Chainsaw History - Part One: Newt Gingrich, Teacher's Pet

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

{ Discover more at ChainsawHistory.com — access our full episode list, delve into bonus content, and click the logo in the center of the page to support our show with a paid subscription! }Newt Gingrich wasn't just the former Speaker of the House here in the United States, he was the one-time college history professor of co-host Jamie Chambers. Journey back to the 1940s as Bambi learns all about Newt's humble origins (largely thanks to his mother's roller rink romances). Find out how the little guy terrorized his grandmother with a snake collection, tried to start a zoo at age eleven, and snuck around behind his mother's back to watch (gasp!) nature documentaries. Laugh as you learn how his oversized head affected his football career. And be amazed that not long before graduating high school Newt was caught hooking up with his geometry teacher—whom he eventually married!In this episode we encourage listeners to give to the Wildlife Conservation Society. They support safe habitats for wildlife around the globe. Learn more about their mission and find out how you can help: https://www.wcs.org

Hey folks, Jamie from the editing desk here. Just letting you know this episode was originally recorded in spring of 2024. So if our references seem a little out of date, that's why. So without further ado, enjoy Newt Gingrich, Part 1. That was fucking amazing. yeah Nicholas Cage as Dracula it sounds terrible and it's perfection well you know who also like no notes it was great and you know who also loved movies who loved movies the guy we're going to talk about today oh giddy gum drops yeah he uh his movie hero is is almost predictable so we'll get there when we do it so Bambi you might remember that back in the mid 90s I took a a college history class that was kind of controversial. Yes, I do.

I remember this. As in, it was on the nightly news and mentioned on talk radio and in the local papers. I had to, like, take the class on a Saturday morning because it was the only time my very important teacher was available. Oh, okay. So it sounded crazy then, and it still does now. For our listeners, my teacher was the serving speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, Newt Gingrich.

Yeah. that asshole. Yep. Yeah, I took a college class called Renewing American Civilization. And spoiler alert, it's not just this cool little detail that I took this class for him. That class features into the history of his life quite importantly. So, but we're going to take a minute to get there. This is chainsaw history. And this is the podcast where we take a man once second in line to be president of the United States and make fun of his big fat head. He does have a big fat, stupid head. And no, and there's, we will be getting into Newt Gingrich's head in this episode.

Oh, good. I am your host, Jamie Chambers, and this is my sister Bambi. Hello. Just remember, we are a comedy podcast. I'm not a historian, but I did take a history class from the subject of this episode, which might, like, cause an implosion in the space time continuum. I think we're fine. Probably.

I don't think I learned a whole lot of actual history in that class. If you're listening to our voices right now, you need to head over to chainsawhistory. where you can make sure you hit the subscribe button. That way you get an update every time we release a new episode. You'll get to see our full back catalog and you will get bonus stuff like our value of series where Bambi reads children's history books to me that we used to get from our parents in the 1980s. They're very charming. And we are in the middle of a limited series called No Time for Love, Dr. Jones, where we explore the fictional life of Indiana Jones as he rides through history. And we're just getting started with that one.

So if you want to get all of that, go to chainsaw history.com. And if you are hearing us there and want to listen to us on your favorite podcast app, just look for us under that name. Warning up top. There is no way to avoid the discussion of politics in this episode. Oh, yeah. I mean, not that we've avoided it before, but like modern contemporary politics. This story is incredibly relevant to it,

and which is actually why the point of why I want to talk about new. not just because I have a personal connection to him. So if you want your history free of modern American political drama and bullshit, say I blame you. But yeah, this episode's not for you, and neither were the next couple, because we're just going to get started today with Mr. Gingrich.

So, yeah, I guess then you really need to go to the substack. Yeah. And if you want to listen to some Indiana Jones, it's a lot less political. Buy a lot. So this episode is weird. This is the first time we've ever done a subject that's A, still alive, and, you know, could potentially sue us.

Come at us, Newt, you coward. And B, I have a direct connection with the guy. Like I- Yeah, you know this asshole. I posted a picture of us in this same frame on Facebook the other day. But since we started the George Wallace episode, shocked, you know, that we had a family member very closely, you know, associated with that racist asshole. I thought it was only fair that I eat my humble pie on a microphone. Yeah, you were all about this asshole. So you see, listeners, I was raised conservative in what is still one of the most red areas of North Georgia.

Our dad took me to campaign for Ronald Reagan when I was only five years old. And then mom had to be ashamed later that she'd actually voted for Carter that year. But then later on became such a Reagan disciple that, you know, it was like this thing that dad could tease her about, you know, in the early 90s, I got very into talk radio and I was a fan of guys like Rush Limbaugh and Neil Borts. Gross. Yep. And I drifted from sort of religious conservative toward libertarian, you know, the fucking

opposite of who I am and what I believe today. Like, for example, my favorite thing about Rush Limbaugh these days is that he's dead. So yeah, I sucked. I was a shitty young white man who believed, like, everything that reinforced the idea that I was on top and I deserve to be. You know, that's a very easy trap to fall into, especially when you're just all that shit's in your face the whole time you're growing up. I'm just very happy to say that in the second half of my life, I have grown and changed and my opinions have evolved. That's good.

So anyway, like I said, if I'm going to. I was, you know, I was raised to get married and have babies. And like if I'm, if I was going to talk shit about our unnamed relative in George Wallace, it seemed only fair to say I was all about Newt Gingrich back when I took that college class. So fair is fair. Yeah, I mean, I voted Republican for years and years and years and years and years. I do not do that anymore. So, Newt Gingrich. He was second in line at the time to become president of the United States.

He had been named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, the year I took his college class. And probably most importantly, Newt was the architect of the Republican Revolution in the 1990s. And for people who don't really remember back that far, you have to understand the GOP hadn't controlled the lower chamber of Congress in 40 years. In fact, it was just this assumption that the House would always be Democrat and that the Senate was the only chamber up for grabs. And Newt didn't believe that. His aggressive approach to politics seized control of the national conversation and

pushed the Republican Party way farther to the right than it had been before. They were a lot more boring before, honestly. There's a lot of shitty toxic stuff, but Newt really kind of shove things a certain direction. And only that, but he made sure the stuff he wanted to. wanted to talk about was the stuff that was on the news like clinton and gore were kind of on the ropes when newt was around uh and so he literally got a democrat president once again bill clinton to take a carving knife to welfare program started by fdr and lbj and to pass tax cut for the rich because well yeah that's

because bill clinton sucked and yeah clinton sucked and newt kind of really helped make it seem like this was the these were the actions that the american people wanted yeah no uh he was he was involved in two different government shutdowns, like the first time that had ever happened. Yeah, he broke democracy. Yeah. And now that happens like, you know, every couple of years. Yeah, now it happens all the time and we don't even think about it. But yeah, no, he broke democracy. Yeah, he obliterated a ton of the old norms on Capitol Hill. Um, politeness and decorum and backroom deals were tossed away in favor of weaponizing the media and congressional ethics rules to attack his enemies. Fortunately, Jamie, you know, that's all fixed now. Yep, we're good. Um,

To quote one of our main sources today, Newt is responsible for, quote, the normalization of a no-holds-barred style of partisan warfare where the career of every politician was seen as expendable and where it was fair game to shatter routine legislative processes in pursuit of power. In Giggrich's era, a crippling form of partisanship came to permanently define how elected officials

dealt with almost every issue, ranging from who should lead parties to mundane budgeting matters to decisions over war and peace, unquote. So in other words, fight from, extreme positions all the time over everything, even the boring stuff that everybody agrees on. Which is terrible. Yeah, treat the other side like they are the enemy, not just that we disagree and need to find middle ground. Yeah, no, and it's ridiculous and this is what broke democracy. Yeah. This is how we get the Marjorie Taylor Greens. It wasn't always like how it is now in Congress, and we have Newt to thank for it and a lot more.

Oh yeah. Thanks, Newt. So speaking of the sources, like we just quoted. one up above. I'll be quoting from articles and news clips all over the place, but I highly recommend that book I quoted a minute ago. It's called Burning Down the House, Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party by Julian E. Zelizer. Another main source today is the PBS Frontline Documentary, the Long March of Newt Gingrich from 1996, which you can still find freely available on pbs.org. So if you want to watch it, and this is where you'll hear some audio clips that will be playing today come all from that documentary. So I know you're looking forward to this, Mambi.

Oh, giddy gum drops. He's a real piece of shit. Yeah. Let's talk about him. I think the story of Newt Gingrich is an interesting case study in nature versus nurture. Like how his raw DNA was shaped by his upbringing, creating somebody who is both like nerdy and intellectual, but also an aggressive, ruthless pit bull of a politician who, like you said, fucked up America.

You broke democracy, motherfucker. Like many influential pictures, his story is one of contradictions. and I think it begins with the circumstances of his birth. So let's go back before the beginning. Oh, joy. Our story begins in a roller rink in Middletown, Pennsylvania. It's like a little railroad town just outside of Harrisburg. The skating rink was the spot for local teens to meet and hook up, which, you know, remember sparkles back in the day?

Yeah, but we weren't teens. Yeah, like middle schoolers. Yeah, we were little kids. We were little kids and we just met up with our friends. But this was a magical evening in 1942. And a teenage girl named Kathleen Dowardy was swept off her wheeled feet. Kathleen, she went by Kit, and she fell hard for a six-foot-three galute with his own nickname, Big Newt, which was short for Newton McPherson. Kit was 16 years old.

Big Newt was 19. Okay. So they meet up at the roller rink and romance was born. So Kit learned pretty fast That her new beau loved three things Booze Bets and Brawls Sounds like a winner

Yeah So he'd spend all night drinking Playing cards Get into bar fights Yeah that's only fun for so long Yeah And I'm sure this is gonna totally shock you But he was nasty and abusive

To his girlfriend when he was on the sauce Oh I'm sure But you know teenagers are stupid So when the big guy proposed Kit said yes Like I guess she thought that you know engagement and marriage would kind of, you know, he'd grow up.

Oh, yeah, that always works, too. But even then, like, during their engagement period, the drinking and staying out all night and getting in trouble got worse, so Kit got cold feet. Good for her. This is Kathleen Gingrich Kit, from 1996 in this documentary, talking about this part of her life.

I wanted to break our engagement, and my mother said, you can't because it's going to be in the paper tomorrow. Really? Really. I should never have gotten married, but I didn't have anyone. I know now I did, but at the time I didn't know, because my aunt, my mother's sister, I should have gone to her. She would have backed me up, and we wouldn't have, but then we wouldn't have nudie, you know?

So I'd rather have him. So even then, even this, like, she still has this regret of marrying this guy all these years later, but she also loves her son. And Kit loves nudie. Okay, well, I'm sure she does. Because her mother pressured her, because, you know, they announced it in the paper, and that would just be embarrassing to not marry the abusive drunk at 16 years old. Yeah, I have so much to say just about that.

I'm going to just stew for a minute. I mean, you got to remember, too, it's 1943. There weren't a lot of men around, so just getting one to marry at the time might have seemed like the mom. We were like, yeah, I need to marry this girl off because all the men are off, you know, dying, storming beaches and shit. Yeah. So they got married. Three entire days later, Kit tried to wake her husband up when he was drunk off his ass, and he jumped up in a rage and started beating her.

And to her credit, she didn't put up with that shit for a single extra minute. 16 years old, already pregnant and didn't even know it yet, she walked out and never looked back. So good, good for her. Good for her. It's like at least her regret didn't linger. Yeah, no, she, as far as that goes, her marriage literally lasted three. three days before it was over. She moved out.

This was in the middle of World War II, like I said. And so Big Newt decided to solve his problems. He would ship out with the U.S. Navy. Yeah, I'm sure that worked, too. Yeah, but everybody knows going off to war, you know, cures your alcoholism. So fast forward nine months to a hospital in Harrisburg, and we finally meet our hero. Newton, Leroy, McPherson. I absolutely refuse to call him a hero of any type.

We've been doing it. We've been doing it. The main character is always our hero every time. No, he's not. No, your hero. I, no, protagonist. Our subject today. Yes, subject.

I will accept subject. Newton Leroy McPherson when he was born to a single mother on June 17th, 1943. Before we move on, we have to give a quiet salute to Newt's mom for what she went through that day in June. Because I've seen Newt's Gingrich's head in person. Holy shit. Oh, yeah. Giving birth to a giant, yeah, no. I mean, and also just respect to the recovery power of the female body, you know?

Ugh. Well, I mean, fortunately, too, you know, the baby's heads are collapsed, so it's not, it's not full force. You can only collapse that so much. That woman had an epiziotomy up to her belly button. Oof. The good news for Kit is that she had a supportive family. So, like, she moved back in with her mom and there were aunts and, and other cousins and other people around,

lots of women in the family, able to just shower the little guy with affection. So he was not lacking for attention when he was really little. Newt's grandmother, aunts, uncles, they all lived in Hummelstown, like this working class, very Republican neighborhood where everyone either worked for the government in the state capital of Harrisburg

or they made their way over to Hershey to work for Hershey. Okay. When Big Newt showed back up on leave, it wasn't exactly to connect with his bouncing baby boy. It was to officially begin the divorce process. The other good news is that the 1940s had something new for women. Jobs that actually paid money. Yeah.

They were allowed to work and shit. So Kit got a wartime production position as a junior mechanic, you know, like a factory job. Okay. Rosie the Riveter shit. Good. Yeah. Good for her. Absolutely.

So Newt was a little boy largely being raised by his grandmother because mom was working. And his grandma had been a teacher and he was just surrounded by adults. There were no other little kids in this early period of his life. Yeah, that always makes for a stellar childhood. Yeah. So he was encouraged to read and learn things because his grandma had this blue-collar family and she wanted to really push them up into, you know, educated and they all, you know, the dream that all our grandchildren would go to college, which was very, you know,

very typical and very noble, you know. Yeah. One of that. But so she was shoving books and really pushing him being a little well-educated little boy. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that specifically. She didn't mean to start a chain reaction that's going to. to screw with the world.

Unfortunately. Or maybe she did. And again, you know, I joke. I think it's good to get little kids to read. I'm not, I'm for education as a little kid who read a lot myself. Unfortunately, being a single mother in the 1940s wasn't exactly the ideal situation. So, you know, especially as far as society was concerned, Kit needed a man. And we've already established there is one place to get one.

Oh, the roller rig? Yeah. We're going back. We're going back to the well. We're going back to the roller rink. I was thinking it's like some kind of U.S.O. something or wartime something. Strap some wheels to your feet.

Okay, we're going back to the roller skating rink. All righty. So this time Kit avoided loud drunks. Yeah. And she found the strong and silent type, a young lieutenant colonel in the army named Robert Gus Gingrich. And at the time, he was on medical leave, like temporary medical leave from his service overseas.

So he was taking a biology class at the local college. So they met romance was born and he gave his intention that he wanted to marry her and was willing to step up and be a father to Newt. So shout out to Bob. We're going to maybe have a bit of criticism about Bob coming up. But in terms of like being willing to raise another man's kid, that is a thing I have done and I have respect for that. But he wasn't exactly what you call affectionate. More on that in a minute. Yikes.

So Bob wanted to formally adopt Newt. And the chance came when Big Newt's new wife got pregnant. And he was already four months behind on child support. Oh, yeah. This is. We all know stories like this. Yeah. They struck a deal to just drop the back child support claim if Big Newt would just sign off in the adoption.

Like, we all just walk away. And Big Newt was all about it. And which is why Newt did not actually know that Bob Gingrich was not his biological father for a long time. Interesting. So he was raised by his grandmother. mother. Well, in the beginning. Oh, okay, just when he was tiny tiny. Until until his stepfathers came in and then they, then his situation changed. In fact, that's kind of, I think one of these very important things to think about when you think about like, we're trying to figure out, how do you

get a new Gingrich? And so, so like, remember, he'd been this little boy with a huge head, been spoiled rotten and just told how great and wonderful he is, this whole life up until this point. This kid just literally was like, I'm just going to arrest. all the things that came before, and only know this. And then suddenly he's Newt Gingrich, the son of a stern army officer who did not take shit from kids. If you want to know what kind of guy Bob was, he'd grown up in foster care and had not even known anything like a family life until he was 16 years old.

He had a very rough early life, and so he felt like kids, especially boys, needed to like toughen up. Like the world's not going to be kind to you. you need to, you need to be able to handle things. He did not like weakness, and he also was all about the rules and discipline. Oh, that sounds super fun. This is a guy who wore his lieutenant colonel uniform to his high school class reunion. Yeah.

Although at the time, I'm sure that wasn't uncommon. Yeah. Being wartime, it is just a way to instantly score points. So let's just say that Newt didn't get hugs and milkshakes and fishing trips. Well, that tracks. Here's what Bob had you say in 1996 about little Newt. He was a little bratty too at the time because he had been living with his mother and a grandmother who was a doting grandmother. But he was not a brat.

He was precocious. Kit and Bob got down to business and within a few years, Newt had two little sisters. The kids lived in mortal terror of their father. Not because of any reports of physical abuse. There's no indication that he ever hit them or did anything like that. But he was just one of those quietly terrifying people that when he made his point, he made it very clearly. Yeah.

And intense, no bullshit insistence on 100% obedience to the rules with no exceptions. He ran a tight ship. So, like, for example, at dinner, every night, Bob would interrogate each of his children on what they learned in school that day. And if they did not give good answers, they would get in trouble. Okay. Well, that's terrible. Newt describes his childhood as lonely despite never being alone.

He once said, quote, I was a 50-year-old at 9, unquote. Raw. That sounds fun. Yeah, like you're like the least fun person ever. Yep. Oh, you have no idea. Oh, we're going to get there. I mean, I'm sure we're going to get there.

It's hilarious how not fun Newt Gingrich is most of the time and how weird he is when he tries to be. Lacking fatherly affection, he did what any normal kid would do. Start an extensive snake collection. Raw. Okay. So, yeah, apparently his room was filled with big jars that had snakes he'd just grab from, like, the woods or wherever. And just kept them? Yeah, he fed them hard-boiled eggs and kept them in his room.

And in 2012, Newt went on hardball with Chris Matthews and declared the python, his favorite snake because they're, quote, big and passive. For a long period of his childhood, he, shared a room with his grandmother who could not fucking sleep at night because of all the slithering death, just all around her. Oh my God. Like she's terrified when these snakes is going to get out of their jar and go crawling up her nightgown or whatever. Yeah, that's legit. He named one of his snakes, Oscar Aloysius Stinky the third. Does that mean there were two previous snakes?

They had to have been two previous snakes that did not survive. I don't know what happened to the other stinkies. Newt read books way above his grade level on zoology wearing thick-ass glasses. because he's just like this near-sighted nerd bobblehead doll at this point. You know, as someone who was also wearing thick glasses and near-sided, I take a little issue with this description, although my head is moderately sized. You have an appropriately.

If not small. So America developed a new fixation after World War II, one that kept our military busy for decades, containing the spread of global communism. Oh, we're here. It's the Cold War. Yeah, so much fun. So Bob got called back into service by Uncle Sam to go to a little place called Korea,

leaving Kit home with the kids and struggling what would now be identified as clinical depression. So, like, there's stories that the kids spend about as much time taking care of their mom as the other way around. Because she would just, like, be bedridden sometimes with depression. And there was not a lot of help for that back then. There's almost not a lot of help for it now. Not enough. But if nothing else, the kids learn self-reliance. So you remember how, like, when I was a little kid, my biggest dream was to be an astronaut?

Yes. I got the moon mural on my wall on the space. The curtains look like stars, and I was a NASA nerd. And then the asthma hit. Yeah, it didn't work out. So similarly, just like I love outer space, Newt loves animals and his favorite childhood trips were to the zoo. The way I wanted to fly in the space shuttle, Newt Gingrich, wanted to be a zookeeper.

Aw. And kind of like how the world might have been a better place had someone, like, enjoyed Hitler's paintings. American politics would likely be a better place if Newt had just gotten a fucking zoo. Oh. Like to this day, if Newt's bummed out, he will take a trip to the zoo to cheer himself up. See, yeah, he could have just been a zookeeper. Which would have been great.

Which would have been fine. How sad. Yeah, no, no. Of all the things to talk shit about Newt, He has always been a lover and supporter of wildlife and conservation efforts, you know? Yeah, I too enjoy those things. I love animals. And, you know, zooming forward a couple episodes, he is one of the reasons Zoo Atlanta exists.

Very cool. Anyway, this will be a running thread. So good for you, Newt. And this point, that is his little boy dream, being a zookeeper. And so, however, weirdly enough, it's this love of animals that gives us our first glimpse at the man, Newt Gingrich. would become. Weirdly enough, it's his wanting to become a zookeeper that leads him into politics. Well, because he's hurting cats. So, quoting, again, from burning down the house, quote, at age 11, telling his mom he was going

to the library, Newt bought a bus ticket to Harrisburg to see two documentary films about African wildlife. And hold on, interrupt the quote for a second, because that's what a big fucking nerdy was. He was 11, lied to his mom. To go see documentary. To go see documentary films. That is almost sad. Like not any kind of trouble. It's like, yeah, I got to break the rules to go see the lions, hunt the gazelles. So, wait, back to the quote.

He was enchanted by the films and left wondering why Harrisburg, which is the state capital after all, didn't have its own zoo. As he walked onto the street, Newt noticed a sign pointing to City Hall. Instead of heading back toward the bus, an inspired Gingrich walked directly over to the government building. building. The receptionist amused to hear a young boy so earnestly asking her about why the city didn't have a zoo, send him upstairs to meet with the assistant director of parks and recreation. The two had a serious conversation, reviewing old files, budgets, and well-worn maps. The civil servant explained to Gingrich that if he wanted to pursue the idea further, he needed to return the following week to make his case directly to the city council. He ordered a cab to

drive Gingrich home, handing him a thick book of laws and regulations as a souvenir for his efforts. unquote. Oh, ew. So imagine if the receptionist had been in a bad mood that day and told the little kid to fuck off. Or if, like, that well-meaning parks and wreck guy hadn't indulged him, you know, quite so much. Quite so much. Oh, well, here we are. So, so little Newt got all dressed up and went back to Harrisburg the next week and he waited his turn and he made his pitch to the city council.

So it's kind of cute. Aw. I mean, it's like an adorable little story. And then, yeah. So Newt totally failed. No zoo was built in Harrisburg. at the time, but everyone was kind of impressed with this kid's gumption. So this happened. Now, Bambi, I'm going to give you a little newspaper clipping, and I would like you to read it

in your best NPR voice. Ambitious zookeeper, Harrisburg Pinn, an 11-year-old is fighting City Hall here in an attempt to establish a zoo in the city's Wildwood Park. Young Newt Gingrich told Mayor Claude Robbins and four city councilmen that he and a number of of youthful buddies could round up enough animals to get the project started if granted use of the park. They were just going to round up some squirrels and some chipmunks and... I got some snakes in my room. I got some snakes. So this story was run in the Harrisburg home star by a guy named Paul Walker, no relation to the Fast and Furious franchise.

That you know of. But this little human interest story got picked up by the Associated Press. That's where there's an AP tag on that because I found that. this story in the September 1st, 1954 issue of the Boston Globe. How did it get all the way there? Because it was picked up by the Associated Press. So in other words, this little stunt gave Newt a column inch of news that ran randomly in newspapers all over the country.

It was just one of those things like if they needed to fill that space, they had this little bity, cute little, cute little story. Like I said, just like, you know, it was a paragraph. A little feel good story. Yeah, that was all those little boys like, I'm going to catch some animals for the zoo. Let us use the park. But he did like, stick squirrels in cages. He made his best little.

11 year old proposal and they were like oh no that's adorable and that's not all newt was given a front page article on the local giveaway paper about why the city was desperate for a zoo so like he actually got to write a little piece to make his pitch to the community so these guys so again this guy Paul Walker is like oh newt you're you're adorable let's let's give you some more some more opportunity to get your voice out there oh this is terrible this is where things go Paul Walker is one of several people who seem really cool and nice, who also enabled Newt and Brian are partially to blame. The road to hell.

Always paved with the good intentions. So, like, remember when I was in sixth grade and I wrote a play and my teacher decided that the class would perform the play and I got to be the director? Yeah, you were a real asshole. Yeah, it's like, it was an amazing experience, but it's also, there's a real danger in letting a smart and precocious little boy start to feel like he's better than everybody else. It's something that I had to overcome that

because it made me a dick. Yeah, you were a super dick for a really long time. So thank goodness for therapy and introspective drugs. But I'm going to declare that this level of attention damaged Newt permanently, like literally the same age as the thing I did. And on a grander scale. Yeah, on a much grander scale. Because I did a thing that was just about me in my little class

and no newspaper even covered me directing a little play other than our school newspaper. So, as for his loving stepdad, Kit mailed Bob a newspaper clipping out to Korea with a letter about what the little rascal had done. Then he wrote back, keep that kid out of the paper. Keep the kid out of the paper. And I believe, yeah, it's easy to say. Oh, yeah, even dad was like, this is terrible. This kid doesn't need this much attention. No.

So, Newt also styled himself as kind of a comedian. And he would, like, memorize stand-up routines from guys like Red Skelton back in the day. Okay. And he would play really weird pranks. So he would go by this place where people were driving by. And he would get a friend to pretend to, like, be beating the living shit out of him. So they have this fake fight, Newt's just getting beat unconscious, or at least that's what it looks like. And so then somebody would come and stop to see what's going on and check on him.

And then he would just go, surprise! And jump up like a maniac and laugh his little chubby ass off. That's fucked up. It's like what is psychotic. But that's his. His version of humor at 11. Oh, my God. He also loved the movies.

Yeah. Lots of people love the movies. However, it's like seeing movies, like he would see the same movie multiple times to like memorize it and really get into it. Mostly westerns and war movies. Especially those starring Marion Morrison. I mean, of course, the Duke. John Wayne, Pilgrim. Yeah, of course.

Nude identified John Wayne's aloof, intimidating Sergeant Stryker. with his own stepfather. Did you ever have hope or expectation that he might pursue a military career? No. No. Then he is very near-sighted. You probably know this.

He can barely see across the street without his contacts. He has two of the flattest feet that there ever was. He was never physically capable or qualified to be made. or qualified to be military. True, but, ouch. Yeah, it's like, yeah, okay. And remember, that was an interview from 96 when Newt was literally, like, speaker of the house.

No affection from that man, ever. Newt later reimagined his decision to not seek military service, declaring that being a politician, quote, was the most effective thing I could do to ensure the U.S. would remain free, unquote. I decided America needed me here more. Oh, God. That is almost sad. That is just gross. And the fact that he literally destroyed democracy instead of saving it,

fuck you, Newt, Cinkrich, fuck you so hard. All right, so, you know, Newt was a wartime army brat, and his mother, Kit, moved the family around following her husband's service. In Kansas, Newt stood out as an animal-obsessed little nerd who was more comfortable around adults than kids' his own. age. Yeah, well, that tracks. And speaking of the art of war, he actually got to learn that in international relations from

retired general Lucius Clay, the guy who ran occupied Germany after World War II. So he was kind of a big deal. Born in Marietta, Georgia, by the way, he was a whole, he's like a whole other rabbit hole. We can't go down right now. Like, for example, he commuted the death sentences of some of the worst Nazi war criminals and let them live. So he's like a whole other thing we know time to get into.

But Newt spent a little. time with Lucius Clay when he was a very young man. Now, Bob got stationed overseas again in 1956, so this time the family moved to France. So Newt's 13 years old when they move out there. And so then he started to pull some teenage bullshit. Like he broke curfew. And his dad, for the very first time, he broke curfew at 11 p.m. And his dad was just waiting on his disobedient ass when he got home.

So Newt was, shall we say, a husky boy. But Bob grabbed him up by the shirt and slammed him up again. against the wall a few feet off the ground and just like held him there and said coldly I don't want that to ever happen again. Then he dropped him and then I presume Newt dropped a load and burst into tears. Randall was trying. Bob Gingrich sounds like a fucking scary motherfucker. Yeah, well, I mean, it didn't say Newt was scared of him.

It said children and those were his sisters. Yeah. During the time in Europe, Newt had an experience that he claimed forever changed him. A family visited the World War I battlefield. of Verdun, one of the grimmest places on planet Earth because nearly a million men died there. Yeah. You can still see barbed wire, trenches.

Newt walked along a road and he picked up an American helmet, a German helmet, and a French helmet. All rusted, but they were still laying there. Newt's father, actually his stepfather, made the point to him that this one happened if it hadn't been for the politicians. And that really kind of caught Newt. And, you know, the people responsible for wars

are not the warriors. They fight them, but there's these other people that cause them. At the time, did you recognize that as some great watershed moment in Newt's line? No. And he never said anything about it. He never discussed it. But evidently, it made a lasting impression upon him.

And there's something about redundancy. that will make a lasting impression, but one of the gloomiest places that I've ever been in my life. His stepfather's lesson was that politicians kill soldiers. But Newt says he saw

something much larger at Verdun, that it was politics that truly shaped the world. He had found his calling. Oh, there's so much to unpack there. Like, he sees this place where nearly a million people died. And he's like,

I want to be one of the world. I want to be one of the people who can make this happen. I need to have that level of power over people. That's the people who really matter in the world. It's sad and gross and it makes me mad. Of all the takeaways from this place, where also described, you know, you walk by, there's the plate glass window,

and you literally see the bones of a hundred thousand men all stacked up to literally be a grim display of this, is why we can't ever let this happen again. And Newt's like, no, I need to be one of the guys that is capable of making this happen if necessary. I need this level of power. Oh, my God. And he decided that as a teenage boy visiting, like I said, one of the saddest places imaginable. Good God.

So thoughts about the relationship between politics and military power led Newt to, on his own, not an assignment, spend all school year writing a, quote, 200-page single-spaced paper about the balance of global naval power, unquote. You know, for fun. Oh, my God. He's literally the least fun person on the planet. You suck so hard. I'm pretty sure your opinion ain't going to change anytime soon.

After three years bouncing around Europe, the family moved back to the U.S. and settled in Columbus, Georgia. It's 1960, and Newt is 17 years old now. He wore thick glasses, carried a briefcase, and were a fucking pocket protector. Nice. he is the stereotypical nerd. He didn't want to learn to drive because he wanted to read in the car.

They just want to give him a wedgy. There's so much entitlement here. But, however, when he got to Columbus, what he did get was a best friend and kind of an inroad to not being a complete social outsider. He hit it off with a guy named Jim Tilton. It's like an athlete and one of the popular kids.

But he had a couple things in common with Newt and they bonded. So they love John Wayne movies, a military history, and politics. Newt helped Jim organize a campaign to run for class president, and Jim got Newt to try out for the football team, which leads me, Bambi, to this glorious story. This is high school football coach James Bubba Ball talking. Newt was a boy that came in that had never played football,

and really wasn't given a lot of athletic talent. but he came on to the field, wanted to play football, and we had a little trouble getting a helmet that would fit him. Auburn didn't have one, Tech didn't have one, Alabama, Troy State, so we had to call Riddell, and they had to make up a special helmet. Newt has a large head, and there were no helmets in Columbus that would fit Newt, except for these 1940 football, these leather things with the little ear flaps, I gather.

This is what Jim's story always was, anyway. Oh, my God, that's hilarious. His fucking head was so big. They could not get him a football helmet. He needed to wear one of those ones like Goofy War in the 1940s cartoons when a goofy does football. Newt, however, actually really loved playing football. He was a defensive tackle, and apparently, like, the aggression and the adrenaline or what he loved.

Like, he enjoyed tackling dudes and even getting tackled. His coach was the kind of guy who told him you had to, like, jump up. up right after you got hit hard, you know, just shake it off. And these are just more life lessons that are just going into the stew pot that is Newt's brain. So he's like not at all a natural athlete,

but he was determined. He had like grit. Yeah, and he was also you know, big. Yeah, I mean, he was a husky guy, but he said he was flat footed and he couldn't run very well. But he said he went for it and he didn't let his lack of ability stop him because once again, Newt has

endless confidence and he He is aggressive. Yeah. You see who his biological father was, who is, it's like this interesting, all this stuff and you're thinking about, how do we get new? Like all of it contributes and you can see the ingredients going into the recipe. Yeah, this gross fucking stew pot that we're forced to stir. He went back to Pennsylvania for the summer and looked up Paul Walker, that, you know,

that editor who had written the news clip that you wrote. Oh, he was like, I'm amazing. Come back. So Walker took Newt under his wing and gave him work for the summer, like selling ads for the paper and then letting Newt sit on lunches with local politicians. Now, this guy Walker and his dad, Bob, were both lifelong Democrats. But Newt decided early on that he was going to ride the Republican ticket to greatness. Now, Newt got upset because he found out that one of his favorite places in Harrisburg,

the state museum, was closing down for renovations, you know, temporarily while they fixed some shit up. So he and Walker, you know, so he's like, I can't go to the museum. So like a normal person, he and Walker leaked the information to the press and sparked a backlash campaign to keep the place open. What the fuck? Like he didn't want to miss out and go into the museum while he was there for the summer. So he literally made it stay open. Well, he didn't.

He just made it where they changed the renovation plan so that it could stay open during the work. Because then Newt would have to miss out for, you know, a couple of months. I absolutely hate him. This point we've already seen, you know, he's helped organize like a high school class political campaign. He's had his little moment of glory when he was 11 and people talked about him trying to start his zoo. And now he's literally seen that if I make some phone calls, if I do the right things, if I play the media in the right way, I can literally change things. Yeah, I can weaponize the media to do my evil fucking will. You can see the lessons he is learning.

Yeah, I hate him. He sucks so much. He started stalking as a very small child. So he was inspired at this point. He's like, look, I can make shit happen. And so politics, you know, is this thing he's like into. This teenage boy gets back to Georgia. So he immediately volunteers for the presidential campaign of a guy who keeps coming up in our podcast.

One day we may have to do an episode on him directly. Your friend and mine, hero to Alex P. Keaton on family ties, Richard Millhouse Nixon So Newts came knocking on doors and making calls And putting out flyers and trying to help Nixon get it in 1960 Oh yeah Nixon Just ordinary and so like he even organized debates in his high school Like you know to talk about the presidential election

You know ordinary 17 year olds doing 17 year old shit Yeah But you got to remember As the party of Lincoln There were not a whole lot of Republicans in Georgia in 1960. The Democrats were the party of our old pal George Wallace and, you know, the Dixiecrats. You know, remember, it wasn't until LBJ came along and passed civil rights legislation

that the whole South flipped. But back when Newt was 17, the Republicans were kind of a tough sell. And as you might recall, a senator named John F. Kennedy was the guy who got elected that year, no matter how hard Newt tried. But, you know. However, he read a book about this. election afterward called The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White that inspired him. The book argued this about this idea that the Republicans had kind of lost the idea-oriented

segment that could actually offer voters a vision. They were kind of like the Republicans have just become this sort of boring patrician party and they didn't have anything to offer anybody. And so Newt really grabbed on it. It's like, this is an idea I need to bring in to change the Republican Party. And he does. And he sucks. And I hate this so much.

so senior year newt spends some time with a very pretty popular girl as her tutor he doesn't date at all i'm sure who would want to date that big fat head well this is where it gets weird because for one thing he's a very serious young man as we've established he does like if you're a teenage girl would you want to hang with this dude no absolutely not he's no fun which is also why he is more interested in older women oh is this going to take an extra gross term and let's do it. Yep. One in particular grabbed a hold of his heart and his loins. Her name was Jackie Batley. She was 25, Newt was 18, and she was Newt's high school geometry teacher. So these two start some up, and the full details are known only to those involved, so we don't really know exactly how it started and what all of the sort of details are.

But whatever was going on, they tried to keep it a secret, but they got busted. This is Linda Tilton, the widow of his best friend, Jim, talking in the 96 documentary. They were out in Fort Benning making out secretly. They had to sneak around because she was a teacher, for heaven's sakes. And so got time to go home, and they got caught in a tank tramp out of Fort Benning.

Couldn't get the car out. And I think they walked finally until, I got to a telephone and called Jim and a bunch of kids went out and rescued the car. But that was big trouble. I mean, yeah, I'm sure. Okay, scandalous. So, yeah, so like a bunch of his friends

had to come up and help him and everybody saw he was with his teacher. Everybody saw, yeah. Oh, you're literally hanging out and make out point with our math teacher. Oh, yeah, that's... So there was no keeping that secret anymore. And Bob found out about it.

and coldly ordered his son to break off the relationship. And that went about as well as you'd expect with a teenage boy in love with an older woman willing to have sex with him. Yeah. That was just not going to happen, dude. Sorry. So his parents tried another tactic. They enrolled him at Emory University and hoped that maybe he'd meet, you know, a woman his own fucking age. But they were just not his speed.

No, because they were fucking normal. They were normal speed. Yeah. However, Newt did fall in love with college. And that's something I can kind of relate to. He got to college and it's like, oh, hell yeah. I have arrived. I love college. And I get that. I remember that feeling like, oh, high school was bullshit. Academia is awesome. And not a lot of people disagree. But yeah, I'm not a, yeah. Certain people are, I mean, yeah, you have to be a certain kind of academic nerd. I am. I am not. We went to the same college, and I did not have that same, like... I didn't go to a great college. We went to the same college. So, but also like me, Newt did fine, but not great in school because his real passion and education was outside of class. So, you know, while I was pursuing my nerdy interests

aside from my official education, Newt was obsessed with politics. He founded a chapter of the young Republicans on campus. And again, not a very popular. move in 1961 because it's more like Republicans ain't welcome around here boy that's a few years later they're like whoa no we love these guys so oh it's weird okay it's very weird but american history and politics is weird uh so jackie got a teaching job in atlanta and and newt went with her to get married and finally and start a family over his parents screaming objections well i mean at that point he's a grown-ass man so i mean technically he was a legal adult even when this relationship started. It still was very gross.

She was his teacher. Very inappropriate. It's inappropriate. It's very gross. She should have lost her job. 100%. This is Newt's mom, Kathleen Gingrich, talking. We didn't go to the wedding because Bob would not go to the wedding. He said he would drive me there and wait for me. But I couldn't go in that church without Bob because it would point right at him. It's the dead.

I couldn't do him. And Jimmy Tilton that night brought me my corsage. Nudy just said that Jimmy knew I was coming. He just knew I was coming to the wedding. But I didn't make it. So even Mama's boy, Newt Gingrich, his mom did not go to his wedding. That is a, that's a protest. Yeah.

They didn't like that scandal as ho. So one interesting thing here, Newt grew up Lutheran, but Jackie's family was hardcore. Southern Baptist. So Newt made the switch without a second thought. And spoiler alert, this is not the last time he will trade in his brand of Christianity to match the current wife. It becomes a thing he does.

Okay. Well, you know, he has lots of them. So. Also, you can imagine that perhaps he doesn't really have very core beliefs. And he just goes with what expedient? Yeah, no. The second conversion very much even more convenient. You'll see what I mean when we get there.

But that's like two episodes from now. God. So, Newt was still in college when he and Jackie had their first child. A baby girl he named after the mother who ditched his wedding, Kathy Gingrich. He graduated from Emery and got accepted into a Ph.D. program for history at Tulane University in New Orleans. So there's another thing that Newt and I have in common. Our original career plan was to be a college history professor. The difference is, though, that Newt also had political ambitions that burned bright.

And, you know, the story about Newt was always that he was a history teacher turned politics. but there's a number of even his close friends he was like no no nude was always a politician it's just that he needed a career to start his political career from you can't just you know yeah you don't just go out you got to have a job and he didn't serve in the military

because of course you know his country needed him in politics far more oh my god so anyway so imagine a college campus in the deep south in the early 1960s well I mean New Orleans was cool and fun still even then but of course

newt probably didn't have any fun well yeah and like remember too like this is like said college campuses in the 1960s instantly picks a picture this is when the protest movement is originating from college campuses this was civil rights in the vietnam war yeah this is you know this is rowdy it's it's rowdy and it's it's probably dope and he probably is on the wrong side of this history this yep uh well i mean this is and newt is interesting in this point because he you'll see so it was during this time in college that Newt got into some ideas that he would carry with him all the way into my college classroom some 30 years later. He got into the writings of a guy named Alvin Toffler,

like a futurist because he analyzed the world and made predictions about how rapid change in technology and society were going to like affect people. He's most famous for a book called Future Shock. And it's just it was and he's written a whole bunch since then about just this idea that all this like all this technological change and cultural shifts are happening so fast that that people are having a hard time kind of keeping up and it has a real effect on society. They're all very interesting ideas. Like I actually, like, I don't necessarily agree with all the Toffler's stuff, but he's worth reading.

He's the guy who coined the term information overload, for example. Okay. We wouldn't have it without him. And we'll be talking more about Toffler's ideas further down the road, particularly he did a book called The Third Wave, which Newt latched onto and brought into my classroom, which I also have kind of mixed feelings about. But back to our boy, Newt, to his credit, he took. tried to at least be a little cool.

He smoked some weed and went with his buddy Dave to listen to some groovy music. Groovy. This is his friend, David Kramer, speaking. One night we went to a Jefferson Airplane concert in New Orleans, and he found that very interesting in that. There were a lot of people there that were very excited. And, of course, his question was, is there any political value in this? That's how we've used music.

What a fucking asshole. Now we know he has no soul. Yeah. He literally goes to a fucking Jefferson Airplane concert and instead of getting into the music and he's literally like, wow, all these people are worked up. I wonder if I could use this to, you know, my political advantage somehow. Eh, nah.

It's useless. Next. Oh my God. I hate him so much. Man has no soul. So with all these important social issues causing campus unrest, Newt was having to navigate around for some cause he could finally fight for. So Tulane University's student newspaper is the awesomely named Tulane Hullabaloo.

And they tried to publish a picture of a nude artist with his erotic sculpture. And the president of the college declared it obscene and was like, how about new? And the students are like, censorship. Newt got to work immediately organizing the protest movement for the right to see this man's dick. Well, okay. So he showed off the skills he'd been building up during his high school years and his obsessive knowledge of political movements. And even his friends never thought for a moment. He gave a shit about the actual issue.

Oh, I'm sure he didn't. He just enjoyed being the one pulling the strings and getting things going. Yeah, he wanted to be the behind the scenes man. That is sort of funny that Newt's first kind of big political move was so people could see a guy's dick. The pornography. Yeah. Okay. Well, no. I mean, I said say that a nude artist with a erotic sculpture is completely legit it's fine and i'm on his side on this it's just he's not doing it for the right reasons it's not about freedom of it's not about freedom of speech or artistic expression

which are things i believe in he just was like i need to exercise power and so he kind of rode his way through yeah well navigating some things this is this his testing around because here's the thing a lot of the stuff that you're going to associate with new in the beginning he's not really that known for he's not because once again he's he's a republican and republicans at this point or are more, it's like sort of like the small government idea is kind of their core principles, but a lot of the stuff you think of, and I think of these days, just doesn't apply right now. Everything shifts and changes over the next few years, and he's sort of on the ground floor

of all this. Yeah. While all this was going on, his family grew by another daughter. And while always politically involved, he decided to give Richard Nixon the double middle finger the next go-around and organized on behalf of Nelson Rockefeller in 1968. Oh, yeah, another... Another great guy. Great guy.

But Newt pushed his way through college, feeling the pressure to start a paying career and stop making his wife be the sole means of support for their children. Because, like, she's been teaching this whole time. He's in school and being political, not earning a fucking dime. Yeah, you need to get a job, dude. You've got kids. Yeah, I mean, I was working my way through school. I had jobs when I had a family in college.

But he was like, no, I'm too busy doing politics. I'm too busy doing the things. I deem important. And the other thing... Instead of taking care of my wife and my children, because this all tracks. So when you're pursuing a Ph.D., you have to write and defend a dissertation. And oh, boy, did he pick quite a topic and an angle? Put out in 1971, Newt's paper, and when I say paper, it's like a 300-page book

because that's a dissertation. You have to pick a subject no one's ever done before, do original research, you know, do all that stuff. And so he wrote a, this is called Belgian education policy in the Congo, 1945 through 1960. And just the title, I could see the look on your face. Ugh. Because you know how great the Belgians are in the Congo. Yeah.

Ugh. To research his paper, Newt went to Belgium. He did not, however, set foot in Africa. Okay. So wait, while his wife and children are at home, he goes to... Oh, I think he took, I think he took his family to Belgium with him when he did this research, if I remember right. Okay.

So they took a trip, like on summer vacation or whatever, to go to Belgium to research about the education in the Congo. Okay, sounds. They didn't go to the Congo to talk about what was going on in the Congo. They did go talk to Belgian, the white people in Belgium. The white people who were in charge, and obviously they were the good ones. Yeah. So listeners might be aware that Belgium has some ugly history in the Congo.

You know, European colonialism was awful across the board. But Belgium's actions in the Congo take the disgusting racist cake. As part of King Leopold II scheme to corner the world market in producing rubber, the Belgians engaged in forced labor, mutilation. One example. Men didn't make their work quotas. Their hands were chopped off and hung around their necks like Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones. Yeah, well, that'll make them work faster.

And sometimes if they didn't do it again, having already been maimed once, there were instances of men having both of their hands chopped off for not making work requirements. literally crippled and made dependent on others for life, for not helping make rubber fast enough for King Leopold. Yeah. That's just one tiny little snippet of how fucked up this situation was. Yeah, he was so gross. So yeah, mutilation, torture, murder, starvation,

and of course, everybody's favorite sexual exploitation of women and children. Of course. Just horrific, like the worst. The worst shit ever. The worst of 19th century colonialism happened in the Congo because of the Belgian, the Belgian policies. Leopold should always be remembered as a monster and he's and elevated up there with like Hitler and Stalin. He's just been kind of forgotten. And because in Belgium, he is still a huge hero because of all the fucking money he made and all these great public works and all this

beautiful stuff that went up at the time. Thanks to what he was doing. So yeah. But, you know, as Americans, we can't say shit because we can't say shit. Because we also glorify the ugliest parts of our past. So, so we can we can say that sucks. But, you know, we also look. look at the statues down the street. So, to be fair to Newt, he did say this about the Belgian free state under Leopold. Quote, the most clearly abusive government in 19th century colonialism, unquote. So he did identify that. But to be even more fair, because fuck Newt Gingrich, he also wrote shit like this.

Quote, Belgian colonialism was in fact a model of technocratic government. It analyzed and planned for the Congolese economic development with a thoroughness that virtually none of the now independent African states can match. The Belgians were far more aware than either the British or the French of the need to develop the entire society from the most backward peasant to the most advanced

university graduate. Unquote. So literally he's like look they literally knew they had to take this country and change it to make it more like white people's society from Europe from the lowliest peasant all the way up to the top. You don't let anybody live the way they used to.

We got to change the way they live. Well, I mean, that's entire colonialism. Yeah. That's what they all did. And Newt's saying Belgium did it better than everybody else. No, they did it more brutally than everybody else. Now, to be fair, like I said, if you looked at the years that under Newt's paper, his paper wasn't about King Leopold's stint, that was kind of the background leading up to the period he was talking about. But Newt, so he's not talking about it, so he's not defending it exactly.

But he also does present a very super positive. interpretation of how things went from 1908 to 1960, and that the Belgians deserve credit for trying to completely overhaul Congolese society. However, he says that it was just a fail, the failure is just proof that big government is just always a bad idea. It's not that what they were doing was bad. It's just that you can't, you can't look to it to big government for the solution. Bambi, you got to, you need, you need, you know, small, small business in states' rights or whatever. Oh, God. I know, it all begins here.

So he not only didn't visit the Congo for his paper, but he didn't quote a single Congolese source and only a few actual people from the entire country. And once again, this is like 300 pages long. And he has a couple of quotes from people from Africa. Well, because, yeah, who was important were the Belgians, the white people. The white Europeans are the ones that matter. Yeah. They're the ones that shaped history, of course.

Decades later, in 2010, Newt made a comment. And one of Newt's things that we'll talk about a lot, and I noticed that when I met him and spent some time around him, was that he has this thing where he just, he kind of thinks out loud and he has no filter. So that once again, this is 2010. He made a comment about President Obama that earned a, what shall we say it, backlash.

He was quoted by the National Review Online as saying, quote, What if Obama is so outside our comprehension that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior can you begin to piece together his actions that is the most accurate predictive model for his behavior unquote fucking hate him yeah he's literally so god damn much Obama is a Kenyan and he's anti-colonialist that's how you have to look at his his socialist policies yeah we should all be anti-colonialists yeah no that's the everyone he used anti-colonial as an

insult to Obama when that's yeah that's a hell of a thing to say it's a hell of a thing to say So, yeah, he tipped his hand a little too much there because, you know, white European good, Kenyan anti-colonial bed. And even though that's the whole thing calling Obama Kenyon is a whole nother, so we don't want to bother talking about. But it sure sounds like something a racist would say. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much what we got here. And Bambi, that's where we're going to end today with Newt Gingrich ready to begin his college teaching career. And even more importantly for him, his dreams of pulling.

political power. Yeah, mom, I'm glad we're done. We made it to the 1970s. All right. Next up, Newt will move back to Georgia to teach history and build a new kind of Republican party that will surely not cause any lasting harm or cultural damage or fuck up the world. No, no, it does. So thank you listeners for tuning in, checking out the first part of our epic saga of

Newt Gingrich. Yes, thank you to our sound engineer, Kevin, here at Raven Sound Studios. We appreciate this awesome setup and the fact that we're We sound good these days. Yeah, I love my mic. Again, go to chainsawyhistory.com if you want to check out our back catalog, get our bonus episodes, our new shows we're doing. Spoiler alert, Bambi.

Speaking of Verdun, when we get there in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, we're going to do a whole episode on Verdun. Fun, fun. Yeah, you know, the really, really just. It's so dark. Feel good story. Not to mention the value of series, where Bambi reads to me children's books and we make fun of them,

but we appreciate you. Q. And we'd like to support charities on this show. And, you know, one of Nutes, like you redeeming qualities was his lifelong love of animals and support for wildlife conservation. So for once, I will take a cue from one of our bastards and my former teacher and recommend the Wildlife Conservation Society. Their mission is to protect the most iconic and endangered species and their habitats. Been around for 120 years. They're active in 60 countries and work to protect over 200 million acres of land. They focus on combining science, conservation, education, and their work against wildlife trafficking.

They try to address climate change, protect oceans and marine life. They are a pretty cool organization, and 88% of the funds go directly to the conservation programs, not just like administration and awareness and stuff like that. It actually, most of the money goes to the thing you're donating to the animals. That's awesome. So visit WCS.org if you want to donate to them and be like the one. good part of Newt Gingrich we found so far. So, yep, everybody go round up some snakes in your backyard, throw them in jars, and scare your

grandmother. Yeah. And, you know, in honor of Newt Gingrich, I say, let's ride out on some Jefferson airplane. When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, don't you want some to love don't you need somebody to love wouldn't you love somebody to love? You better find somebody to love.