The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - History Meets Galaxy with Tony Gilroy and Mike Duncan

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

In an era that can feel like a tinderbox, Jon is joined by Tony Gilroy, creator of "Andor" and Oscar nominee, and Mike Duncan, bestselling author and creator of the "History of Rome" and "Revolutions" podcasts. Together, they examine what draws ordinary people into extraordinary historical moments, explore the catalysts that spark revolutions, and consider how both fictional narratives and historical analysis illuminate our present. This podcast episode is brought to you by: SURFSHARK - Go to https://surfshark.com/stewart and use code stewart at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! GROUND NEWS - Go to https://groundnews.com/stewart to see how any news story is being framed by news outlets around the world and across the political spectrum. Use my link to get 40% off unlimited access with the Vantage Subscription. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast> TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod   > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic  Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. We are back after being off for, I think a week there and we're taping this damn thing.

What is there? Wednesday, July 9th. It's probably going to air tomorrow. As of this moment, the Epstein files are still not here. They were here. They were on a desk and then they weren't on the desk. And then they said that they don't have the files. Apparently a gentleman named Jessery Epstein, who was sex trafficking hundreds of people. There were hundreds of victims of this, but apparently acted alone. There are no files. And then maybe tomorrow they will have the files.

And it turns out all the files were written on with lemon juice on paper. Oh, they just had to hold them up under the light. And then they appeared again. Uh, this has been such a surreal experience, uh, watching this administration in this moment, look, Donald Trump very clearly came to power. The, the, the fuel of his rise was the kinetic energy of conspiracy. He rode the power of a quote unquote, the secret knowledge

to light up his audiences, to drive them mad with injustice and how they were gonna fight it. There was this deep state and they all knew about it. And there was a liberal conspiracy and there were children involved and they were and and Trump and all his influencers and all those individuals that force amplified The conspiracies are

What I think Drew his movement together. It was in many ways, it's the glue that holds the Magna moment much more than I think patriotism does. It's the glue of secret knowledge, of unknown forces that work against you to cause your life. And one of the main forces was this exemplified by this Epstein thing.

And everybody talked about, oh, when they got in there and they were gonna, where we go one, we go all, and we're gonna clean this thing up. And it is so fucking bananas to watch them now try and diffuse this bomb that they planted watching fam bonding. I don't know if you saw the cabinet meeting where somebody, uh, the, the first moment they, they brought up Epstein in the cabinet meeting and Trump immediately jumps in the really, you're going to talk about that guy, that guy, the guy that, uh, my audience has been

like clamoring about for, for 10 years. That's the guy you're going to bring up while children are missing in Texas. And you're like, man, you like, you were golfing the whole weekend. What are you talking about? How dare someone ask a question. It's desecration. You were on like the 11th hole when all this was going down. You didn't, you didn't change.

And it's a very reasonable question, but to watch Pam Bondi have to go from, and it's the same that happened with Pungino and Patel, to go from conspiracy theorist to reasoned expert is just chef's kiss. Oh, there's a minute missing from the prison videos. They had security camera footage from the prison, but there's a minute missing from 11.59 to midnight.

And that minute, man, you can fit, how many conspiracies can you fit on the head of a minute? Like you can fit them all and watching Pam Bondi have to go, you know, I get, no, listen, I get it, you know, minute is missing, but it turns out there's a very simple explanation and it's somewhat innocuous. So it's not the, the sinister motives that everybody thought it was. So I'm sure that will take all the air out of this conspiracy because I've just explained to you there's a very reasonable explanation for why that doesn't exist. Watching them dance on the head of this pin is going to be and I will guarantee you that ultimately

you're already starting to see it. It's fire Pam Bondi. It's not fire the guy who's in all the pictures with Epstein and who said, I don't know if I'm going to release the files because there's a lot of phony stuff in there. And Trump said there was phony stuff in there. And we all know the definition of phony when it comes to Donald Trump. Anything that reflects poorly on Donald Trump is phony or fake. So by the very fact that he used that word specifically tells you something very much so. And I'm sure it'll morph because somehow dear leader will find his way out of it.

It'll be a Pambandi or it'll be somehow there or it'll be the Mossad or they'll come up with some fucking idea that, oh, actually Trump has been really smart. He's got all the information and he's using it as a compromise to bring peace to this world. But man, what an upside down, it's like watching the movie Speed. They've all been in the bus driving 80 miles an hour. And suddenly the driver

turns out to be one of them. And he's like, actually, I planted the boss, I planted the bomb. And I'm the one who said we couldn't drive less than 80. It's man, we're in such a weird moment, man. And that's why so we have we have a great couple of guests today that can actually talk about this weird moment that we're in through the lens of history and through the lens of art and fiction. Two people that I just, I so admire the work

that they both do. So I wanna get to that and get out of the absurdity of the moment that we're in. So let's get to them. Folks, I am excited here. I've got two fellas. I'm huge fan of both of these individuals. We've got Tony Gilroy, who if you're fans of the,

the Bourne series, the writer, sometimes director of all those greatolutions podcasts, including the upcoming, it's now over in the podcast, but as you know, in the future, there will be a Martian revolution. And Mike Duncan has very graciously informed us about the various things that are going to happen in the Martian revolution. But the reason I wanted to have you both together on the podcast in this moment, because I feel like this is one of those fraught moments in time where we all feel we may be on the precipice of one of these schisms that leads to something historic, but maybe people always feel that way but the reason i wanted to pull the two of you together mike as a historian.

I think what is story is do so well is the view revolution or historical events and they deconstruct them. They allow you to take a core sample of these moments in time that we all believe we understand really well. But the historian goes through and shows you the component parts may not be what you imagine them to be. And then the artist and the writer and the director, like Tony, you take those deconstructed moments of revolution, the ingredients, and you reconstruct them to create these beautiful works of art that kind of give insight into maybe the more emotional aspects of what these are. It's almost as though you're two sides of the same coin. So I want to start with Mike deconstructing history and revolutions. What drew you to that? What do you find that you learn from kind of taking that fine-tooth comb and going through these large scale movements and moments that we all think we understand, but showing us their component parts. Yeah, like, I mean, I got into

revolutions, like I started the revolutions podcast because revolutions, I think, are inherently interesting moments in time, right? Like this is where so much is happening and like so many of the pivots of history exist in this, and it's so chaotic. The French Revolution is inherently interesting. The Russian Revolution is inherently interesting. So I did want to go through these, and I thought it would make for a great format for a show.

And then when I'm doing the individual revolutions, I'm not really thinking about how these connect necessarily to other revolutions. I just want to explain the one that is right in front of my face right now. I want to explain the Revolution of 1830 in the specific context of 1830. And then when I do the Mexican Revolution,

I want to talk about the specific context of the Mexican Revolution. But then when I was all done with these 10 seasons worth of revolutions that I had written, I did produce, I forget how many episodes it is now, like 12 or 15 episodes, where I went back through and really did a big compare and contrast of every revolution that I had covered from the English Civil Wars

to the Russian Revolution. And there are similar structures, similar character types, similar orders of events. There are reasons why things happen that you can extract from this, similar orders of events. There are reasons why things happen that you can sort of extract from this, like an abstract structure. And then we would never want to take that abstract structure and put it on today and say, that means

this is how things will go, or put it in the future and say, that's how things will go. But when things then do roll out, if we get another revolution, I'll bet you anything, you could go back through it, talk about the specific context of that particular revolution, and then see, oh, yep, this is exactly like it was around the Cromwell era

and exactly like it was for Robb Spear and Danton. And that is sort of how things go, because history does not repeat itself. Yeah, history doesn't repeat itself, but it absolutely does rhyme. It's amazing. And Tony, when you're creating these worlds, are you then going through work like the work that Mike does?

Or as a fan of that, how are you compiling those kinds of ingredients that he's talking about to create the worlds that you're creating? Because what you do so well is is you make them resonate. There's a reality to them. They feel three dimensional, which is such for an artist, for a director, for a writer, that is such a challenge. What's your process like then? Well, I mean, I, first of all, I need like a booster seat or flotation device to participate in a real historical

conversation because I am not a pro. Like I am. That's what Mike's here for, man. Me and you, we're on the different side. And even you, I mean, you guys have, you guys have the kind of, you know, you guys have the kind of memories and the kind of minds that hang on to all this stuff. I'm liberated. I mean, in 40 years of doing this, or 35, 37 years of doing this, I have never once done a true life story for a script. You can imagine how many scripts I've written. You can imagine how many things I got

offered over the years. I mean, how many, and I've never done one. My brother and I touched on one, but the character was so obscure, it really didn't matter. I've even hijacked projects that were nonfiction and fought hard to turn them in against to fictionalize to turn to fictionalize them saying I can't do this if we're going to stay real. So I get this absolute instantaneous free pass. So I don't have to tell the truth. You don't have to tell the truth, but when you're building the foundation of a story to make it resonate, to make it believable. Yeah, I'm getting there.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the best, it's the best possible situation. I can, I've listened, I've now listened to all of my, I didn't do it in order. I looked today, what am I missing? What didn't I do? The only revolution I did not do with Mike was the American Revolution.

Oh, that's fine. I don't know why, because I did it in school. That's the only one I didn't do. Yeah, you could skip that one. And I didn't do Martian because I didn't wanna get, I didn't wanna have any, I didn't wanna like, I didn't, for five years I didn't listen to any. Oh, you didn't wanna go through

a whole nother science fiction revolution in space? I didn't think that was a good idea. After having just spent five years doing one. Maybe not. And so, and then, but the reason that I listened to it wasn't just because I was working on the show. The reason I listened to it because I've been a freak for this my whole life. So I mean, the library in this house is just a chaos of random books from the street and bad history books and great history books and weird things. I have what you were describing before. I use history as a catalog.

I really get to use the entire catalog of incidents. It's almost as if it's a shop for what I need as I go along. And I have one requirement that is above all that, which is it has to be behavioral. It has to be relatable to character. It all has to be something. Explain that. Explain that. Explain that. I mean, all of these, I don't necessarily, I don't really have a dog in the fight of the great man or great moment

philosophies of history and other big debates about all that. It doesn't matter to me. But when I read history, I am always, if it's not being presented to me overtly, I am always trying to dig behind what's going on for the behavioral aspect of why is Mussolini doing this now? Why is Garibaldi doing this right now? Why would they do that? And what does he need? What is he so afraid of that? What is she so desperate to have?

So that's my- You're looking for motivation in a lot of ways. I think motivation is just a word that's just right up front. I think behavior is much more important than motivation in a way. So I don't have any of the moral or objective criteria or judgments or comments coming at me about truthfulness that anybody else is going to have. But I do have a very high bar that the behavior has to be honest, it has to be real, it has to be consistent.

I have to find a way to get my people, my characters into situations and I can set the trap, I can set the things in motion, I can, I can set the trap, I can set the things in motion, I can light the kindling on fire, but I cannot, once the characters are involved in the, in the machinery, I can't, I can't manipulate the machinery to do what I want. The characters have to take it where it goes. That's my responsibility. Hey everybody. As you know, I'm a very modern man, very tech savvy. I'm a big VPN guy.

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You can overcome location-based price discrimination on plane tickets and car rentals by connecting to VPN servers in different countries. You can stay safe on public Wi-Fi by encrypting your data, making it useless for people who steal it. You can unlock the 15 largest country Netflix libraries, including the US and Japan by merely connecting to a server in the right country. Go to surfshark.com slash Stuart and use code Stuart to check out to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. That's surfshark.com slash Stuart to get four extra months of the VPN. to get four extra months of the VPN. We don't think of history in itself as a series of behaviors

or motivations and those things. We see it as there's a certain inevitability to it. I mean, everything Tony just said is like what I do in revolutions. I'm obsessed with why people do the things that they do. Right. And there are large structural forces that people are existing within. Like, of course, but it is like individual choices and individual like motivations, like what is getting people up out of bed and driving them to do things. And then especially when we're talking about like, you know,

people like czar Nicholas or, you know, Marie Antoinette, like, you know, czar Nicholas was Marie Antoinette, Tsar Nicholas was not sitting down and being like, I'm going to be an evil tyrant today and oppress people. And then they will rise up against me, but I hate them. No, he was convinced that he had been given his position by God and that it was his job to steward this responsibility that the Romanov family had, you know, to reign over Russia and hand that off to his, hand that off to his heir. That's their

principal motivation. That's what they're focused on. They're not focused on anything else beyond that. And inside of, you know, Nicholas's mind and Alexandra's mind, this makes a ton of sense. And what they're doing makes a ton of sense and is internally consistent with their own belief system, even though it appears from the outside to be like, well, you're just awful people who need to be overthrown. That's nobody actually works like that. So anytime I'm reading a biography or I'm reading a history or something,

I'm very much focused on what is the psychological motivation for people and the things that they do. That's a huge part of the show. See, I think that's such an interesting point. And I wonder, Tony, how you deal with this in the way that you're constructing these things. I think we view that there's a difference between genuine belief and cynical manipulation.

And in revolutions, there's always that moment. And Orwell sort of spoke to this, I think, really well. That idea of the people that are in charge, are they behaving based on true belief or are they manipulating systems for maximum power, like czar Nicholas, you might look at it that way. But then when we look at like, maybe the more modern revolutions, where propaganda, you know, when you talk about the Nazis, or Lenin and Stalin, do they believe that what they're doing is right, ordained by God, or are they manipulating for power? Does that enter into, as you construct, either villains or heroes, Tony? I mean, he's dead on. I mean, the reason that makes it so entertaining and the reason why it's so compulsive, you

listen to it so compulsively. And I just, it really is a lot of hours I put into that. And you don't just do that. It is personal. It is. He's delivering characters all the way through. I don't think I agree completely with the basis of the question because it's like, I don't see power or rebellion or insurrection as, I don't see anybody having a firmer grip on cynicism than anybody else.

I think cynicism is a, I think there's some very cynical revolutionary leaders along the way. I mean, really cynical. Right. I mean, people that are just, you know. Who are the people that come to mind for you? Well, I mean, look how Lenin uses everybody around him for kind of looking Mao.

Right. I mean, you talk about. That's what I mean. Looking Mao, I mean. Right. Man, I don't know if there's ever been a greater, I don't know, maybe this book's discredited, maybe Michael no more, but I think one of the most incredible books I ever read was,

because I don't think there's ever been a personal account of someone who was so close to an historical dynastic leader as Mao's doctor's book. That book that Mao's doctor wrote is like, it's just, and the cynicism inside that, so I don't think anybody has, so I never look at it that, if you look at our show, if you look at what I do, I think in general, I'm really interested in what people wake up in the morning, I guess, and what is really driving them. I think just as many Nazis were driven by

who had the best parking place and who had the best corner office and who got the best piping and anything else. So much, yes. I don't think anybody, I don't think a whole lot of people woke up in the morning and thought, you know, it's really great. We're nationalizing the industries

and I really hate Jews so much. I wanna go out and do mass graves. You don't think any of them thought that? You really, it couldn't have all been Park and Spaces. Oh yeah, sure. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But you can't write a character like that. That's why- Oh, that's interesting.

That's why that movie, The Zone of Silence was so incredibly effective without doing anything. Man, I remember that, you know, the Auschwitz movie that was out two years ago where they never went into the camp. The Zone of Interest, right. It two years ago where they never went into the camp. The zone of interest, right. It's a scene where the wife tries on the coat in the room and you realize when she goes to the pocket that it's someone else's coat and she loves it.

And it's like, man, that's where I wanna live. That's where history is for me. History's in the tendency of those people to want things. Mike can speak much more eloquently, I'm sure, about how individual behaviors get shaped into a lump and a lump gets shaped into a movement and it moves forward. And those title shifts are important in their story, but I can't start characters from the point of view of anything other than how much chaos they have inside of them. What do they really need? What are they afraid of? You know? But then what is that, Mike? Is it, you know, is it the

conductor or is it the orchestra? You know, does somebody in revolutions for this, because I think if you look at the, the span of human history, oppression and violence has always been with us, but it doesn't always combust into revolution. Those moments are really specific. And as we're talking about sort of character and behavior, does there have to be a conductor as you look at it? Must there be somebody, you know, when you talk about Nicholas, who is, you know, this person who believes I'm ordained by God,

and these are the things I'm doing, not to be evil, but because this is biblically written. How do you view that, Mike, as you look at those? Well, it's a giant interplay of things, right? Like the orchestra can play without the conductor and the conductor can wave his arms without the orchestra and the two things have to come together in order to make the revolution happen in the moment that it does. And yeah, to your point, there's a line from Trotsky

that is like, if you're talking about what are the things that cause a revolution, what are the triggers of a revolution? You can't really say the misery of the peasants is a cause of revolution because the peasants are always miserable. The peasants are miserable, whether there's a revolution or whether it's the very nature of peasantry at the time. So you can't say like, oh, the people are miserable and therefore there's

a revolution because human misery is omnipresent. So it takes all of these other things fitting together up and down the socioeconomic line from the very inner circles of power all the way down to, yes, the peasantry is miserable. And they are ready to rise up. In my experience with revolutions, this gets, as I've gone through history, starting with these very early modern revolutions, then moving all the way up into the 20th century,

you can see revolutions professionalizing as a career path and a career choice. Because in the early days, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, these things, the chaotic things happen. And there are leaders, and there are people trying to do things, make reforms, do this, do that. But usually, events start to spin out of control.

Nobody's really in charge of it. And then inside of these chaotic revolutionary vacuums, leaders do pop up and movements do pop up and parties do pop up. And then those groups start to like bend, bend events this way and that. But at least in the early days, it's never people being like, okay,

we're gonna sit around, we're gonna stage a revolution and then it's gonna work. Like the first time that even happens is in August of 1792, when they do get together and overthrow the monarchy. But that's three years into the French Revolution by the time they're even getting down to business and planning stuff like that. But then you move forward 100 years.

And yeah, Lenin is a professional revolutionary. That is what he is trying to do. That is his job. And so he's trying to create the conditions that will make this revolution happen. And that's the first time you really see that being exercised. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it comes along in the mid 19th century. They were definitely precursor to Lenin, but even when the Russian revolution gets going, like where's Lenin? He's in Switzerland. Like he didn't even know it was happening. He had to cut a deal with the Germans just to get

back there so he could lead the revolution that he had nothing to do with. And then he did. And then him and the Bolsheviks do bend events their way. But revolutions at their bottom are just really out of any one person's hand for sure. Right. You know, John, remember, I mean, it's usually, I'm curious if Mike thinks this is true, but it's in the end, it's a body in the street. It's like the guy who started Arab Spring, because he started himself on fire. It's the women in Paris marching to Versailles. It's like, someone just says, hey, it's raining, I don't give a fuck. We're going to, we're going to march to Versailles and demand that we get our bread. I mean, and it's in the end, it's somebody goes to the street or somebody, or somebody blows up the Reichstag or somebody or flag or somebody does,

you know, but it, it, uh, yeah, I'm sure the Spartacus League and various revolutionary groups have a very highly articulated checklist of things that will start a revolution, but I have a feeling it's probably pretty sad. Yeah, that could be a Thursday. It could be two years from now. That's what I'm getting to though. It's sad, that list.

It's sad, yes. But as you deconstruct these revolutions, what you end up with is in some ways a to-do list and you have a variety of choices and options. Like you say, the Reichstag fire or you have the false flag. Tony, you had that in Andorra. You have that massacre in the square and they lure them in and you see the planning of you know the empire and they're saying you have that wonderful dead who says you just need the right people to do the wrong thing or the wrong people to do the right, you know, you need the people who think they're the revolutionaries to commit an act that allows the empire to massacre them.

Well, okay, just look at that. Just look at the one thing that you've said, because you're just, you're going to hit on a whole bunch of things that have their own. These are all part of the catalog. Right, right, right. They don't go into every revolution, probably, you know, I don't know how, but, but, but, you know, building the enemy you want is a key tactic. Boy, that's a nice phrase. Building the enemy you want. Well, look, J. Edgar Hoover puts people in the, in the, in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

Right. You know, the Brits put IRA, they have provosts. I mean, a lot of people would argue, I might agree that Netanyahu built Hamas. I mean, he took apart everything else and he built the enemy that he wanted. You do that. That's what she's saying there. She says, we need people that'll do what you want them to do. And that is in the authoritarian playbook for sure.

I mean, Mike could probably give you 19 other examples where that happened. Well, I mean, the head of the SR combat organization was taking money from the czar while also planting bombs, right? Like, yeah, there are those connections all the time. But getting back to the checklist of stuff, like those guys can have a checklist,

and you can hit every single part of the checklist of stuff, those guys can have a checklist, and you can hit every single part of the checklist, and then no revolution happens. Because there isn't actually a series of buttons that you press and then have a revolution happen. And even in February of 1917, the Bolsheviks... I mean, the February revolution gets going because the women went into the streets. It was National Women's Day, and the women wanted to go out into the streets and protest. And the Bolsheviks were telling them, like, no, we don't want to do this. We don't want it.

We want to keep our gunpowder dry. We're going to save it for May Day, which was just a couple of months away. And then they went out there. And it was a bright, sunny, warm day after a long winter in St. Petersburg. And the whole city just went crazy outside of everybody's

you know expectation of what what happened so these things they happen or they don't but you're never just going to sit down and do like check nine things and then and then be able to stage a revolution that is absolutely not how these things work. Folks you've heard me talk about this before and I'm going to talk about it again, and I'm not going to stop talking about it until you people get on this damn thing. Ground news. It's a website. It's an app.

It's a website and an app. It's on a mission. It's going to give readers an easier, more data-driven way to read the news. I don't understand why they didn't do this before. They prioritize critical thinking, media literacy. Everything they offer is all related back to those two ideas. Every day, they're pulling thousands of news articles from around the world.

They organize them by story. Each story comes with visual breakdowns of the political bias, ownership, and headlines. Oh, relevant to today? You bet your ass. It helps you better understand why you're understand why you're seeing what you're seeing and who's behind it.

Ground News is a response to that fear anger based media. They don't dictate how readers should think or feel. They aggregate and they organize the information and they help readers make their own informed decisions. Ground News can help you sort through the noise and get to the heart of the news. Go to Do you find, is it, you know, when we think about America in the way that we've mythologized our revolution, and I think it speaks sometimes to fiction because the Star Wars universe is so interestingly, you know, I think people look at the rebel alliance as the liberals and the empire as, well, that must be conservative. The liberals, look, they're all different species

and they're living together in sin and doing all kinds of different things. And the empire is much more kind of fascistic and authoritarian and they're doing those. But revolutions don't neatly play along. The liberals are the good guys and the conservatives are the bad guys, you know, or well, his was Stalinist, you know. Yeah. I mean, no, I mean, the empire is pretty

clearly fascistic, I would say. I think there's some fascist overtones to it. I don't know, Stormtroopers. I don't know if anybody gets that connection. The color palette, maybe a little bit. Anyway, but they, you know, and look, I don't, I am, I win no Star Wars trivia contests at all, but I do know the, what I was given was five years. I have a five year piece of the calendar and the five years that I have is a furnace that's just about to go nuts.

Because the empire is at this moment making a view, Jeff. And this is the five years prior to a new world. Five years prior to Rogue One, yeah. Prior to the blowing up of the Death Star and the whole thing, yeah. So I get those five years and I have a couple canonical incidents on the calendar that I have to pay attention to. But the general understanding of that

period of time is they are consolidating power aggressively because they know they're building this energy project that will dominate everything. They are doing what every fascistic government does, which is nationalizing all the corporate entities first. They are stripping the legal system. They are rewriting. They are emasculating and completely neutering the political organizations. I have them write a public order resentencing directive in the first season, which just changes all of the laws about arrests and they're building factory prisons. To detention centers that are- Factory prisons.

That's right. Where they're working. Yeah, where they're working and all those different things. I mean, they're on a big power grab. And the other liberating thing about what I'm doing, I suppose, the other thing that makes it easy, there's a lot of things that are hard about it, but makes it easy is not just that I don't have to tell the truth or have to be beholden to any specific revolution, but I also I don't really have anybody espousing their ideology of what they want the

galaxy to look like when the fight is over. Oh wow. I don't have anybody saying when we're done, this is what it's going to look like. And I thought in the beginning when it came on the show that that was going to really be a very big thing for me. I think I probably somewhere in this office, I have a couple of weeks of work on that, trying to figure out how I was gonna try to deal with that. And I gradually realized that I just didn't really need to do that.

And I thought, how long can I get away with that? And then it turned out to be, I don't miss it at all. People don't miss that. It's- Man, you just blew my mind. Because I hadn't thought of it that way, Tony. But you're right. In the entirety of that five-year period with Rogue One,

I don't think I ever remember. There's no moment like there is with Padme saying, so this is how Liberty dies. No, no one's saying when this is all over, we're really going gonna have collective bargaining. That's because Tony's a really good writer. No, because I really am. That's why you don't hear that line.

I'm an old sneaky writer. But it's surprising to me that that, I mean, I have some, I mean, I tiptoe around it. I have a thing very early on where Forrest Whitaker's character, because he's a real outlier, partisan, uncontrollable, and he has a long speech with- He's a real revolutionary. ... the Stone Scars guy. Yeah.

And he says, man, what are you? Are you? And he names like seven different groups. And some of the names I just made up for the moment, you know, human cultists and the Maya Pay Brigade and different things I put in there, which who are you? But I never, I never, I never pinned them down to what it is they want. That fight is going to come later on. I do want to suggest that that fight is going to come in coalition and I do spend a lot of energy as in every revolution and every

revolution that Mike's dealing with. I mean, fighting authority is just one third of the battle. Right. You know, one third is trying to get food, the other third is trying to get food, and the other third is fighting with the people you're working with. Mike, when you look at those real revolutions, the thing that Tony's talking about, sort of that governing philosophy, the isms that are associated with it,

what part does that play in being able to coalesce these kind of revolutionary groups into something that is more successful or less successful? How much of it is ideology and what the world should look like? Well, I think in the beginning, Tony gets it right, because it usually is opposition to a single shared enemy, some kind of opponent that you all share a common hostility

towards. Created or otherwise., like created or imagined. Okay. Yeah, and it's usually, and the way I describe it is like basically whatever you want, whatever it happens to be on the ideological spectrum, there's an obstacle to getting what you want. And so a lot of people, like the king is the obstacle to me.

I'm a liberal noble, I just want to reform things. And then like over here, you have the communists. The king is an obstacle to me. I'm a liberal noble. I just want to reform things. And then over here, you have the communists. The king is an obstacle to me because I want full luxury communism, and we've got to get rid of the king. So that makes these two sides, at least in that part of the revolution, allies, of course, because everybody's sharing the same obstacle.

And so that brings this huge disparate group together, and they all charge at that one obstacle together, and they blow it up. And then, yes, they are left with what to do next. And in the revolutions podcast, this this started this pattern showed up very, very early on, which is any revolutionary group that wins immediately breaks into at least two factions and they start fighting each other. Is that the most fraught stage, Mike, that you see in these types of movements? Every stage is fraught. But oh yeah, dude, a power vacuum is incredibly fraught. Because you're just making it up as you go, right? We declared a provisional government on whose authority,

we don't know. But we just declared it and hopefully people will believe it because all this stuff just exists in our mind. Sovere, like sovereignty and accepting like who has power and who doesn't. These are all just like emotional states and psychological states getting back to that. And so but when when they achieve power, they're gonna they're gonna wind up fighting with each other, because even though they shared an obstacle, they did not share an ultimate goal. And so this is so I call this the entropy of victory, which is that any time a group achieves victory, then they just start to spread apart. And it usually breaks down into some kind of binary,

because then these guys over here roughly say to themselves, well, our new obstacle is those guys over there. And these guys are saying, well, our obstacle is those guys over there. And then they start fighting. This group wins, and then they split. This group wins, and then they split. And then suddenly he got Ropespear

blowing his own jaw off because he's about to get overthrown. And then Frankenstein wakes up and it turns out he's not dead after all. Yeah, he's not dead after all, yeah. No, oh my God, Napoleon the 19th, yeah. And Tony, this is what's so brilliant about sort of how you construct these

in the fictionalized universe and even Star Wars and stuff. It's a new hope. And then it's, you know, or it's a rogue one, but then it's the empire strikes back. And then it's the force of weight, you know, this ebb and flow of I don't have to worry about any of that, John. I just had to do Andor. I just do an Andor. Right. And I could not have been more disappointed with what they decided to do with those sequel movies, because the whole point of the original three movies

is we defeated the Empire. Now we're going to go forward and let's see what happens next. And the idea that there is not drama and conflict and incredibly fascinating things to deal with, after you've overthrown the Empire, now you're trying to restore the old republic. And how does that work? Right. That stuff overthrown the Empire. Now you're trying to like restore the old Republic. And how does that work?

Right, right. That stuff is all over the place. It is beautiful fodder. And now we're left with sort of a franchise that like you end the sixth movie and they're dancing on Endor because everything is great. And then the first scene of the next movie is like, oh, we're a resistance again.

We're fighting who? Like, what is the new, I don't know what any of this, I thought we beat all these guys. Mike said that. I just want to make sure Mike said that. I'm saying it's a nobody else has to. Yeah. I was really bummed out by that.

Because those, and people talk about like, when I do the show, nothing ends on Bastille Day. Nothing ends when the czar is overthrown. That's the middle of the show, or even just still occurring in the first third of the show. And then it's everything that happened after that. And they haven't even introduced the new character of Napoleon yet.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These guys are showing up like very, very late in the game. And yeah, so all of that stuff is as fascinating and as much a part of the revolutionary process as the initial overthrow, which is like the first wave of the revolutionary process as the initial overthrow, which is like the first wave of the revolution is usually united. It's usually very democratic words like freedom and liberty are just like on everyone's lips. And we see this all the time.

And then, yeah, as soon as you get power, then it's every, every group starts breaking against every other group. Tony, I thought what was so interesting about Andor is, you know, what he's talking, the way that you handled, you know, this idea of, of what Cassian Andor's journey to it. What was so interesting is oftentimes in fiction, there's sort of this idea of the ordained, there's Neo or there's Skywalker. Cassian Andor is just some guy. Like he doesn't, he's not a revolutionary. He has to be like kind of roped into this and his conditions become so extreme that it seems like his behavior really changes. How did you resist that kind of ordained trope? Oh, I mean, it was, well, it was baked into the very concept of what I was doing. They tried to do several other prequel shows with the same idea.

And they, you know, what's the smart, what's the obvious thing to do? So they wanted to have a show where Cassian and K2 would go do adventures and stuff. So they tried to do that a couple of times. And after they did the first one, it was very slick, the script and the package and everything, but it was Cathy Kennedy sent it over to me, not to work on, but just for advice,

and said, hey, what do you think about this? And I go, well, this is very smart and slick and entertaining. I go, but I don't know what the hell you're going to do after episode five. I mean, what are you going to do? Just storm the Citadel every week? There's nothing to do. You'll die on the vine here. I mean, there's just, there's no story protein here at all.

Right. So what should we do? And I said, well, man, if I was going to do this show, you'd take this guy back to a roach and take him on the, pick him up on the worst day of his life and try to see how far away from, you know, in Rogue One, he's all singing, all dancing, revolutionary warrior leader. I mean, he has every skill there is. Right. He's a butterfly. So like, how far away from that could you take somebody to get there in five years? And that was too radical for them at that moment.

But when they came back, they came back a year and a half later and go, you know, that idea doesn't sound so crazy. So it was baked in for me. I don't see any other way that you would do it. I don't see how you'd get there. I don't want to make it seem like I've got a chalkboard here and a calculator, but like, I do want to pull from the menu of what radicalizes a human being. What are the stations of the cross that make somebody wake up to political consciousness and then pass political consciousness? to political consciousness and then past political consciousness, how does somebody wake up to the point of personal sacrifice and ultimate sacrifice really?

And so that first season is him, you know, is me, you know, I'm kind of working the menu there. I mean, he's a thief, he's a killer, nobody wants to see him, he's broke, he's cynical, he'll be a mercenary, he'll stay a mercenary, he'll go on a party with the money that they stole. And everybody that he meets along the way, his mother even, and every single person has an effect on him.

I have a Trotsky character who spins ideology to him. Nemeck reads his manifesto. He meets people along the way whose whole families were slaughtered. There's people there for revenge. He meets all these other influences. And then all of that was, I try to pack that musket as tight as I can,

and then I send him to prison. And in the prison, the only way he's gonna get out of the prison is to lead a revolution because no one else is gonna do it. And so he builds a mini revolution in the prison, the only way he's going to get out of the prison is to lead a revolution because no one else is going to do it. And so he, he builds a mini revolution in the prison. And, and by the time he gets out on the success of that, um, he's fully committed. And, and that's so, I mean, I'm trying to show what it takes to get somebody all the way there.

And if you look at the characters that, you know, that, that Mike's dealing with in the show all the time, I mean, I don't know. I mean, some of these people are there instantly. I mean, if you're in the Haitian Revolution and you're, you know, you're a slave, it's pretty easy to figure out where you want to get. Sure. I would think. But it is interesting how often prison seems to play a role in either the hardening of these revolutionaries or of the awakening of them or of in the, you know, setting that feeling of like, and now this will be.

Look at Hitler, who more than Hitler? Right. If he didn't have time to write that fucking book, what would happen? I mean, holy cow. I mean, really. But it is those little moments. And again, this is one of the brilliant things

and I'll ask Tony about this because then, and then go to Mike, but the brilliant thing about, I think the rogue universe and the Andor universe is you take this one moment that is the climax of the very first Star Wars movie, which is this one in a million trust the force shot of a bomb into an air duct that goes in and you build out this entire world of how did they make that shot?

How did they get it? Turns out the guy who designed it was doing it under direct. He had placed that in there, but they had to get that plan. There's there's this whole universe in this one moment. And it's so brilliant that you played that out and created this entire world of that one shot. But it's like Mike said, you go tablespoon by tablespoon. You don't ever look at it as a big thing. You just go step by step. You can't look at it as it. It's like he goes into a brothel to look for his sister. You could say, oh, if he doesn't go in the brothel to look for his sister, you don't blow up the Death Star. Of course, you could look at everything that way.

But it is stitch by stitch and what feels good and what's behaviorally right and what's politically interesting and what will people really believe and yeah. Mike, when you look at the actual history, I think it's easy for us when we look at fictionalized representations to think of the inevitability of revolutions or the inevitability of the victors. Are you surprised by the lack of inevitability and, and the way that

they fall apart and, and all the ups and downs that occur that, that these moments where we look at it as, oh, sure, the assassination of an archduke, how could that not lead to revolution? Of course. Right? Is that what's surprising to you as you delve into these? Well, I mean, surprised isn't the right word, because I got into revolutions after,

like doing the entire history of the Roman Empire, which is again, those aren't necessarily revolutions, but you can definitely see how nothing is inevitable. And there are times in history where it just feels like every single thing is locking into place to make a revolution happen, and the revolution is going to explode. And then just like nothing happens. It fizzles out. If you look at what was going on between 1955 and 1968 in the

United States, there's every reason to believe there was going to be a full blown revolution in the United States at that time. There's a lot of the pieces falling into place. The 20s and 30s. I look at the anarchists of the 20s, the absolute economic collapse of the late 20s and the early 30s, it's almost stunning that there's not a revolution. Yeah, and then there are times like in French history, there was damn near a revolution in France in the early 1820s that was basically called

on account of rain. Like everybody started getting, like in Paris, like everybody starts getting together and it just rained so hard that day. Like literally that people were not as able to get together and storm out into the streets. Whereas in February of 1917, the opposite happened. Like I said, when the women went out, it just so happened to be like a very balmy spring day after a long winter. And so like everybody's like, yeah, let's go out into the streets. Let's do a thing. And then that becomes the revolution. And then there are other times where nobody expects

a revolution to break out. Nobody thinks anything is going to happen. And then the next thing you know, things start running away from. Like I wrote this biography of Lafayette. And there's a really funny moment where they're having all these battles with King Charles in early 1830.

Like he's annulled elections. He's rewriting election laws. He's canceling free press. And they're like, we're going to have these battles with King Charles in early 1830, like he's annulled elections, he's rewriting election laws, he's canceling free press. And they're like, we're going to have these battles with him, but like we're going to come back like for the fall session and do all this stuff. And there's a note from Lafayette saying like, I'm going to leave Paris and I'm going to go back home to Lagrange because like nothing's going to happen over the summer. And then like literally 36 hours later, people are manning the barricades in Paris, and Charles is on his way to being overthrown. And Lafayette has to immediately turn around and come back to Paris because the revolution he did not

think was going to happen suddenly broke out, contrary to anybody's expectations. So that stuff is the stuff of history. And nothing is ever inevitable. Nothing is written. And you might think it is, but it is not. And then things will happen that will surprise you, and things that you absolutely are dead certain will happen

just do not happen at all. [♪ Music playing. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. Vibrato. V So Tony creates these incredibly just layered plays of behavior and things that, and how people become these revolutionaries and what they have to do to do it. And you're looking at, you know, the different ingredients that went into these things, but we all live in the present. And it's really difficult. I have a hard time doing this, not looking at the present and gathering up those ingredients that you guys put into that, Tony, you put into this brilliant show about a revolutionary,

and Mike, you put into deconstructing, and not look at the ingredients in this moment and think, boy, we are in a tinderbox. There's not an ingredient. John, John, John, we're in it. We're in a tinderbox. Well, that's like a historian. Oh yeah, don't even worry about that, man.

Oh yeah, people are flicking matches at a tinderbox right now. Now, whether or not it's gonna go off, nobody knows, but dude, man. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. People are flicking matches at a Tinder box right now. Now, whether or not it's gonna go off, nobody knows, but dude, yeah, we're there. We've been there for years. Where has all the karma gone? I mean, that's what I wanna know. Sucks.

It's really bad. No, I mean, I think, I wondered if this question was gonna come up because it is. That's what I've been leading up to, for God's sake. The inner sort of muffled response that we've just had, the sort of stunned past six months is just, it would be, I'd be really interesting to hear Mike's podcast in 75 years about this moment, what it would be like, how he would cover, you

know, for like six months, it's just like nothing happened. I mean, people just so, yeah, it's this it's it is getting packed, man. It's packed. We're current we're currently in about I don't know, Episode 13 or 14 of a treatment of, you know, the revolutionary upheavals of the, you know, middle 21st century. Maybe. Yeah. Like we would be if, if, if, basically, like my point is that if something broke out tomorrow, it would be the easiest thing in the world to explain the big major structural forces and like individual incidents that brought us to this point, it would be very easy to tell that story.

And it's not hard to predict what the, I mean, if I was, people talk about the predictive quality of the show. Oh, the show is like, and we're even, I mean, we were, you know, I've been ducking those questions for four months while we've been out selling. I'm a little bit more freed up at this point.

But I mean, as the show started to click out, all these things started to happen. We have Gorman and the mineral rights, and that happens right when Greenland happens. And we have the immigration issues. We have ICE, and we have the Senator from Iran arrested from the Senate at the same time that Padilla is being arrested from the- Right. And we're like, oh my God. All right. So if we're so predictive, it's really, you know, it's not hard to predict a couple of things that are gonna definitely happen.

I mean, I'm shocked that there has not been an immigration Kent State moment at this point. I mean, that just seems inevitable. Something bad is absolutely going to happen at an ICE conflict. And whether it's false flag or whether it's an accident or whether it's fully motivated, that's going to happen. That's going to trigger martial law or an attempt. A reaction.

That's going to totally accept that. We always forget and you think about Kent State and you think, oh, that's the moment that the revolution, but in truth, public opinion, and we had talked about this previously, I think, with another guest, the public opinion after Kent we had talked about this previously I think with another guest, the public opinion after Kent State was, fuck those students. And there was the hard hat. Generally in this country, there were,

Nixon played that, there were the hard hat riots in New York where it literally went into a college. It hardened each side, it hardened each side. Yes, I would agree with that. I mean, I was, you know, what you would think is it would have, it would have lit a fire under a popular uprising in a way that didn't occur because of the view that law and order was under attack and that Kent State represented chaos that the society led in there. When I look at MacArthur Park, you see a tank and a bunch of guys rolling through there. When I look at what's happening to press freedom and those other things, it's hard to contextualize it

to contextualize it in the pantheon of moments that lead to revolution. Like Mike, is the bar to revolution in a society like ours higher than it was in the 1800s where society is maybe not as industrialized, not as developed? Was it easier to inflame revolution then? I don't know if it was easier or less, easier or harder by comparison. The United States of America right now does not seem particularly primed for a giant revolution, honestly.

I think the thing that we are dealing with right now is not like, are we on the verge of revolutionary upheaval? I don't see that. Are we on the verge of revolutionary upheaval? I don't see that. Are we on the verge of civil conflict? Yes. Are we on the verge of a regime actually succeeding at planting itself in an authoritarian way and just getting away with that?

Yeah. That's absolutely the thing that I'm most afraid of, because I don't see the kind of large scale aggressive action that would make me think that a revolution is on the way. I certainly do not see the disaffected elites being willing to do anything outside of their comfort zone, which is something that I think is essential for any revolutionary project.

And Tony nailed this one. With the monmothmas of the world, what are the monmothmas of the world doing right what are the monmothmas of the world right now, they're certainly not engaged in revolutionary upheaval, we just had a guy get elected, or he's about to be elected as mayor of New York, and everybody just like, wanting to turn on him and like talk about his SAT scores, because we're at great obsessions going to speaking of Kent State, and one of the great

obsessions of America on his Columbia, one of the one of the great obsessions of American elites is elite college admissions. It's so crazy how obsessed people are with elite college behavior. Right. Talk about that. That's interesting, Tony. Talk about Mon Moffin, because what a crucial figure.

Revolutions were sort of steeped in this mythology that revolutions are from the ground up. But it really isn't that way without the elites. I was also really fascinated. She started, I mean, I was also really fascinated with the early Christians that started bringing down the Roman Empire, who began to be elites, who began to believe in Christianity

and became undermining the power structure. I thought the Bader-Meinhof group was always really interesting. I thought Red Brigade and wealth. And the idea of also money, I really wanted to get very initially, revolutions really need money. I have a question for Mike though. I'm really curious what you just said before. Do you think I see, I'm curious whether it seems to me there's two authoritarian efforts going on simultaneously. It seems to me that you have the one that you know about the, you know, with the emperor Palpatine in the White House, but it seems to me that there's

a tech Reich that's simultaneously on a parallel track that's like, that's using him as a host organism and using that clown car of all these other idiots and just like, just sort of quietly cooking along, getting everything they want. And like, I don't know whether I can think of another comp on his list of revolutions where you have, you know, a shadow authority that's really actually more frightening probably than the idiots that are, I still adhere to the clown car idiot stumble bum. I don't think they're in charge of anything other than staying out of jail. But the other thing is really terrifying, this tech rake that's just, they have wide open feel now. Is there a comp in history where there's been two, I don't know.

Man, that's a really good question. But I completely, I mean, Peter Thiel is more frightening than anybody else that's out there. Did you see his interview with Ross Dothat of The Times? Yes. Where he said, he asked him, should humanity survive? And there's this really long, they're talking about how Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist,

and there's all these other things. And they say, should humanity survive? And there's kind of a heavy silence. And in that moment, you're just like, oh my god, this is the guy who just gave his company all of our data? What are we doing? This is the guy who eats Bond villains, man. He is like, he is. And that's the social and economic world

that we all live in, right? We're all attached to our phones. We're all attached to our phones. We're all attached to the internet. Everything runs through them. And yeah, Silicon Valley, there's a wing of Silicon Valley that is developing and has developed a deeply anti-democratic and deeply anti-human ideology that they just wanna kind of like float above it all

and they do not care what happens to the rest of us. Transhumanism, let's go to Mars. Yeah, man. So maybe they want a revolution. Maybe it's in their best interest that in two years there is a revolution, you know? Maybe it is in their interest. Which goes back to kind of our original talk about cynicism.

Who's conducting, you know? Yeah. Okay, I'll write my next season then. Yeah, the next season is that the Kent State happens on the eve of the elections and he canc of the elections and he cancels the elections and he declares martial law and who's really happy is, you know, the guy who owns Palantir, you know?

Right. Mike, do you find in these moments of revolution, what do changes in either technology or, you know, the way that we go from agrarian societies to industrialized societies. We go from lack of communication to a printing press. What do these kinds of really transformational moments in the way that we live, does that sow a certain instability and create more opportunity for these revolutions, more opportunity for people to weaponize these new technologies or these new industrials? What have you seen with that? Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, because it can be big stuff. I mean,

industrialization is transferring agrarian and old feudal societies into something new, and that creates different incentives. It creates different elites. Right. That's one of the big ones. It creates a whole new set of elites who are making money off something that oh, right, do not be able to make money off of before and narrows the and narrows it. Yep. And then you have people living in completely different environments than their parents were.

And usually the first run of things is going to be very exploitive towards the peasants who are coming into the factories. Is it better a little bit? Yeah, you make a little bit more money. But it's awful. It's brutal. It's exploitive. And so those things, yeah, that churns discontentment.

And that churns chaos inside of the society. That's the big stuff. And then also, changes in communications technology. Right. The way that we spread ideas, the way that we share ideas. Like if you don't have a printing press and then you do have a printing press, the big thing about this is when you get that first wave of the printing press, like things are just hitting the market. Things are just being said and thrown out there and ideas that you've never been able to confront or think about before are suddenly in front of your face. The French Revolution basically invents daily journalism.

That didn't really exist before the French Revolution, which people are just trying to chronicle events in real time and spread pamphlets and newsletters. But because there was something new happening every single day, there was always something to comment on. And nobody had ever dealt with that kind of flood of paper before. And you can't censor that. You can't control that as the regime. And so what we find in basically all states, and really if you start getting down to like,

what are the basic causes of revolution? And a lot of it is a state's inability to adapt to changing circumstances. And if the state can adapt to the changing circumstances, if it can co-opt these new elites, if it can maybe ameliorate a little bit the suffering of these people, if it can make this change, if, okay, there's a, like in Britain, there's a huge middle class that isn't allowed the vote and they're starting to get really restless. So let's give them the vote. And those changes are the things that really head off like revolution. Or a really big mistake. Or a really big mistake. I mean, that's right. Yeah.

Elaborate on that, Tony. Right. Well, I mean, Mike can give the historical comments, but like, you know, a breakout virus in February that we didn't prepare for because we have Captain Crunch is the head of the FDA. Right. Something could light the box. And everybody dies. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, good luck then. You'll have a revolution. There are comps. I'm trying to think what, I mean, all these are filled with so many mistakes. All these people, I mean, the czars and I mean, they all just, I mean, but a big mistake, World War I was a mistake for Russia, right?

Yeah, oh, sure it was. I mean, if they didn't do that, if Russia stayed out, they would have been cool. Everything would have been fine. And this is like the big takeaway from revolutions that people know is my great idiot theory of revolution. Yes. Which is right, which is not the great man theory, but like.

Yes, the great idiot. It does take a certain kind of moron to like actually blow it so bad that you get overthrown. These are some of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met in my life. Well, watching, when you listen to your podcast on Rome, watching in slow motion, the Romans destroying this 100 year period of more

egalitarian, more democratic more to watch them destroy it by just taking away farmland and you're just, you're watching it in slow motion going, why would you do that? Why are you doing this? And I mean, Charles the first, who was the first sort of, and he wound up being the sort of prototype for all my future leaders that get overthrown. This is during like the Cromwell era in England. Like nobody wanted to chop his head off.

Like nobody wanted to kill him. They just wanted some reform. All they wanted was like, we just want parliament to control the budget and maybe like have a veto over war and peace. And he's just like, well, yeah, like I can't do that. So like they had to chop his head off in the end. Like nobody wanted that. He takes the cake.

He really does. Oh yeah. Yeah, he does. And then when I, and then it was cool because that was the very first season. And then I see that behavior like over and over and over again, like the revolution of 1830 which is, you know, that's another Charles,

like don't have King Charles's. It's like one of the lessons of revolutions is don't have Charles. But there was no reason for him to get overthrown. He drops these four ordinances in the middle of the night, basically un-nuifying the elections and canceling free speech. And really what gets Paris going in 1830 is the printers have all just been put out of a job.

And they're the ones who are the most pissed off and the ones who are going into the streets, the British government that is running the North American colonies, like after the seven years war, just fumbled away those colonies. Like there is no reason for them to have been so obtuse politically that they wind up losing control of the Eastern seaboard of North America. How do you not know we don't love tea? We love tea. How do you not know? Why would you make it more expensive?

Yeah, like these are mistakes that are being made. And so you don't get revolutions usually against some hyper-competent, tyrannical government. It's not just the fact that they're a dictatorship or there's a lot of oppression that's going on. It's because that you need that structure and also somebody who's running it really badly. So much so that the elites inside of that,

because as long as the elites are together, like there's not gonna be a revolution, but if you get somebody who's really doing a bad job, then other elites are gonna be like, we are really frustrated with you and we would like you to go now, please. And it is, in some ways it is like watching a movie, Tony, in that or even a horror movie where you're just like,

don't go in the house. Like, don't drop those ordinances. Please don't consolidate the farmland. Like, you're just shouting at these dudes not to do that. But I wonder in a parallel to now, isn't there anybody within the government going, don't militarize our cities. Don't just because you need vindication over those you don't think voted for you. Don't this revenge fantasy is going to that's how I feel right now. Like we're watching this in slow motion.

I do not know how I sophisticated as I may appear and as educated or not, or I still, you'd be shocked at how baffled I am by, I still do not understand people who do things that they know are wrong when the cost is not like your children's hand or something or your I don't understand. I don't understand the lack of and collective and not so collective. Now it's like a it's a it's a it's just it's stadiums full of people doing what they know is wrong and just doing it and going along. And nobody's standing up. And I'm just fascinated by that. I don't know how to package that.

I don't know if that's... It's hard to see an historical comp for that because I've never seen anything in any other show that's on that scale. But there's an entire city now, all of our, I mean, so many people in America are doing things that they actually know are wrong. They know it. And yet, well. Mike, does that, does that stem from, as you watch the history, as long as they're doing it to the right people, as long as the bad actions are being exercised on the so-called deserving enemies of the state. Is that how this tends to propagate? I hope that's the answer.

I mean, dude, it sure seems like it because I'm not too far off because I have studied all of this history and yet I've come into the last 10, 15 years of politics and I cut my teeth during the Bush years and during the build, the selling of the Iraq war and watching people just like- Sure, and de-bathifying a country and oh, that turns into an insurgency. Let's just haul off, invade and occupy an entire country and let's just do it. And this is getting 90% approval. Yeah, people will buy into those things and they will go along with them. And I think that to be like, not to be a downer, but if Trump had never gotten into the tariff business and really started poking at the economic parts of the empire,

if he had stuck strictly, which I think he's doing now, if he'd stuck strictly to just like, let's just like- His cultural moments. Terrorize and drive out all of people who are Hispanic or people who are Muslim and just target them, America was going along with that. American elites were going along with that. The American public was going along with that. And it would have worked pretty seamlessly.

And then if they were not doing, if they slow rolled this a little bit more, if they had waited before they started going after the ice cream vendor who's been there for 30 years and all these other beloved parts of the community, I think the United States of America goes along with it. In total, yeah.

And it has brought approval. I've always said they didn't vote for foreign wars. They voted for civil war. I mean, in many respects, that's what they're after. And to Andor, you know, we can kind of tie these things together. Like Palpatine is being a great idiot. Like when he gets going on the Death Star, the Death Star is stupid. Like the Death Star does not need to be there.

I think that the Empire as such could have insidiously moved from system to system, a little bit here, a little bit there, built it up, the next thing you know, like you're paying taxes to the Empire, you're paying taxes to the Empire. But it gets going on this like huge dramatic fantasy of like having a big orbit space that like blows up planets. Right. And that's what leads to like the Gorman Massacre.

And one of those little bits of point, like at the cannon along the way is that the Gorman massacre like triggers these systems to go into revolt and it creates a dramatic moment that did not need to happen. And I was skeptical, I think, early on of how quickly the empire was supposed to take place between like the prequel movies and the original trilogy. Because I was

like, that's such a short amount of time. Like it's only like 19 years. Like it felt in the first movie like they'd been around forever. And now having watched and or at the same time that I'm watching what's going on in the United States, I'm like, oh, 19 years now that tracks. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. It's actually two decades is a wildly long time. Yeah, that's actually kind of a long time. Yeah. It's a, it's a bit of a long time. And that's the weird thing about history. When you deconstruct it, if you look at it on the overall, you think, oh, it's the part. But if you take core samples, there's really only the only core samples that you'll get is like seven to eight years of peace and stability in a moment. Like

if the moment you widen out the time horizon, you see that these things happen really quickly and really violently. And I wanna end it with, you know, we talked about kind of deconstructing revolution, reconstructing them for art. You've done that now, Mike, with the Martian revolution. And I thought what was so brilliant about that is it's fiction, but it's almost more predictive now that your, your

fiction predicts the time we're living in now in a really prescient way. And I wanted you to talk about that a little bit just, and you too, Tony of, are you surprised at the works that you've both created out of examining behavior and out of examining the way that people might be turned into something that's different from who they were the journey that their characters might be taking. Is actually more predictive of the moment we're living in than the news. Well, yeah. And when I was writing, so I wrote The Martian Revolution, it's 29 episodes long, and I started it back in October, and then was coming out with early episodes of stuff that I'd plotted out kind of for years, like things that I wanted to happen mostly because I wanted to

like critique, as you said, like the tech oligarch part of society that I'm really scared of. And so there's like, there's a monopoly corporation and there's an idiot that's running it, that's doing all these things. But there was meant to be inside of this, like one of the things those guys do is they just come in, like, you know, like private equity style,

and they just buy something and then they just fire a bunch of people. Right. And so that's a part of what's going on on Mars is like mass indiscriminate firings that they don buy something, and then they just fire a bunch of people. And so that's a part of what's going on on Mars, is like mass indiscriminate firings that they don't know who does what, how or why they do it. And then it's like a doge. Yeah, and then literally like three weeks later,

they're starting up doge. I do not like this at all. And then there was also meant to be like, and again, I started this project like I did not, look, I did not think Trump was going to win that election. I had, I guess, one last shred of naive hope that we wouldn't do this. And so once all those people get fired on Mars,

there's a mass deportation business to all of this where they are coming around and they are rounding up these people because if you don't have a job on Mars, you got to get off of Mars. And so like mass deportations are a part of it. And then several weeks after I dropped those episodes, suddenly we're doing, you know, mass deportations in America.

So I did not enjoy controlling the lathe of heaven. I don't know how Tony felt about it. Like I certainly started writing different things. Yeah, Tony Baseman. Tony, I was, I'm literally watching Andor's mining resources underneath Gorman, the materials that they need to fuel the Death Star as they're signing the mineral agreement in Ukraine.

It's happening as I'm watching it. I mean, you're asking how it, I mean, mostly it makes me, my overwhelming feeling over the past three months and going out and sell the show is really, it's sadness. I mean, it's sad. There's a really, there's a Tolkien had a whole thing about, he didn't like allegory. He didn't like people making comps to his work, to world, but he, but he was really into applicability. He wanted it to be applicable to your life.

So I'm not exactly sure how wide that he takes that term, but to me it's been shocking to go around the world. We went around the world selling the show and every place we went, because I really didn't wanna, particularly in the beginning, I didn't wanna have the show get ghettoized by being left or right or political or whatever. I was really, we're really surfing through, but every journalist, every interview that we did, everywhere we went, people were finding

ways to take things, the same incident and make it applicable for them. Oh, this is Gaza. This is Ukraine. This is Northern Ireland, this is this, this is me, man, this is me, this is us. And that's, it's very sad. I do worry, as I said before, I do worry that that we're into a different situation with tech. I wonder if like, if our fallacy is that we've been going along going, oh, here's all these revolutions

and we know everything about a revolution and Mike's done all these shows about it and Tony's written all this stuff and it's all codified and you just pick one from column A from column B. I wonder if there isn't another page in the book that we haven't seen and that's the book, that's the page that we're on now. And that's the one that worries me the most of all.

Then the tech side of it, the AI side of it, and the lack of any kind of accountability to that is, that's what would keep me up at night more than anything. I think you're absolutely right. And I think, like we talked about earlier, these new communications and these new technologies are wildly disruptive.

And I think if I were going to take, uh, maybe a hopeful sign of it, it's that to me and maybe to you guys, I don't know how you interact with it. It is novel and it is alien and I don't, and I find it discomforting in a way that surprises me. But my hope is that for my kids and maybe even for And I find it discomforting in a way that surprises me, but my hope is that for my kids, and maybe even for their kids, their adaptation to it, that it will be native and it will be less destructive, that their brains, that the human instinct will be,

when we talk about the printing press comes in and everybody thinks, and that ushered in the enlightenment. But what they forget is it actually ushered in a hundred years of like fucking killing witches. Like it just, it ramped up people into all kinds of prejudices. But the hope is, is that people's brains. Yeah, dude, dude, dude, Mike and Tony just, he, he huge size. Like, is that how we're going to end this? Just the other two of us being like, Oh man, I'm trying to bring us into a

bucket of optimistic. Mike and I are going to start, we have to go, we have some prepping to do. We have to go back to our prepping replacements. Yeah, I gotta, yeah, I gotta, I gotta work on my bunker. I gotta go to the bunker.

I'm talking about our ability to evolve. Come on. Yeah, look, I will, I will say one thing though, because one of the things, I mean, we didn't touch on this, but like, the Andor dropped into this moment that is talking about resistance to the creeping authoritarian regime. That text becomes a part of this political moment, right? The fact that that was given to people right now in this moment, like however few or many actually read it in here, people are processing what to people right now in this moment, like however few or many actually read it in here,

people are processing what is happening right now in politics through Andor. Like I go to protests, and I see signs that say I have friends everywhere. Like that stuff is out there. Oh, yeah. No, it's out there. Wow.

It's out there, and you do see it. And I got friends everywhere. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll go with that hope. There you go, Tony. And your show and Mike, your podcast, become part of my kids' brain's ability to evolve to this moment in a more resilient way. I truly mean that. I'm not trying to like fucking kiss your ass here, but like, I truly

believe that the work that you're doing, Tony, and the work that you're doing, Mike, goes into their brains. And it does change the way that they interact with tech in this moment. Well. And it's a positive. I'm glad I was young when I was young.

That's a good point. Yeah, the 90s were good. It was a good time. The 90s were good. But remember too, and this is the thing we forget, we thought the world was spinning out of control. No, I know. I grew up, every good person this country produced

got fucking shot in the head. No, I know. That was true. Look, we have to remain that that's strong. And I so appreciate you guys doing the work that you do. It's so engrossing and such a pleasure to watch and feel, and it's so just thorough and all encompassing and real and not contrived.

And I just appreciate you both really, truly tremendously. And thank you both for adding good things into this sickly soup. But we're honored to have Tony Gilroy, who obviously created Andor, and so many other wonderful things. Mike Duncan, bestselling author, creator, History of Rome, Revolutions podcast.

Guys, thank you so much for spending the time. I really appreciate it. A pleasure. Thanks very much. Damn, I love those guys. Oh, good. It's wild to see how intentional they are about everything that they layer into their work,

how carefully. Tablespoon by tablespoon, as they said, yeah. I think it might even be teaspoon by teaspoon. I think it might even be smaller. I think a tablespoon is almost a cudgel. A little heavy-handed. It's a little heavy. It's a little heavy-handed.

But how about, I don't even know if this was on the air, but at the end, they were both exchanging numbers. Yeah, I know. You set them up, John. I set them up. You're a matchmaker. What? Give yourself a little credit.

Me next. Yeah. I'm just kidding. But so good and so interesting. And so interesting how, you know, I think for Tony, like I think he's so used to like selling Andor as, yes, the character, like, so to get an opportunity to hang with Mike, talk about it as an allegory,

and to talk about it through history, it seemed to, he seemed pleased. Yeah, he did, yeah. I mean, that was so, the show obviously resonated so much with, everyone wants to kind of apply it to the moment that you're in, but just hearing them zoom out too, and like, what a student of history they both are.

It was so satisfying, I guess, just to hear them sort of like build that narrative, layer it on top of all of these like very real things that have happened. That's right. And to hear from them exactly why their work seems predictive to us is because it's not new, because there are these patterns. But I also love how precise they are.

Like when you say to him, like, when you think about their motivations and he's like, eh, not motivations, behavior. Like they're really, I think whenever I talk to people whose work I really admire, I'm always struck by the precision in which they operate. Yeah, and that comes through in both of their work so clearly.

Right, yeah, no, fantastic. I was so glad to get a chance to do that. I don't know who put them together, probably Katie Gray, her and her putting people together. All those things. She's a matchmaker. Brittany, what do we got for our questions today? John, you once compared Dick Cheney to Darth Vader.

What Star Wars character would Stephen Miller be? Oh, Jesus. I don't even know if there's a... I don't know that that universe has conjured up. I think it would probably be, you know, kind of one of those characters that they mentioned, but, you know, like Darth Sidious. Like one of those that's like, and my teacher taught me, taught me the power of life and death. His name was Sidious. You know, it's one of, and it would be a life and death. His name was Sidious. You know, it's one of, and it would be a sibilant. There'd always be that like,

sssss in one of those characters. It'd be, yeah. That. I feel like, yeah, when Tony said like, the characters that are interesting to write, you know, the Nazis that are like the clock punchers and stuff, like Stephen Miller, you're not interesting enough to write.

I don't think you're too despicable. Yeah. And also too, almost too much two-dimensional. Yeah. Like you can't even see him in Inglorious Bastards where he's like, wait, wait, we have to wait for the cream for the strudel. You know what I mean? Like you can't even do that shit.

Like it just, all right. What else we got? All right. The Democrats launched plans for project 2029. Do you think they finally figured out how to win? Copycatting and going on podcasts? Because their 2029 is so fucking idiotic and it's the same idiots that put together all the plans

that haven't worked out in the first place. They're not understanding where the energy and the desire rests in this country. They have no idea. They're looking in the wrong place and their project 2029 is going to be a rehash of all the consultant driven careful nonsense that has put them in this place of that,

in a moment when the Republican Congress is passing one of the most devastating bills that we have seen in this country in forever to just put out pictures of Hakeem Jeffries from an angle that makes him look six years old holding a baseball bat. And you're like, it doesn't look like you're going to fight. It looks like you're going to T-ball.

And that's where they're all going. So hopefully this project 2029 that they've done is just a draft on a Google doc that they can put into edit mode and have people go in there and make some real changes and hopefully understand the desperation of the moment that people are feeling because right now. Do you think anyone's getting it right?

Yeah, I think, I think there are a lot of young people who's much more populist campaigns. I mean, obviously Mamdani is getting all the attention in New York and for very good reasons, but there's a lot of young candidates that are, it's not even about the savvy in which they use social media or the way that they've gotten attention, it's the burning, I think, authenticity of how they feel about the inequities and upside down

nature of the society that we're building. Like we talked about in the podcast, you know, when you start consolidating and taking people's farmland and just creating more and more elites with larger and larger farmland, that's a recipe for stupidity. And so seeing the bottom up energy of some of these candidates, I think they're getting it right. They're not being, I think, in any way, nurtured or helped by the party elites. In fact, I think they're being resisted, and I think it's stupidity and suicidal

on the part of the party elites. I think they're making a huge mistake. It's, yeah, it's both shocking and unsurprising to watch the Democrats respond to all of this this way. Right. I mean, they're trying to discredit it. Yeah. But there's such a shocking disparity

between the authenticity. Like, you're juxtaposing, let's say, Mom Donnie speaking to camera, talking with, you know, so much, like, expertise and feeling about things that affect the city, like a plate of food. How much does this cost? And juxtapose that with a single picture that was, you know, canned and I don't know.

It's not produced. There's just a stark difference between even the message and how it's being said, not just the capturing on social media even. Well, it's like anything else. The Project 29 they're doing and the party elites smack of what is so inauthentic about like taglines on movies. Like, you know, it, and people feel it.

It's not of a reality. It's of a process that is put into place by people who don't experience reality to try and describe what they think will be a winning message, as opposed to taking in the reality of the emotions and channeling those into positive, you know, change for people. And I think you're exactly right, Lauren, about the specificity of Mamdani when he talks.

It's not just platitudes about affordability. It's really deconstructing how that inaffordability has been created and how we might battle back. Yeah, it just shows people how their city works more. I think there's a point to that. Yeah, policies he understands and believes in. Who would have thought that would be a winning recipe? As they say, so you're saying the strategy is authenticity.

I like it. I like the cut of your jib. Very, very nice program. Thank you guys, as always, for putting together just a banger. I really love talking to those guys. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer, Rob Vitolo,

audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear, executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. And we will see you guys next week. Bye bye. The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast I'm going to be a good boy.