Part Of The Problem - Darryl Cooper

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by Darryl Cooper to discuss his appearance on Tucker Carlson, break down the place of WWII in American culture, and much more.Original air date: 9.12.24Part Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!Support Our SponsorsSheath - https://sheathunderwear.com use promo code PROBLEM20Lumen - https://www.lumen.me/problem for $100 off your LumenProton VPN - http://protonvpn.com/davesmithMy Patriot Supply - https://www.preparewithsmith.com/Get your tickets to Porch Tour Herehttps://porchtour.comFind Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarianSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. Very excited for today's episode. Quick reminder for those of you guys listening live, there's, or I should say when the episode first comes out, I am in Oklahoma City and Tulsa this week with Robbie the Fire, Bernstein, Comic comic Dave Smith.com for those tickets. All right. I have with me for this episode, Daryl Cooper, the host of the Martyr Made podcast, who is somebody who I have been talking about for definitely for the last year. I've been telling anyone who will listen that you got to check out the fear and loathing in the New Jerusalem series that he did on the Martyr made podcast. It's just incredible.

However, uh, over the last few days, Darrell has gone from being the guy that I'm talking about to being the guy that literally everybody is talking about after, uh, following, uh, what I thought was a really fantastic interview with Tucker Carlson. So Darrell, how has it been? You have set the internet on fire. Yeah. You know, we've been talking about getting together on the podcast for a while now and, um, you know, would that it were under happier circumstances, but, uh,

I don't think it could be under any, any more interesting ones though. It's been very surreal. I mean, you know, as strange as it sounds, given the fact that I do a podcast, a public facing podcast and everything, like I'm not the type of personality that like seeks attention or really wants attention. I don't even like doing interviews. I do this because I love you.

And like, you know, so for somebody like me who's as introverted as I am Having all this go on honestly, it's it almost feels far away like occasionally I'll be reading a story and I'm like, wow, this guy sounds like a real piece of shit. Oh wait, that's me Well, it's one of the things that's that's funny to me is that so I've had these I've never had anything like what you've Had over these last couple weeks. I've I've done some I've never had anything like what you've had over these last couple weeks I've I've done some of the bigger shows where I you know, I was like, oh this is gonna stir up some controversy or that You know, I kind of anticipated it But then I had this one thing last year

I don't know if you you saw this but I had Tucker on my show and If you had at the end of this show, if you had asked me to pick the five most controversial things, I never would have picked this. But I just said that Bill Buckley was a villain and then Tucker agreed with me. And then this became like a big controversy, nothing compared to what, what your show did. But I will tell you, I watched the like the way I experienced it was I was like,

like I knew you and Tucker were friends. And then I just saw on Twitter that you were on Tucker's show. And I went, yes, I'm going to love this because I love everything Tucker does. I love everything Darrell does. I'm going to love this, this, uh, this interview. I watched it. I was like, wow, that sure was great. And there wasn't even a part of me that was like, this is going to set the world on fire. So it was kind of interesting to be like,

oh, wow, they really, like, you know, the circles I float in, it wasn't that crazy of a thing to say it's like, yeah, we all know Churchill is the villain. I thought that was common knowledge. But did you, like, when you left Tucker's's did you anticipate it was gonna be anything like this? No, of course not. I mean Tucker told me And he reinforced it and said he's not exaggerating in 30 years in media and being at the center of a million concoctions He's never seen anything like this. So

So no, I did I definitely didn't anticipate that I didn't even know we were gonna talk about World War II as the funny thing. If I did, I would have been more prepared and probably made my case a little bit more clearly. But if anything, I would have thought that our conversation about the ongoing population replacement of European countries and how any monarch in the past

that would even imagine that he could do something like that would end up with their heads cut off. I would have thought that might have generated a little more controversy, but I mean, it's worth, it really is worth asking like why this particular thing did, because that really got to the heart of what Tucker and I were talking about.

My comments about Churchill were, as I said, in the interview, kind of hyperbolic and provocative. I was repeating something I had said to my buddy Jaco, and I told him I did it to provoke him, the hyperbolic, right? But the real thrust of the conversation was, why is it that this particular issue, World War II, is, I mean, as we saw

this last week, I mean, it is the third rail. It is the untouchable, absolute landmine that you have to stay away from, you know. And I think that that's gotten more intense, not less as the internet has opened up discourse, you know, and as the narrative has started to kind of splinter and, you know, the few sources that are used to being able to control it have begun to lose control of it, they're throwing ever more intense tantrums, you know, because like, let's be honest, like, 10 years ago, even 20 years ago, they would have just been able to snap their fingers and destroy my life. And they can't do that now, you know, and to the credit of like sub stack, for example, and, you know, which is one of the one of the income strings I have, they got ahold of me right away, let me know that I don't have anything to worry about that, you know, that they're proud of, you know, proud of where I'm at right now, not like they didn't say anything about agreeing

with my Churchill take or whatever, but they let me know that they had my back. And as long as you've got a few ways like that, a few places like that, you've got an Elon-owned Twitter where you can at least speak, and if you're not being violently inflammatory or engaging in criminal behavior, you can do it. A few of those,

a few of those is all you really need. And then all of that power kind of slips away. Yeah. There's so much that is so fascinating about this moment that you had on Tucker and almost before we even get to the substance of what you were saying on Tucker. So like that right there is one of the things I've been thinking about since this happened. Not only, it's not only like that just a few years ago,

they would have been able to say like, shut a guy like you down. Just a few years ago, you never even have this conversation because they already shut Tucker down. Like when they fire him from Fox news, that's it, you're done. You're out of the game now. Like Bill O'Reilly, like the guy who was in the same position as Tucker the number one show at 8 p.m They decided he's fired over some me too allegations or whatever and that's it billo right now He's got a show on the internet But he's removed from the national conversation

whereas Tucker goes and he's bigger than ever and then Because he's not even dealing with a corporate machine anymore He can have whoever he wants to have on and so and then now when you get this reaction The most fascinating thing about it is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much Pierce Morgan or and anybody else it like hyperventilates about it Your show was like the number one show in the world. I know on iTunes, on Spotify, all over the place. So just objectively your message is reaching way more people because of like,

that's the end result of all of it. So that right away is just so fascinating. It's like, wow, there is, we're living in a whole different information economy with different rules and different, you know, uh, where old tactics don't work anymore. And then of course, the, the thing that's, I think, proved your point was it is, as you just alluded to, it's amazing. It's, it's amazing how much outrage having an unorthodox opinion about World War II would have. And again, you know, I was thinking about this because for whatever reason, I don't

know why this is what came to my mind, but I imagine, have you ever read Democracy, the God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. Whether, whether you agree or not with the central thesis of the book, it's, it's a really like a, it's a great thought experiment and it makes you think it's a really brilliant book. But so Hoppe disclaims in this book

15 times maybe that essentially the core thesis of the book is that he's he's a libertarian who thinks the the preferable or legal order is a libertarian order but he thinks monarchy is preferable to democracy and he makes this very very clear throughout the book and I cannot tell you how many people have just told me like well Hoppe is, hop is a monarchist. He said it in democracy, the God that failed. And you're like, did you miss the 15 disclaimers in the book? And it is so funny that even as you in the clip, here's the clip that Pierce Morgan is playing me to get you. I'm like,

but what about that part in the clip where he just said, I'm being hyperbolic, or I'm not, oh, you'd assume if I'm criticizing Churchill, that means I must be supporting Hitler. But of course I'm not supporting Hitler. And they go, this guy's supporting Hitler. And you're like, did you, is everybody just so hysterical that they're incapable of listening to what was actually said, even when they're playing the clip on their show? It's just really wild. Well, you know, if you think about like what a symbol is, right? I can like Adolf Hitler was a person. He was a leader of Germany, you know, in the thirties and four to us, what he is,

is he's a symbol, right? The Holocaust is a symbol, you know, just like the cross and God and the devil, whatever their external reality and grounding in the real world to us, their symbols. Like that's how they activate for us. And so like, what does that mean? Like a symbol is like an image that is implanted, but deep in our subconscious by the culture

at a very early age that is attached to and meant to activate like a whole constellation of feelings and emotions and reactions and responses, you know, and every society, this is how societies bind themselves together, they use symbols to do it, right? Like when you see people get super, super angry and worked up over somebody desecrating the flag. Part of that is because that symbol's lodged in there and you know all of those hostile responses are sort of that's what's meant to be evoked by something like that. But also it's because on some ground level like people have some idea even if they're not thinking about it consciously, that if we start, that if everybody starts kind of

moving to a place where we don't care that the flag is being desecrated, that we're gonna come apart in certain ways. Certain things are gonna come apart that we all sort of rely on, even if that's not like really elucidated, clearly in people's minds. And I think that when you look at World War II,

I mean, it's very much like that. Like people have this, I mean, from a very, very early age, you know, literally elementary school, like it is put in your head that this is different. This is not really a historical event. This is a sort of world historical mythological event. And I don't say myth to mean that it's false or a lie, but in this symbolic sense, right,

that it plays in the culture. Like I told Tom yesterday, like it's a load bearing story, right? There's a lot that rests on this particular story being just in this way. And even if people don't have, even if they're not sort of breaking this down to themselves consciously in their minds, like they have an idea

that if we start to question this particular story, if we start to pick it apart and look at it critically, because symbols, you know, symbols never hold up to like endless critical analysis. I mean, that's one of the problems like that we run into in post-modernity, right? You can do that with everything. And so I'm not like saying these things are bad,

they're necessary, but you have to look at the functions that they're actually serving. And if you look at the functions that the World War II myth has at least, you know, has come to serve, surely some things, you know, are solid. It definitely ingrained in the Western world, like in people from a very early age

in a way that was probably never possible before, a sort of visceral reaction against group hatred based on race and things like that. When you really think about people today and people if you just go back anytime in human history, 300 years ago, like the level of just innate tolerance in your average American, it's unbelievable.

I mean, it's truly unbelievable that that transformation didn't happen over centuries. It happened really over the course of a generation or two. And the World War II story being so central to the order we're living in is a big part of it. And so that's good. That's great. But then also, World War II has been used to essentially justify the US global order, the US empire, if you want to call it that. It's been used to sort of justify the special status and privileges that are according to the state of Israel, that sort of place it above the critical evaluation and standards that we would expect above

western democratic nations, things like that. And even you mentioned democracy, like Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Democracy is one of those symbols too. And that's why people got triggered when they read that book, is that symbol was triggered in a cascade of emotions and everything else just overwhelmed the fact that he was, everything else he said. And democracy is one of those things. You can't even question, I mean, questioning democracy

is like, that's a big project. I think you gotta be very careful with that because whenever you overthrow the entire order of a society that can go in unpredictable and dangerous ways and the people who maybe have great reasons for wanting to get overthrown don't always get their way. In fact, they usually don't.

And so we have to be very careful with the larger idea, but you really like, it's not something that's even questionable. Democracy is a religious precept, you know? And so, so much really rests on that story in a way that it doesn't with World War I or the Korean War, the Vietnam War, anything like that. All those other wars, they had this ramp up of emotional attachment where, you better not be against the Iraq war in 2003, or else you're just an unpatriotic American and David Frum's going to write you out of

the conservative movement and everything else. But then it passes and that cultural power fades know that power that cultural power kind of fades away And that's how all the other conflicts work world war two has been with us for 80 years And it's really still at that at that peak, you know Alright guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is proton VPN Proton created proton VPN to further protect the journalists, activists, and everyday citizens who use Proton mail. ProtonVPN breaks down the barriers of internet censorship, allowing you to access restricted

online content. ProtonSecureVPN sends your internet traffic through an encrypted VPN tunnel to keep your browsing data safe even over public or untrusted internet connections. As a Swiss VPN provider, Proton does not log user activity or share data with third parties. Their anonymous VPN service keeps your browsing history private and enables an internet without surveillance. Proton's VPN is available on all devices, including PCs, Macs, smartphones, and even routers. A secure internet connection you can trust is essential to maintaining your privacy on

your laptop at home, your mobile device on the road, or your workstation at the office. To check out an exclusive and limited time offer, go to protonvpn.com slash Dave Smith. Again, this is a limited time offer, so go check it out today. Proton VPN.com slash Dave Smith. All right, let's get back into the show. It's such a good way to put it. And that's it's because really what it is just like, as you, as you say that, I think it's like, yes, Iraq war two was, uh, it was a myth, but it wasn't a load bearing myth.

There wasn't that much on top of it. So you could take that away. And essentially you still have the same narrative about the, the fundamentals of who we are, of what our systems are. The only other one really, right? And, and of course it's the only other war that could generate this type of, uh, controversy would be the civil war. if you were on the South side. Like if you... Yeah.

Go ahead. I was going to say I would also add the Civil Rights Movement and it's interesting because the way, especially the left, but really everybody kind of talks and thinks about it is that the Civil War, World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, it's really all one long war. Like that's how they see it, you know what I mean? It's been like the forces of tolerance and good and democracy against the forces of oppression and intolerance and racism and so forth on the other side. And they really do look at it like that. You know, that it's all been one long war

in this sort of binary monarchy in sense No, that's right. You know, there was a um, one one of your episodes that I really loved was uh on on the history of tensions between uh blacks and jews And one of the points you made there and and kind of I think this is such a useful way to understand things as these Like myths again to your point not saying that they didn't really happen Just saying how they become myths in our lives and what purpose that serves but you pointed out how really the 60s more so than you know 1776 or

1865 or anything like the 60s are really the center of the modern like five or anything like the sixties are really the center of the modern, like origin story. And the example you just used was you said, uh, you know, go desecrate, um, a statue of George Washington and then go desecrate a statue of Martin Luther King and tell me which one gets you more problems. You know, like tell me which one gets more of a hysterical outrage. And obviously we all know what the answer is to that but it's really it's it's very interesting because if you look at those three which as you point out are all

kind of seen as one but if you look at the um the civil war and the abolition of slavery um the second world war and the civil rights movement and and you realize that those really are the load bearing myths those are the ones that you're still not allowed to question or people get very outraged and then you kind of understand that and look to give the devil is due. I will say that as you kind of said too I do think like hey listen if the regime the US empire has anything it can brag about, it's that. Whether you agree with the means by which they did it or whether you want to question who everybody was, you know, not a perfect angel, but okay, like there

used to be slavery, there isn't anymore. There used to be a belief in the deep South that black people were essentially animals who didn't deserve rights. That doesn't exist anymore. animals who didn't deserve rights that doesn't exist anymore. And as you pointed out the kind of just accepted, um, idea that you could very harshly judge another group based on immutable characteristics is at an all time low, or maybe it's backtracked a little in the last 10 years,

but it's close to an all time low. But then you think about the fact that everyone in the regime, whenever somebody is an enemy of the regime, they're always some form of racist or Nazi. And you recognize that you're like, Oh yeah, that's really see, that's, that's the only thing the regime can really brag about is that we beat the racist and the Nazis. They haven't put up a W since then. And so now every villain has to be one of those two things.

You're either a racist or a Nazi. It's all kind of perfectly works out. Yeah, I mean, and those are the prime evils of this regime, right? And again, to point that out is not to say that they're not evils. It's just, in our society, you know, people, I'm sorry you had to answer for this on Piers Morgan, but I put out a tweet right after the

Paris Olympic ceremony, you know, the last supper thing, where I posted a picture of Hitler and his boys walking in front of the Eiffel Tower, and I posted a picture of that last supper desecration. And I said that the outcome of the picture on the right was preferable to the one on the left or something like that, which I took down after a few people who I trust to tell me when I'm out of bounds, like, let me know that they thought I was.

But I told them, like the reason that I did that was I was, like, outraged by what I was watching at the Paris Olympics. And I was reaching for the most extreme example possible to show my out to express my outrage about this. And in our society, it's not the devil, you know, if I would have posted a picture of Satan, like looming over the Eiffel Tower and said that this is better than that, nobody would even got it. It wouldn't have landed at all because Hitler's the devil and the Nazis

are the legions of hell and Germany. Every society has a heaven and hell. Every society has a god and a devil and they don't have to think of it that way. They don't necessarily like it may be in totally, totally different terms, and maybe in secular terms, and maybe in mythological terms that divide up God into many and devil, you know, the devil in the many evil spirit, whatever it is, but we've all got those. Like, it's just, you know, it's a basic structure of the human mind. And in our society, that's like, it's one of the reasons I'm really convinced that there's always been, just as there's an extreme focus and fascination with World War II and the Holocaust on the side of you have to treat it as this sacred thing

and treat it differently from everything else and don't be critical about it. There's also, you know, on the other side, there's always just been this like undercurrent somewhere. Even if it's just, you know, a punk rock thing or today, it's like an online thing or whatever of like a positive fascination with Hitler and the Nazis. And I like my way of looking at that is every generation

has its devil worshipers, you know? And not all of them are serious, like the people who would say that, you know, I'm a Satanist, a lot of times they're just trolls or whatever, but the devil is always going to attract a certain amount of attention from both directions, you know? And so when you take a historical event like that and elevate it to that level and make it a myth,

you're always gonna have like two sides of that, two extreme reactions to doing that. Yeah, it's such a funny thing. Like there's also something just to, um, the culture of, um, political correctness and, and, and, you know, whatever that's transformed into like woke ism or whatever exactly it is now. But I also, there's something really funny. Like when they, I was thinking this when, uh, Pierce Morgan, or it wasn't Pierce, it was, uh,

it was somebody else who was on the show with me. But when he was bringing up that, that tweet and you're, you know, when you're in this like environment where people are doing like, well, how about this tweet? He said, and it's very hard to just go, well, I mean, he's clearly fucking with you on that one, you know, like, okay, well, he's clearly like, this is, this is clearly like being provocative or something like that. Whereas, you know, I, again, it was, it was such a weird environment, by the way,

being on that Pierce Morgan show because, and I enjoy doing Pierce's show. I appreciate that he's had me on so many times, but he, it was not at all explained to me that this was going to be a three on one debate all about you, you know? And I certainly didn't realize like someone from the house of lords was going to be there to fact check me as I'm having this debate. It was such a, it's such a bizarre experience to be in, but then, um, I realized, you know, I was actually kind of pleased cause the reaction that I've

gotten to it was very positive. And so one of the things that I thought was just, it's obviously I'm not going to win a world war two debate against like some world renowned historian, but that wasn't really what the debate was even over. And I'm sitting there and I'm like the only one who's ever listened to your stuff. Nobody else has. And so we're having, it's almost like we're all going to get in an argument about a book that nobody's read except me.

And then they're all going to go around and tell me how appalled they are about this book. And then I'm just like hey guys Remember in chapter 3 when he dealt with all the stuff that you guys are talking about and I mean all For anybody who hasn't you know, and I'm sure there's some people who haven't checked it out yet But I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who have oh I mean forget even any of your stuff with World War two All you really have to do is listen to the first 15 minutes of fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem before you're like, yeah,

clearly that's not who this guy is. Right? Like you're, you're not somebody who's like, Oh, come on. Like, you know, the person, the persecution of Jews has been greatly exaggerated and it really wasn't that big of a deal. And in fact, in all of your work, one of the things that I think really drew me to loving your stuff so much was just that your one kind of guiding rule through all of your projects that I've listened to, certainly fear and loathing in the New Jerusalem, maybe not so much with the Epstein stuff, but certainly with fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem, maybe not so much with the Epstein stuff, but certainly with fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem is that you're

like kind of demanding that your listener really appreciate how brutal it would have been to be in this situation or this situation. And you kind of insist that you put yourselves, yourself in those shoes, which is a, it's emotionally an experience to actually really try to do that. I think far too many of us, even people who are interested in history, kind of just read it almost like checking off a list

of things that you know, or trying to understand this. I wanna know this so I can win an argument, or I wanna know this to know this, but to really sit there and be like no no no no that's not this guy's wife that's my wife that's my wife right now getting beaten in front of me that's my kid watching me watch my wife getting beaten and um so it's anyway I guess it's just interesting to see that the thing for everybody who's a fan of yours that is kind of your calling card,

which we all appreciate so much about you is that you really do work so hard to make sure that people really have an appreciation for the suffering in whatever period of time you're, you're covering. And then for that, to go from that to the caricature of like the accusation essentially was that you're downplaying that you're downplaying you're downplaying the suffering it's just like I don't know why it just bothered me so much that it's like now if you know this guy say whatever you will about him you've got that all wrong that's not who Darrell Cooper is all

right guys let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show which is my Patriot supply I love this company. As you know, life is precious, and things can be taken away from you in an instant. And we've all lived through some pretty, let's say, unstable years. That's why I keep four-week emergency food kits from MyPatriot Supply in my home.

It's got everything my family could need during a crisis. With over 2,000 calories per day, there's enough food to go around during times of social unrest, government crackdowns, or God forbid, an attack on the United States of America. The food lasts up to 25 years and it's ready whenever disaster strikes. I know that after the last few years, I'm not going to take my family's safety for granted anymore, and I'd imagine you're not either. So right now now you can get $50 off the same four-week emergency food kits that I keep in my house by going to my website, preparewithsmith.com. Again, you'll save $50 off your four-week emergency food kits, and my Patriot Supply will send it over as fast as humanly possible. Get your

four-week emergency food kits now at preparewithsmith.com. That's preparewithsmith.com. All right, let's get back into the show. One of the things I told Tucker, and it is really my guiding philosophy when I make the podcast, and the ones like, I really only feel like I failed to do it one time, which with the anti-humans episode,

but and I think it's one of my worst, even though a lot of people think it's my best, but is that everybody in my story, everybody, Jim Jones, psychotic, suicidal cult leader, this Zionist terrorist, this British commander that is butchering the Arabs during the Arab revolt in the 30s, this Arab terrorist who just massacred a bunch of people in Jerusalem. Everybody in my... I did one on the Meli massacre, Lieutenant Kelly. Everybody in all my stories at one point was a three-year-old kid, and they were not evil.

Look, you have people who, there are just, and maybe this isn't even true, I don't know, I'd have to think about it. But maybe Jeffrey Dahmers are out there and they're just, something happens so earlier, they're born a certain way that they you know, that they don't count. But the exception proves the rule, right? All of these were three-year-old kids.

In one of the fear and loathing episodes, I talk about Uday Hussein, monster. I mean, just an absolute sadistic monster, right? Like not just somebody who's willing to be ruthless and brutal. He was a sadistic, evil human being. and you look at it and you act, you know You look at it though and you say that like that dude didn't he wasn't like in the waiting room You know to be born and he said all I'll pick Saddam's son. That's who I want to be

I want to be Saddam's son. He was dressed into that into that world and it's our encounter with the world that like to a large extent shapes who we become, you know, and And I want to try to understand that about people and the thing is whenever I say this Everybody's like yeah awesome. That's a noble way of approaching things. That's great. Whoa Not them Everybody knows they're different. There's evil and like, you know, the blow up last week was obviously over, you know, the Germans in the World War II period, but you know, my wife's Armenian and they have, you know,

if you, like, for example, if you are over here in the United States or any Western country and you're in elementary school. They made me watch Schindler's List when I was like, I remember watching it in fifth or sixth grade, which I think is kind of crazy to be like that's a little much for like a 10-year-old to be handling. But anyway, if it comes up as a topic in class,

in middle school or something in America, any Western country, and you raise your hand and say, yeah, I don't think that happened, not only are you going to be corrected, you're gonna be punished for that most likely, like in some way, whether it's, you know, anyway. But if you're talking about World War I and somebody brings up the Armenian genocide,

and you raise your hand and say, yeah, I don't think it happened that way. You might get corrected, but you're not gonna be punished like in any way whatsoever, it's fine. Now, if you were in school over in Armenia, and you raise your hand and said, yeah, I don't think the Turks actually did any of that, like I think this is all made up,

then you're gonna get punished, right? Over there, it has that cultural power, because over there, that is a load-bearing story. There is a lot of just like sort of Armenian self- understanding at this point in history and stuff that does sort of rest on that. And over here, it doesn't have that kind of power. It doesn't have that power in Europe, but the Holocaust and World War II, it does have that power. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And I guess I really do think this is one of the reasons why I just love your style so much and I really enjoy. I mean, obviously a part of it is because I just, you're incredibly well-read. I've learned a lot from, from your different series. Um, but there is something like I literally, my, my origin story of being really interested in politics was the Ron Paul Giuliani moment. And I just thought that was like the most fascinating thing ever,

because as, as we've both pointed out this, you know, ultimately ended up not being such a load bearing story as we were able to get rid of it. But at the time it kind of was, and at the time it still felt like, oh, this is what's justifying the entire Bush administration, the war on terrorism, all of this stuff. And Ron Paul just makes this point, which really the essence of the point was just like, well, listen, they don't hate us because they're just monsters that aren't people. They hate us for reasons.

And the reasons are this. And you could kind of be like, yeah, all right. I understand that. It actually doesn't take that much work to understand why maybe you would want to become a terrorist if you were living, you know, in Egypt and, you know, in Egypt and, you know, you have sympathies toward the Palestinian people and sympathy toward the Iraqi people.

And you don't particularly like the dictator that's been propped up in your country. It doesn't take that long before you'd go like, Oh, you have, you kind of hate America for that. It's like, okay, that's, that's really not that hard. It's actually very, very easy. Like, and, and I mean this, uh, aside from some of the, like understanding all the details, my five-year-old can get that. Like my five-year-old is capable,

a four-year-old that might be a little bit tough for, but like by five, if they're healthy, they should be able to get that, like, how would you feel if someone did this to you? That would make me feel bad. And there's something about your work that just gives you this to you that would make me feel bad like that and there's something about your Work that just it gives you permission to do that even with even with evil people that you could still kind of understand And so I guess you know you you mentioned earlier

Something about I forget exactly you said but something about being you know You have to be a little bit careful before you tear down some of these load-bearing But something about being, you know, you have to be a little bit careful before you tear down some of these load bearing stories because they you know, and i've i've grown to appreciate that more the older I get like I i'm a radical You know politically speaking but I do as I get older go like okay But like even if I had full control and we could tear things down you're like, let's tear them down very carefully Let's let's make sure we're not just destructive for no reason because chaos is very bad. At the same time, as a historian, I think you know that it's important to understand what actually happened here. And so with the stuff with World War II, you

know, okay, sorry, I'm rambling a little bit, but one of the points you made in your 30-minute piece that they put out. You're in good company. Yes. Well, I know. Well, one of the points that you made in this 30 minutes, uh, kind of response to the controversy that you put out on your, on your feed there, which I posted on my Twitter, if anyone wants to go find it, um, is that you were like, look like, and this is what I always felt like with the Ron Paul stuff is you're like,

look, if I'm just going to get up here and you get on a giant show like Tucker Carlson show, and you were to say, Hey, in case you didn't know this, the Nazis were really bad. Adolf Hitler was not a good guy. Um, and, and let me tell you, their treatment of Jews was unacceptable. Like what have you added to the conversation? Yeah. Like what, what do you, what have you added to the conversation? Yeah. Like what, what do you, what have you added to the conversation? If you say that, that would be the equivalent of Ron Paul getting on the debate stage in 2007 and

saying, Hey, Osama bin Laden's a bad guy and all the people responsible for 9-11 should be brought to justice. Now, Ron Paul believes that, but it's not adding anything to say that. And so what, what do you think if you could sum up, obviously, real quick, it's not adding anything to say that and so what what do you think if you could sum up? Obviously, it's a real quick. It's a ritual. I mean, that's a ritual, you know, it's a sort of me. It's almost like you know like Muslims before they do certain religious

Activities they'll like ritually wash themselves in a very specific way. You know, you're sort of cleansing yourself. Now you can like go do this thing. It's kind of similar. Like people expect you to say, you know, give a big disclaimer, you know, state the religious incantation that now gives you permission to maybe criticize, you know, her Jill or something. Right. Right. Right. So it's almost like this, they're upset that you're not performing the ritual. But let me- You're not paying proper respect to something that is, that really is like a sacred symbol to them, you know? That's the way they see it. Well, what do you think? Obviously you have the, as you mentioned on Tucker, you have

your next thing is going to be a big piece on World War II. If you could, obviously you're not going to give it justice, but what do, but what is kind of the important other side of the story here? Like what is it you think that people today need to understand about World War Two that you're not going to get from the caricature version of kind of like, well the only thing you need to know is that it's the greatest thing that ever happened, the Nazis are the devils, and we'd all be speaking German if we hadn't have fought this thing. What do you think is the most important thing to understand about it? Yeah.

So, this isn't going to be like a historical analysis or anything simply because what I'm about to say, I mean, not the podcast, it will be, but just because like my process is when I pick a topic, whatever, June Jones and Jonestown, World War II, whatever, I basically take, in the case of World War II, it's impossible to read everything that's been written on it, but Jonestown, I think I did read every single thing that was ever written on it, but this it's impossible.

And so, I take like the 15 or 20 books that are sort of the best and most regarded sort of general surveys of the war, some key biographies that are sort of the mainstream biographies of some of the key figures, and I read those and read them over and over sometimes until okay the timeline is now firmly entrenched in my head like all the timeline of events the important people the day all that kind of stuff is just in there so now I can go out and actually read other things and think and branch out and think about this and I have that scaffolding to hang anything that I find

onto right and so then I start then I start with one like this, once I've done that, and I have done that, actually completed that part of it maybe six or eight months ago. For the last six or eight months, I've been focusing on the first episode, which is sort of a general history of the position of the German people in Europe,

that's going, you know, and Prussia, and just the sort of the forging of that Prussian militarist culture, the, you know, the wars of national revolution and ideological currents that led to them in the 19th century up to World War I and any immediate aftermath and so that's all I've been thinking about and been reading about and so I wouldn't like come and say like you know here's like the three points about the war in general because honestly like I don't know what those are going to be like I don't you know a lot of times I don't know where my series are going until until I get there, you know, and um, but so my answer is going to be more general and it's that um you know the Germans were human beings, you know, and I don't say that in like a sort of bleeding heart way like therefore you should feel sorry for them when they

got bombed or what I mean talking about talking talking about them. I'm talking about they were human beings with built-in impulses and motivations and fears and prejudice, just all of the same things as you and the history that they were thrust into led to this outcome. And that's what we really wanna try to understand. Having gone through so deeply into the Jonestown story I'm actually it's one of the things that made me want to really want to do this one

first of all simply because um and again, like there's gonna be a lot of just sort of People like people who will jump to conclusions about what I mean here, but there's a lot of parallels between Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler. I mean, personality wise, just the effect that they had on people close to them that is really hard to understand from the outside. You read the way Goebbels talks about Hitler

and it's almost like, there's almost like a homoerotic element to it. He loves him, you know, just like the people love Jim Jones. And so, you know, they both obviously spent their last years completely hopped up on amphetamines and suffered the, you know, the paranoia and general decline that comes with that. They both ended up in this siege situation where they felt like the whole world was trying to destroy them. And they essentially had a bunch of hostages that they were going to take with them if

the enemy ever, ever closed in. And like, there's just, there's a, there's a lot of parallels. I don't want to take it too far. Cause what people hear when I say that is like, Oh, Hitler was just crazy. Jim Jones or something. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about like in a much more fundamental way. Um, But the going through the Jim Jones story, the thing you learn is like that, you know, the the the the

The mainstream story that there was this guy Who was so charismatic? So almost had a mind control power that he was just so almost had a mind control power that he was just, that he just overwhelmed these people with his charisma and his presence and pulled them in and turned it into a cult of personality and dragged them along to their tragic deaths, right? That that's just not true, you know?

That that's just not what happened. That this was something that involved like all of the people in People's Temple and Jonestown, that this was not something that it was just reducible to one guy. And one of the reasons we have that, we sort of have that idea of it is because the people who led Jonestown like at the end,

almost all of whom were leaders who would help build this whole thing and then jumped out of the car at the last minute while it was headed toward a cliff on fire. People who had been responsible for terrible things, in building this man up and this organization up, deceiving the people who would end up dying. I had a lot of responsibility for what happened out there. Came out and obviously had a very strong interest in portraying themselves as helpless victims. It was just Jim Jones. We were just pulled along, we got caught. And that's where it's from those people that we get our idea of what happened out there. Not to like, again, downplay Jones'

personality power or anything else himself, but nothing like that can ever be reduced to just one guy. And we've done the exact same thing with World War II and Hitler. Hitler is the only player in the war that, if you see the reaction specifically to my criticisms of Churchill, Hitler is the only player in the story that is assumed to have any agency at all. The entire world is just dragged along by this one man. And that's it.

And so that doesn't leave any room for asking questions like is there anything that our side could have done differently that might have averted and you did such a great job the other day stating really the central point, which is you can come up with counterfactuals and alternative scenarios and, you know, there's always problems with that. But it's pretty safe to say that the worst thing that ever happened in the history of

the world was probably the worst outcome of the choices we made, right? And maybe we could have done things differently and it would have been 7 million Jews instead of 6 million or whatever, but I mean pretty much the worst possible outcome is the one we got, right? And so when you reduce it to this one guy who has all the agency dragging everybody else along, it just eliminates any room for questioning what anybody else could have could have could have changed. All right guys let's take a quick moment I want to tell you about a chance to win a year's supply of sheath underwear the most comfortable boxer briefs you will ever put on your body say goodbye to those old cheap pairs of boxer briefs and step your game up like I have with sheath underwear.com

all you got to do is click the link in the episode description to be entered for a chance to win a year's supply of sheath underwear, the official underwear of the part of the problem podcast, or you can always just go grab a new pair of your sheath collection with my promo code problem20, which will get you 20% off at sheath.com. So click the link in the episode description for a chance to win a year's supply of sheath underwear,

or just go over to sheath.com and use the promo code problem20 for 20% off your entire order. Sheath underwear has been a longtime sponsor of this show. The company is run by great people and it is the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you will ever own. So one more time, sheath.com promo code problem 20 for 20% off your

order. All right, let's get back into the show. Well, you know what's, what's crazy to me, and I really appreciate you saying that because you know, much more so than just, uh, you know, like I appreciate what my wife says. I had a good show, but it means more to me when you say I had a good show on, uh, the history of world war two as you're studying it. Um, but you know, one of the things that's just crazy to me is that even by, and again, it, it's better to understand it from your perspective than it all makes sense.

These are just rituals, but even by, like if you try to take it as a logical foundation, even by the standard mainstream approach and it's kind of all about the Holocaust, you know, like the other tens of millions of civilians who died don't quite rise up to that level for whatever reason. But even if you take it at that, it's like for the Jews it was the worst outcome. I mean, even like, you know, like, right, like you said, like, it could have been seven million. I mean, I don't know if there was another million even to be found.

But the whole thing, one of the things that's really fascinating to me, which nobody really seems to ever focus on about world war two is that even from the perspective of, of the Jews is that you had like whatever, you know, I don't have the numbers, uh, uh, in front of me right now, but Jews were a small percentage of Germany. Um, and the Jews in Germany, uh, you know, got it pretty bad and progressively worse as Hitler, you know, as the years after the Nazis came to power. But it's not until he starts going into the East that he starts controlling territory

where there's like real numbers of Jews, where they're like, oh, there's like millions of them in Poland and Ukraine and all these areas and yet you're still not allowed to even You know what? I mean like even question like oh well Maybe something could have been done where the nazis didn't end up taking control of all of these territories or something like that like like even by the the official Story's own parameters you'd think we'd be able to ask a lot more questions about like what could have been done? What would have been much better to work out a deal

where he didn't invade Poland? I mean, I don't know, maybe that wouldn't have worked, but was anyone even attempting that? It seems like no, they were trying to attempt to get him to go West and then go East and then leave the Jews with no place to flee to. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they were thinking of it that way. But I think they were just thinking it in terms of imperial politics

in Britain and everything else, you know. But the example I gave in that response was, if you got a bunch of police outside a house and inside there's a messed up father holding a gun on his wife and children threatening to kill everybody inside. And the police outside, you know, like if that situation ends in a murder suicide, which World War Two did in Germany, essentially, you know, there's always going to be well, once that happens, the person who says, well, we should have maybe been

a little nicer to that guy, maybe we shouldn't have like blasted loud music at him all night so that he couldn't sleep and got more deranged as time went on. Maybe we shouldn't have threatened him and told him if he doesn't come out of there. Like maybe we should have taken a more conciliatory approach. Once it ends in disaster, nobody's gonna want to hear that shit, you know what I mean? And I get that. The only story anybody's gonna want to hear is the cop

that said, I told you, you know, all along, we should have sent the SWAT team in at the very first minute. None of this would have happened, partly because that guy might be right, might be right, but also just because anything else you do seems like you're blaming somebody other than the dude who just shot his kids, you know what I mean? And you would hope, and I think this is again, what happens with most conflicts,

most historical events in general is that some time passes and you are able to step back and really look at it that way and ask what the police could have done differently. And you know because if you're the grandmother of your daughter's now dead and your grandkids are dead you know and you find out later like people got really upset when I pointed out that Hitler made several peace overtures after the invasion of Poland, after he was in complete control of France. He was making several peace overtures telling the British that this is going to destroy

your empire, this is going to be a total disaster, we should not do this. It's going to weaken us with Soviet Union like looming over here. We shouldn't do this to the point where he's lying, you know, as Churchill is sending bombers and just bombing civilian neighborhoods in the early days of the strategic air war, for months and months, Hitler is not, he's refusing to allow any German bombers to go hit civilian areas

in Britain. In fact, he's sending planes over to drop leaflets, trying to get directly to the British people because he knows that the, just like in Germany, the press is censored, trying to get the message directly to them, we don't want to fight you, you know. And that's just a fact. And now, of course, people people can say that and this is what everybody does say Is that those were totally insincere? He was trying to buy time He just wanted to like get a moment to breathe so that he could get on his next conquest All of which may be true. No matter what the cops did

That guy inside might have killed his family anyway, right? That's a hundred percent true but if you are the grandparents of the girl who's dead and the grandkids who were dead, and you find out afterwards that that guy was saying, all right, I'll come out if you do X, Y, and Z. And maybe the first one was a little bit ridiculous. And he says, okay, how about just X and Y? And it's a little less ridiculous.

And it gets to the point where you know maybe maybe even the final offer that he gives before the disaster is still you know something that nobody in their right mind could really accept but you find out that the cops didn't even talk to him about that in fact they threw him back in his face and said we're not even having this discussion like this ends with you dead that's where where this ends. If you found that out, you would be very upset. And I feel like that's the point I was trying to get across in the Tucker interview. And I think that's a major theme of the lead up to the war. Not that that guy inside the house was not dangerous or crazy, but because he...

I don't think Hitler started out crazy. I think he went crazy, right, as time went on. But not that that guy's not dangerous and you're an explosive situation, but because you're in that situation, you have an obligation to treat it with, you know, a certain amount of delicacy, you know, and try to recognize the fact that of the two parties here, like we're the responsible parties. We're the ones who are like really responsible for figuring out a way to make sure that woman and those kids get out alive.

That's our responsibility. It's not his responsibility. He's in there messed up with a gun pointed at him. That's just, and it doesn't mean he's not responsible for their murders if it happens. It just means that the responsibility, you know, falls on us to figure out a way to get them out of it. Yeah, well, particularly and this is such a good point. And this is something that I've kind of I've found myself kind of bringing up

this in a lot of the Israel-Palestine debates that I've done, where it'll kind of be like the starting point is that, well, we're supposed to be on Israel's side because they're an advanced first world Western country, just like us. And then it's kind of like, well, all right, but if you want to claim that status, then I, there's an onus on you that there isn't on Hamas like you don't get to fight the way Hamas fights no I'm not saying Israel fights exactly like Hamas fights but like there is a different expectation like again you know to your

example like or if you make it more like what Israel does that the police come and instead of negotiating they just bomb the building and blow it up and kill all the innocent people inside they They kill the family themselves, but they took out that militant while they did it. It's like, well, no, no, you don't get to do that. Because the whole thing is that like, you're paid by my tax dollars because you say you're the civilized one. Then my only available response to that is that then I hold you to a much higher standard and that you have to conduct yourself in a way like a civilized fighting force,

not to say, well, hey, it's Hamas, so we get to do whatever we want to. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I mean, think about when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. And if somebody would have come to you, everybody like with the with the Gaza situation, if you criticize the behavior of the IDF in Gaza, the first way, why aren't you criticizing Hamas? Imagine after the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, you know, broke, and you're criticizing the behavior of US soldiers in there, people are saying, why aren't you criticizing al-Qaeda in Iraq? What about what they're doing? It's like, I don't think they're listening to me.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't think what I say really has a huge bearing on what they do. And, um, you know, that's just, to me, that's just pretty obvious, you know? And I think it's pretty obvious, honestly, when you state it like that to most people until again, you run up against one of these load bearing myths. Yep. Well, you know, I was thinking about this one because uh, like as you, you've been talking and because it's we're recording today on nine 11.

And so of course I, I opened up Twitter before we were recording and it's just, uh, everybody with the worst nine 11 conspiracies that I just, you know, and it's a lot of people I like, so I'm not trying to trash them. And I don't even want to like post against them today because I like, I don't even want to hear it. But it's like some of these, some of the conspiracy theories that just should have died a long time ago that are almost as bad as the response to 9-11 was like guys. No, like, anyway, there are, there are good, by the way,

there are good 9-11 conspiracies and good questions that aren't answered. But then there's also some really bad ones that just like, you know, like no a missile didn't hit the Pentagon. But anyway Alright guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is lumen lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic Coach it's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app It lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep, and even stress management. Your metabolic health is your body's engine.

It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, et cetera. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health.

It can also track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts so you can keep up your energy and stave off cravings. If you wanna take the next step to improving your health right now, go to lumen.me and use the promo code problem to get $100 off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N.ME and use the promo code problem at checkout for $100 off. Thank you to lumen for sponsoring today's episode

Let's get back into it But so there was this one and I haven't read about this in years So forgive me audience if I'm like butchering this a little bit but the point I'm making is that this is this is the danger in kind of the Mythologizing of these things or that when people like have this kind of religious like Devotion to it. So to your example, we're like once it goes really bad. No one wants to hear about how it was kind of the cops fault Once 9-eleven happened and I was in New York City at the time. That's where I was born and raised

it's Everybody there is kind of traumatized. They're kind of in shell shock and immediately they decide that Rudy Giuliani is a hero because you know, he was there. Like literally there was no, there was never even a shred of logic attached to why Rudy Giuliani is a hero. He came down there and he was there and he was the mayor, you know, and he said, we're going to be tough, but I don't know if you, were you familiar with this doubt? So there was this real scandal where Rudy Giuliani had insisted that like the

command control center be, I can't remember if it was in building seven or it was in one of the other surrounding buildings there and a bunch of his people thought him on it and they were like, don't put this here because as much as people may not remember this, it was kind of known that the world trade center was like the most likely terrorist target in the world. They had already hit it in 93 and almost toppled the thing. And so Giuliani insisted on putting the like command control center there. And then the day of 9-11, it's completely off limits

because no one can get into it. And this is the reason why there was this terrible communication on 9-11. This is why not a lot of cops died on 9-11, but a ton of firefighters died. And it's because the firefighters didn't get the word that you're supposed to pull out right now. And so they don't get the word till late.

And so they're also, while they're trying to pull out right now and so they don't get the word till late And so they're also while they're trying to put out fires They're also obstructing the way to get out of the building and like I don't know exactly what the numbers of people who like didn't Get out because they were there, but there's certainly a lot of firefighters who died who didn't need to die on 9-eleven But we will never have that conversation Ever because as soon as you made it into this religion for you to come out like even if you're not saying the bad guy in the actual thing that led to 911 was Giuliani. If you're just saying, hey, there is this scandal where a lot of people died who maybe didn't have to die because of this decision you're like well sorry we've already made that guy a saint and so we're not having this conversation at least for another decade you're never going to get to have this conversation and so this is um this is a way where that kind of uh religious

spirit really directly prevents us from understanding something and correcting it, you know, like potentially like not making that same mistake again. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's, you know, that process is meant to reinforce and protect the emotional, the emotive power that, you know, that a symbol like that has for us so that, you know, it can serve as a sort of so that it can serve as a sort of like an activating, like binding agent, you know? They can pull us together for certain purposes or at certain times when it's activated. And so, yeah, I'll be honest with you,

like one of the side effects of just being a nerd who's always buried in some history book is there's a lot of stuff like the 9-11 stuff I'm like I pretty much just outsource all of my thinking about that to Scott Horton and like it like I sort of just trust him to tell me the best version of events and like I really don't know a whole lot about the like the conspiracies or any of the stuff about it to be honest with you I know Scott's done the research and he'd tell me if if something was bullshit. So Yeah, well, it's not a bad person to outsource your thoughts to I've been I've been guilty a time or two myself with Scott

And you I'm not guilty though. I think that's you look we have to do that, right? Yes We can know there's only so many hours in the day Yes, no, even in the even in the stuff that you know about, there's always still, well, maybe not you with Jim Jones, but like in every other scenario, there's always another book you should read on it. There's another thing you should learn about it. So, and that's in the areas of stuff that we do know. One of, um,

one of the things that I think is really interesting and I'll, I'm curious to get your, your kind of thoughts on this, but you know, you mentioned earlier in the show where like, look, there are risks to tearing down some of these load bearing stories. And for better or for worse, the time we're living in seems to be a time where like they're all being torn down or at least they're, they're all much more damaged than they've ever been before.

And it seems to me that there is a fairly obvious, uh, positive and negative aspect to this. I tend to think the positive outweighs the negative, but when you see kind of, like, um, you know, as you mentioned before, like the people who are kind of pulled into the Satan worshiping, whatever that may be, do you think is it overall, is it better now that so much, so many of the lies and the propaganda, um, and the,

um, exploitation of, of events used by the current regime are kind of all being destroyed. So they can't get away with a lot of their corruption that they used to be able to, or at least they can't get away with it and people not be aware of it. However, the flip side to that, I guess,

would be that we probably have never been at a point where there is less that is binding us together in terms of like commonly shared mythology. Um, do you think this is a positive or a negative or, or is it both and does one outweigh the other? What do you think? I would just say it's, um, I wouldn't say it's positive or negative, but I would say it's dangerous, you know, and that sounds negative. I don't mean it that way.

I just mean that, you know, when you have a situation like that, you know, we had something sort of similar when the printing press was invented and people started putting out vernacular Bibles and all of a sudden you had just local people, whether it's you know the peasant who's learning to read or just the local person who did learn to read in the village or something reading it to everybody else, starting to read the Bible themselves and starting to form different interpretations and opinions of what it meant. At a time when, I mean, that was, the Bible and the Christian story, it was the American flag, the Holocaust, Abraham linkage, everything wrapped into one.

Like that was the formation that determined the shape of society and the way people related to each other in terms of class and just everything, I mean, it was everything. And so you start questioning that. And maybe from today, we can look back on that and say, well, you know, look, people's minds were like freed up and it's great that people are able to question things now

and we have all the benefits of it. We didn't go through the centuries of religious war that resulted from it. And so, I mean, look, like here's a, maybe I shouldn't even go down this road right now, but it's just a thought experiment. Although I know they'll leave that part out of the Piers Morgan clip.

Of course. Is that if you go, like let's say, if Israel is a thriving country 500 years from now, it is entirely, entirely with, I would even say it's, I would maybe even say it's probable that the historians, Israeli historians 500 years from now will look back at the Holocaust with some amount of like positive feeling

in the sense that they look at the persecution by the Egyptians. It's obviously it's a bad thing, but it's what brought us together. It's what like formed our reinforced our self identity and our understanding and our sense of purpose in the world. And so like that's entirely possible. Maybe it's a thousand years from now or something.

But that's a kind of a that's kind of a crazy thought. But you know, I do think that that's true. And so that's worth thinking about. Well, right, because they if we're talking 500 years in the future, they would say we never would have had a state of Israel without that. That is essentially the origin story, right? Yeah. No, it's an interesting way to put it Alright, listen, we do have to wrap up

I just I cannot recommend Darrell Cooper's work highly enough if people if you haven't checked out the martyr made podcast I just I can't encourage you strongly enough to go do it if you were Darrell What would you say if someone, and obviously this might depend on your interest a little bit, but if you were to recommend where to start, if there's someone new who maybe just found you from Tucker or is just hearing you on this interview now, is there, uh, any episode of yours that you would be like,

here's a good one to go start with? Well, I can tell you my favorite episode to create and really the only one I'm one of those people every time I like I'm going to listen back to this interview and think I sound like a complete moron, you know. But the only one I don't fully feel that way about is number 20, the underground spirit, which is the one I did, I really kind of veered off the road on that one. I didn't know how people were going to respond. But a lot of people say it's their favorite as well.

It's about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and kind of their parallel biographies and their ideas. And it's not as dry as it sounds. It's a great story. And I would say that one, if you have absolutely no interest in that kind of thing, gosh, don't to ask you to commit to one of the really long series.

So maybe the Epstein series, you know, I went pretty deep on that. And, you know, although the original research, you know, was derivative, you know, from people who had done research ahead of me and that I used. There's, I think, a lot of insight in there and a framing of the situation that's pretty unique. Yeah, I absolutely.