, uh, yeah. This is a rich tapestry. There's a lot that brings up really important moral questions and we shouldn't mock it. No, no, it's good. You're right. It's good. I don't mean anything.

I just said, oh, he talks about, there's a character named Levan. Uh huh. And he talks about, oh my God, Levan, not a white character. Really? No. Detroit, Michigan is where Levan Lee lives. And the first sentence of Levan's chapter is, Detroit was a shithole, but it was his shithole.

I hate this so much. That's the way Levan Williams had thought of it. He'd grown up in this shithole right near Eight Mile Road along Strickland. This is horrible. This is horrible. This is horrible. Oh my God. I will not have Detroit Slander on the podcast.

Just write a book. He saw Eight Mile with Eminem and he's like, yes, in your dorm room when you were in law school. Did he talk about rap battles? You know. Oh my God. He must write. He must talk about rap battles.

Let's, I'm just going to see if, yeah, RAPT is talking about rap battles. Oh my God. There's no, let's see if there's hip hop. Or like, I'm trying to think of like, really, like, oh my God, there's no, let's see if there's, like, vernacular the words, like, oh man, why are you doing that? What are you? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't look like we have that problem here. Thank God for small miracles. Yeah. Thank God for small miracles. Well guys, I don't know how much more, I mean, we could, we could, we could keep this going for hours. But we can't because time is a, yes, Cody?

Could you real quick just search for the word Marxism? Oh my God. Of course. Thank you. Of course. Let's just see Marx. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Marxism. Oh no, only once. Wow. Where the president's plan to, actually, I'm going to read you with the president's plan because this is what Ben essentially calls Marxism and socialism. This is the president speaking. Yeah.

The evil president. Yeah, the Marxist president. He's the worst person who doesn't want us to be in that gambit's place. Do an evil Marxist voice. 15% unemployment. I miss you right now that you will not pay one additional dollar in taxes for this program. You will not lose your job. And if your employer should selfishly fire you, we are establishing a business trust

to which all businesses will contribute, which will pay your salary during rainy days. Businesses may try to scare you, but people are always frightened of what they do not understand. Selfishness must not be allowed to trump the vital liberties of the American people. And this action will not contribute to our national debt, it will contribute to our collective wealth with the entire American population working, producing, creating, not just 80% or 90% or even 93%. We will boost our gross domestic product exponentially.

What a monster. He's confirming this is bad. It's like, what if there was a social safety net? Horrible. Damn you. Highways. Oof. Amazing.

One last one. Yeah. Do you search for IQ? Oh boy. Oh, Cody. Maybe. Just a shot in the dark? Who knows?

No. No. No? No? No. Okay. That's for his other book. Right.

This has been not that illuminating. I mean, it has been illuminating, but only in affirming the things that we know. Just for a number, for numbers sake, Patriot. Oh boy. Yeah. Let's see that. Only two. Yeah.

What? Only two. Ben, you loser. Yeah. You don't care about America. He hates America. You hate America. Unbelievable.

I'm so glad you picked this book. I am too. Yeah, so glad you picked this book. I am so glad that Sophie finally insisted that I pick this book rather than vacillating like a fucking coward. We did it. And I am going to just hop right in right now. Let's go to my orders.

Get that refund started. Get that refund. Yeah. I don't want old Benny Shaps to get any of this. I want to read his pilot so bad. Can you give feedback as to why you want to refund? No. Say this is trash.

Yeah. You know what? I will. I will say this is trash. And while Robert does that, do you guys want to plug your plugables? Hell yeah. Well, you can check out our show that we do with Robert, Worst Your Ever. I'm sure you guys know about that.

And you can check out our show, Even More News. That's our podcast. What do you want to tell them about the other things we do? It's a YouTube show. It's called Some More News. And Straight. You can Google it and Google our names to find all the social media accounts that are associated with the shows and with us personally.

Because they exist. They exist. They're out there with tweets. You know what? I love those things that exist. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm famous for that. Yeah. Well, my item has been successfully returned. So that's good. That's good. I'm so happy for us for you. So there's a lesson for all of you. If you want to game Amazon a little bit.

It's a smart one. That's cool. Also, you can follow Robert on Twitter at iRiteOK. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at BastardsPod. We have a Tee Public Store and a website at BehindTheBastards.com. What she said. And bye. Bye.

Bye. Hello. Hi. Shit. Oh. Hi. 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 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.