"First they came for the Nazis, and I said nothing, because frankly those guys are assholes and we're better off without them. Then they... didn't come for anyone else, we really just wanted to get rid of Nazis. Mission accomplished! Yay!"
The Manhattan Project did not move from Oak Ridge, Tennessee to Los Alamos. The Oak Ridge complex was responsible for creating the fuel for the bomb through a painstaking process that employed some 70,000 people. The bomb was designed, constructed and tested at Los Alamos. Both sites were working at full capacity simultaneously.
This is one of my criticisms of BTB. There are some basic facts that they really should be familiar with before going into a discussion. But then they just kinda wing it and confabulate. I wind up catching it when the detail that Robert approximates is one that I happen to know. That makes me wonder about the accuracy of information about which I'm not familiar. I'm not saying that mistakes never happen or that mistakes invalidate the whole. But when no one thinks to consult Wikipedia for details that are essential to the premise of this novel, and then Robert just kinda throws out a guess? Not good.
Thank you. I was screaming at my computer when she said that the Manhattan project wasn't in East TN because the only reason the city I grew up in (Oak Ridge) exists is the nuclear weapons arsenal of the USA.
@@HarryLovesRuthRobert is generally good with things he's familiar with and it's usually obvious on things he isn't. It would be nice if they had more time to do a little more research to cover the gaps, but I don't fault them for it. Most of the research he does in the time they have isn't bad.
I watched Seaquest. The whole family did. On the couch in front of our 35 inch wood veneer paneled Zenith TV with popcorn for all. And we used a popcorn popper because we didn't have a microwave and i don't microwave popcorn had taken over the market yet... Jesus, I'm crying...
@@aguysomewhere8277 Lucas was a pretty well teenage genius characterr too, and yes the dolphin is funny, Ironside, i think ironside is better, nithing against schneider who is good, but ironside has more edge as character.
Also: I worked at a second-hand library for several years. I never saw a book by Newt at all. Ever. So either people loved it so much they never donated it, or you know it sucked and no one bought it.
@@idontwantahandlethough , author Flannery O'Connor once said " Friends don't let friends read Ayn Rand". I disagree because I believe books that bad should be read preferably in a group setting where you can all laugh at the ridiculousness of the prose and the stupidity of the ideas being put forth, not to mention the tawdriness of the sex. There's a video on UA-cam where Alan Moore talks about this and says that aspiring writers should read bad books in order to be inspired to exclaim, " I am certain beyond any doubt that I can write better than this crap"!
The children are not playing a 10 year old video card game, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure the only people playing Hearthstone are people who are still rooting for Blizzard, which, despite them doing okay, is a diminishing group as far as I can tell (that gets bolstered every time a new WoW expak or major patch happens)
@@alexanon8345 yeah that tracks, I'm 33 and I feel like it was a fairly relevant meme in my day. But then again, I did play WoW. Never again. I've done heroin and I've done Wow, and i'd genuinely sooner do dope
23 year old gen z here. Maybe I'm a special case but I literally would shout "Leeeeroooooy Jeeenkinnns" when I was on the playground in elementary school. I grew up terminally online if you couldn't tell
The facility in Tennessee that they're referring to is (probably) the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and more specifically the Y-12 facility where uranium is/was manufactured for nuclear weapons. They made the uranium for Little Boy there.
Do one on Pemex, the Mexican State Oil Company. They are one of the few industrial companies with multiple several hundred fatality incidents(alongside Union Carbide who you've covered) and have an atrocious safety record. The 3 most infamous incidents are the San Juanico Disaster in 1984(where a poorly built incredibly outdated gas storage and refinery facility in the middle of a city blew up and killed 500-700 people), the Gaudalajara Disaster in 1992(where a leaky underground gas pipe filled a sewer system with gas, blowing up block after block and killing 200-1000 people) and the recent Hidalgo Disaster in 2019 (where a leaky above ground gas pipe exploded and killed 137-160 people). There have been hundreds of other accidents killing a small handful of people and dozens killing...well dozens. If you were to look at a list of the world's worst industrial accidents, Pemex's name would show up at least twice, an honor only shared by Union Carbide.
Newt *Scamander* lived in the 1920s, and had no wife Newt *Gingrich* talks like he lived in the 1920s, and had three wives but divorced two of them Also, people actually bought Newt Scamander's book
My new headcanon is: every time Newt was sitting in his big chair taking notes and liking official, he was actually writing his stories. I will contribute to a fund to keep potential dictators in the arts where they belong.
@@katiekeaton9063 it has been said that humans are the stories we tell ourselves; therefore, take care to make sure those stories are good ones, or there'll be unpleasant consequences.
Recent events remind me of the Communists, yes, actual Communists, I used to talk a bit with in my college days. They felt that the USSR and CCP simply hadn't done Communism right. And they, of course, would. These days at least half of the US seems to be convinced that the Nazis were good guys, and simply didn't do Nazism right. But they will. We have computers now and DNA tech and all that, and this time around, Nazism will be done right and it'll be great (as long as your white "Aryan" and just the right kind of white "Aryan" with exactly the right beliefs and are good at "office politics" yadda yadda).
Speaking of distracting right wing political guys who want to write with a good writing career so they don't get into politics, Orson Scott Card, author of Enders Game, might be a good subject for an episode. A very successful sci fi writer with some _insane_ beliefs and who was calling for a violent coup over gay marriage being legalized.
I literally suggested Orson Scott Card as an episode subject many episodes ago. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks so. (Also, Robert. As someone who is a part of Gen Z, I know both "Leroy Jenkins" and have watched Seaquest. Darwin is one of my favourite characters.)
Orson Scott Card's books were pretty important to me growing up, so I'd love to know what kind of cognitive dissonance produces both anti-gay bigotry and Speaker for the Dead, a novel about understanding people and having empathy for them.
it is the funniest shit to me that right after Sophie said "you're not an old man" I immediately got an ad with Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" playing in the background
They introduced family values in 94 after Dan Quayle called out Murphy Brown being a professional single mother on TV…and the traditional family values was born to the RNC platform
when i was in grad school and teaching undergrad communication classes, i was talking about participatory culture/transformative works/memes/etc. and i used the example of the original leeroy jenkins video and then various riffs on it - a car commercial, a short film, etc. and first i asked "how many of you know what i mean when i say leeroy jenkins?" and like two out of my 30ish students raised their hands. and i was like EXCELLENT, i am about to change your lives, let's watch this video. and that was one of my favorite teaching moments, watching like 28 undergrads discover leeroy jenkins for the first time.
I know you don't normally do historical figures of the middle ages, but I think a fun one would be King John of England. Dude was the reason the Magna Carta was made, he became the villain in the Robin Hood legends, and no other king has been named John since, and is often considered the worst British monarch in history.
I (do not actually) wonder why modern fascists never mention, when they quote the end of that Niemöller poem who exactly, according to it, they came for first.
IIRC, socialists and trade unionists were the first 2 groups, but I don't remember which was first. I'm thinking it was the trade unionists, followed by socialists and communists....
@@goodun2974 There's a short version and a long version. The short versions goes Socialists -> Trade Unionists -> Jews -> Me. So if we remember that Niemöller, as a Lutheran priest, was a conservative, it's very intentionally a progression from more to less Left wing. The long version has the same progression, but adds Communists at the front.
@RvEijndhoven , of course, the not cees also made sure to "come for" gays, the mentally ill, people with genetic disease or disability, and people with crippling injuries that made working difficult or impossible.
What is hilarious is that the co-author, William Forstchen, also wrote an awesome series called The Lost Regiment about civil war soldiers from the Union getting sucked into a wormhole and end up on a planet where humans are slaves to giant orc like aliens. The entire story is so pro Union, pro New England, and pro abolition it could have been written by an outright anarcho-communist and you wouldn't know the difference.
@peternicol3439 unless he is a mormon that does not follow at all. At worst the aliens are coded as Mongolians or Huns or possibly even Arabs given they use scimitars and there is absolutely nothing about them that has anything to do with Native Americans. And even if the Mongolian coding is a problem, plenty of lefties in the 90s and now have extremely negative opinions about Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Either way the values espoused in The Lost Regiment are completely absent from anything conservatives, or Newt Gingrich, believe today.
@@Gloomdrake At the end of the series, after the big bad aliens have been defeated, they start talking about confining them to reservations and thats when the comparisons with The Treatment of Native Americans hit me, reinforced with the fact that he has done numerous books with Newt Gingrich.
Finally dared to look at my Spotify Wrapped. Last year Behind the Bastards was my most listened to podcast, this year it was overtaken by Knowledge Fight (and BtB was followed by Worst year Ever which I've been listening back to, so more Robert for meee!). Must have been close though. I listened to pods for a total of 53577minutes, and that's just on Spotify.......... 🥴
@Goblinkatie I suspect that was how I found them too!😂 Cody Johnston I think I found on my own but almost peed myself from joy the first time I noticed him appearing here with Robert! 😍 I was actually kinda surprised that some more news/even more news wasn't on the list until I realized that I listen to/watch those on UA-cam... But the BtB episodes with Cody and Katy are some of my favourites because of how unhinged they become ❤️
As someone whose studied a lot of Soviet history, its always funny to me when alternate history novels just kind of hand waive away the red army’s role in wwiii. “Oh yeah the soviets lost because America wasn’t there to help” yeah sure, the soviets were prepared to throw bodies at front indefinitely
10:57 If you have to omit most of the poem you're referencing in order for it to support the point you're making, maybe the point you're making is bad and wrong.
17:45 You're correct. Oak Ridge National Labs was part of the Manhattan Project even after Los Alamos National Labs become the hub for the project. There were sites for the project all over the US including Chicago, Dayton, and Hanford (WA) as well. Oak Ridge worked on refining the fissile material for the devices, the Dayton project refined polonium for the triggers that would be used. It was a massive project that is kinda reduced to just "Los Alamos" in histories and depictions of it.
That back cover looks like a last minute press conference for a prosecutor team that calls themselves the "bad boys of Texas Roadhouse" because they meet there daily for lunch.
I'm so glad decided to start watching this channel a week before the election... I've watched nothing but, instead of dwelling on every bad bit of dreadful news coming in I'd rather examine how we got here structurally... Tonight i made it to the episode where you're talking about covid just hitting europe for the first time with billy wayne davis.
" One named Twittler shall become the captain of greater 'Murakey/ no law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be....." Paraphrasing from The Eyes of Nostradamus by Al Stewart.
Two things: One, I guess in this universe Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek don't exist for some reason, since defeating Japan left America "the only military power in the Pacific". Two, apparently Italy doesn't exist either, since there's no mention of the Scramble for Africa. Did Hitler and Mussolini just draw a line down the middle like the Pope giving Brasil to the Portuguese?
Baen books is nuts to me because despite being a really conservative publisher they're also known for publishing the 1632 series by Eric Flint, literal card-carrying socialist, who was so surprised they were willing to publish his book that he wanted to know if they'd fucked up somehow.
I read a couple of those books and didn't know that. It makes me rethink the whole scene were he shits on the big business city dude in the first book. I thought pretty much all of the authors that published through them were some level of right wing with John Ringo being the worst in every way possible.
I think the Baen's personal political leanings have to do with it a lot less than they carved out a pretty successful niche with the military sci-fi authors, who tend to be right leaning.
Oak ridge TN is where the Manhattan Project started and the facility is still in use and owned by the Department of Energy. Parts of the US nuclear weapons program are handled there. They have a great deal with the TVA for cheap electricity for the site.
Everyone in the comments speaking up for Seaquest, but I'm here to show solidarity for Alien Resurrection. Absolute work of art. Underappreciated. Directed by the guy that made Delicatessen and City of Lost Children and fucking Amelie. Alien Resurrection is sandwiched right between City of Lost Children and Amelie in his career. It has Ron Perlman in it. People just don't appreciate it because it has a very "weird french movie" vibe to it that doesn't make sense until you learn who directed it.
I didn't like "Delicatessen" but I enjoyed "Amelie". Audrey Tatou was wonderful in "Dirty Pretty Things", a very grim, dark movie, but well written and acted. And then some idiot decide to pair her with Tom Hanks in "Angels and Demons", ugh. Dan Brown is one of the worst famous writers I've ever had the displeasure to read.
I think a lot of the hate is more for Joss Whedon (AKA human turd extraordinaire) who wrote the movie. Which is kind of a shame, because writing is probably the only good thing Whedon ever did.
4:59 this is exactly how i felt listening to Spotify's ai podcast about my wrapped this year. Like yes, fake people who sound incredibly real, tell me how good my music taste is and how interesting it makes me
Oak Ridge, Tenn was the site of several parts of the Manhattan Project and was still used after the war to develop nukes. Nazi Germany had a massive flyingboat that could in theory carried a small nuclear bomb to America but you're thinking about the paper design Amerika Bomber that never went anywhere because they never had the resources to develop a heavy bomber program.
They _did_ have one heavy bomber program, but it kept catching fire because Hitler wanted dive bombers, so they had to put two engines in the same pod to keep the wing loading down during a dive, so the cooling wasn't enough, so it caught fire all the time.
One time in the 90's I opened a book and saw a review by Newt Gingrich. It was weird af. He was right though, it _was_ a pleasant read. Don't know how to feel knowing I have the same taste in books as that weirdo :|
I read that book. It was hilarious. Really sad what happened to Oak Ridge. He wrote one book 1901 Price of Empire about ths German Empire (Kiaser Wilhem II) invading the U.S. (I think around New York after the Spanish American War. Cause we would not sell the Phillipines to Gemany. It gets weird civil war generals come out of retirement (from the south). Native Americans are set loose as scouts and raiders.
I love how part of the scenario in the book is the assumption that Nazi Germany goes ten rounds with the USSR, and not only wins but comes out stronger than before. Because, like, no. That's not happening. Newt loved talking about the US's massive industrial might, and ignored completely this also applied to the Soviet Union.
"First they came for the Nazis, and I said nothing, because frankly those guys are assholes and we're better off without them. Then they... didn't come for anyone else, we really just wanted to get rid of Nazis. Mission accomplished! Yay!"
I like your version
😅
We wish history went that way. Frack.
😂
We're here. The last episode recorded before *the event.*
Hug your loved ones & pray that Robert is merciful next week.
How I envy Past Robert for not knowing how bad things are going to get until now.
@@jaybeans981 I honestly didn't realize they haven't put out any post election episodes yet. Robert is going to be interesting after this.
I have been desperate to hear a post-election BTB, I don't know why I need it so bad, but they've been really keeping it back.
I pray that Robert unleashes proper heck, heck I tells ya!
Remain indoors. ua-cam.com/video/wnd1jKcfBRE/v-deo.html
“Hopefully the election will be over by December.”
*monkey’s paw curls*
"First they came for the Nazis and I did not speak up because I'm not a Nazi."
that's the whole poem
I think I remember it differently. "I did not speak up because Nazis can get fucked".
I spoke up! I told them "Hell yeah man, punching Nazis is based."
The Manhattan Project did not move from Oak Ridge, Tennessee to Los Alamos. The Oak Ridge complex was responsible for creating the fuel for the bomb through a painstaking process that employed some 70,000 people. The bomb was designed, constructed and tested at Los Alamos. Both sites were working at full capacity simultaneously.
Yes it was a vast, spread-out project.
And it operates to this day as the Y-12 Complex where we basically maintain and advance our nuclear capabilities, both in terms of power and weapons.
This is one of my criticisms of BTB. There are some basic facts that they really should be familiar with before going into a discussion. But then they just kinda wing it and confabulate. I wind up catching it when the detail that Robert approximates is one that I happen to know. That makes me wonder about the accuracy of information about which I'm not familiar.
I'm not saying that mistakes never happen or that mistakes invalidate the whole. But when no one thinks to consult Wikipedia for details that are essential to the premise of this novel, and then Robert just kinda throws out a guess? Not good.
Thank you. I was screaming at my computer when she said that the Manhattan project wasn't in East TN because the only reason the city I grew up in (Oak Ridge) exists is the nuclear weapons arsenal of the USA.
@@HarryLovesRuthRobert is generally good with things he's familiar with and it's usually obvious on things he isn't. It would be nice if they had more time to do a little more research to cover the gaps, but I don't fault them for it. Most of the research he does in the time they have isn't bad.
Coming from Spotify! It's really funny to watch Robert go "here are some ads" and then one second later go "aaaand we're back" 😂
For anyone curious, this book, being ~$25 in 1995 means it would cost ~$51 today. Tragic.
Gamers had E.T. for Atari 2600, readers had 1945 by Newt Gingrich. Time is a flat circle.
I have a copy, haven't read it, and I probably got it for a dollar or less.
Inflation really is goddamn insane nowadays. Double the price in thirty years?
@@gibbcharron3469 You kids who missed the 70s have no idea what real inflation is like.
Describing a Swede as "exotic" is certainly a choice.
I mean, we are exotic, what with our bellydancing, ninjas and spicy foods.
...no, wait, those are the Turks, Japanese and Malaysians. Never mind.
The constant praise Robert heaps on Seaquest DSV validates my inner child. I spent so many years thinking I was alone.
47-53% is such a specific, non-rounded range.
I watched Seaquest. The whole family did. On the couch in front of our 35 inch wood veneer paneled Zenith TV with popcorn for all. And we used a popcorn popper because we didn't have a microwave and i don't microwave popcorn had taken over the market yet... Jesus, I'm crying...
Now the REAL question is weather he was a Scheider or an Ironside guy... XD
@aguysomewhere8277 I liked Darwin because he was a talking dolphin and I was a small child.
@@aguysomewhere8277 He's totally a Scheider guy, if his past SeaQuest DSV tangents are to be trusted.
@@merylcruz3820by your profile pic I see your tastes have matured like a fine wine 😊
@@aguysomewhere8277 Lucas was a pretty well teenage genius characterr too, and yes the dolphin is funny,
Ironside, i think ironside is better, nithing against schneider who is good, but ironside has more edge as character.
Also: I worked at a second-hand library for several years. I never saw a book by Newt at all. Ever. So either people loved it so much they never donated it, or you know it sucked and no one bought it.
This is my favorite book club. Thanks!
Hah! I always loved the idea of a book club where you read the worst books you can find.
I suppose you're right, that's basically what this is!
@@idontwantahandlethough , author Flannery O'Connor once said " Friends don't let friends read Ayn Rand". I disagree because I believe books that bad should be read preferably in a group setting where you can all laugh at the ridiculousness of the prose and the stupidity of the ideas being put forth, not to mention the tawdriness of the sex. There's a video on UA-cam where Alan Moore talks about this and says that aspiring writers should read bad books in order to be inspired to exclaim, " I am certain beyond any doubt that I can write better than this crap"!
Robert, Leeroy Jenkins is understood by a bunch of people still. It got turned into a hearthstone card, which is an ongoing service game.
The children are not playing a 10 year old video card game, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure the only people playing Hearthstone are people who are still rooting for Blizzard, which, despite them doing okay, is a diminishing group as far as I can tell (that gets bolstered every time a new WoW expak or major patch happens)
I mean I'm 28 and it was a liiiiiittle before my time, it was an old meme by the time I found it in my youth
@@alexanon8345 yeah that tracks, I'm 33 and I feel like it was a fairly relevant meme in my day. But then again, I did play WoW. Never again. I've done heroin and I've done Wow, and i'd genuinely sooner do dope
Never played WoW but I know about it. It was pretty ubiquitous. I doubt most kids have heard it before nowadays
23 year old gen z here. Maybe I'm a special case but I literally would shout "Leeeeroooooy Jeeenkinnns" when I was on the playground in elementary school. I grew up terminally online if you couldn't tell
I only listen to two podcasts. This is one of them. 👍
What's the other one?
@@ludo_narrwell there's your problem
Is the other one Knowledge Fight?
I listen to four -- this one, Molly's "Weird Little Guys", Jamie's "16th Minute of Fame", and Magpie's "Cool People who did Cool Stuff".
@@amberruby4896 lmfao
The facility in Tennessee that they're referring to is (probably) the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and more specifically the Y-12 facility where uranium is/was manufactured for nuclear weapons. They made the uranium for Little Boy there.
I can't wait to hear Robert's take on the December 4th event.
10:57 - Hey Newt, I think you have forgotten to include 3 out of 5 stanzas from that poem you're quoting
God dammit, a minute after I typed that, Molly's got my back. Hell yeah Molly.
The look on Molly's face after Robert says sex kitten.
I literally read this about 3 seconds before he said it. 32:14
Priceless. For the impatient: it's at 31:08.
Do one on Pemex, the Mexican State Oil Company. They are one of the few industrial companies with multiple several hundred fatality incidents(alongside Union Carbide who you've covered) and have an atrocious safety record.
The 3 most infamous incidents are the San Juanico Disaster in 1984(where a poorly built incredibly outdated gas storage and refinery facility in the middle of a city blew up and killed 500-700 people), the Gaudalajara Disaster in 1992(where a leaky underground gas pipe filled a sewer system with gas, blowing up block after block and killing 200-1000 people) and the recent Hidalgo Disaster in 2019 (where a leaky above ground gas pipe exploded and killed 137-160 people). There have been hundreds of other accidents killing a small handful of people and dozens killing...well dozens.
If you were to look at a list of the world's worst industrial accidents, Pemex's name would show up at least twice, an honor only shared by Union Carbide.
.....I could have sworn Newt Gingrich was the name of a Harry Potter character.
You’re think of Newt… I don’t remember how to spell his last name, but it sounds like a portmanteau of scabbard and salamander
@Gloomdrake Newt Scarmander I think he is called
😅
Newt *Scamander* lived in the 1920s, and had no wife
Newt *Gingrich* talks like he lived in the 1920s, and had three wives but divorced two of them
Also, people actually bought Newt Scamander's book
My new headcanon is: every time Newt was sitting in his big chair taking notes and liking official, he was actually writing his stories. I will contribute to a fund to keep potential dictators in the arts where they belong.
The "magic of the marketplace" that conservatives are so fond of will likely conspire to keep right-wing artists living in poverty.
Hitler was mad no one liked his paintings. I guess we just pretend?
@@katiekeaton9063 it has been said that humans are the stories we tell ourselves; therefore, take care to make sure those stories are good ones, or there'll be unpleasant consequences.
"What if the good guys won World War 2?" - Newt Gingrich
I guess we'll never know cause the fascist white supremacist americans and the mass murdering communists won.
Recent events remind me of the Communists, yes, actual Communists, I used to talk a bit with in my college days. They felt that the USSR and CCP simply hadn't done Communism right. And they, of course, would. These days at least half of the US seems to be convinced that the Nazis were good guys, and simply didn't do Nazism right. But they will. We have computers now and DNA tech and all that, and this time around, Nazism will be done right and it'll be great (as long as your white "Aryan" and just the right kind of white "Aryan" with exactly the right beliefs and are good at "office politics" yadda yadda).
Prolog! I support log! Big heavy and wood! 28:48
As a person who grew up in TN, I'm certain they were talking about Oak Ridge. Lots of research was done (and is still done) there.
Oak Ridge is curiously forgotten from the Manhattan Project story.
It was a major site of refining so its definitely referring to Oak Ridge
They say it's Oak Ridge multiple times in the book lol. I've read it, it's moderately absurd but this is a terrible book review lol
and the worlds largest super computer
Speaking of distracting right wing political guys who want to write with a good writing career so they don't get into politics, Orson Scott Card, author of Enders Game, might be a good subject for an episode. A very successful sci fi writer with some _insane_ beliefs and who was calling for a violent coup over gay marriage being legalized.
I literally suggested Orson Scott Card as an episode subject many episodes ago. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks so.
(Also, Robert. As someone who is a part of Gen Z, I know both "Leroy Jenkins" and have watched Seaquest. Darwin is one of my favourite characters.)
Orson Scott Card's books were pretty important to me growing up, so I'd love to know what kind of cognitive dissonance produces both anti-gay bigotry and Speaker for the Dead, a novel about understanding people and having empathy for them.
it is the funniest shit to me that right after Sophie said "you're not an old man" I immediately got an ad with Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" playing in the background
For a future topic, may I suggest the Dinosaur Bastards of the Bone Wars, O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope
How the Bone Wars hasn't got a movie yet I don't know.
0:29 Robert is trying to invent TENET
Finding out Forstchen was in this was like a gut punch. He isn't a BAD writer... The Lost Regiment is a pretty good series!
They introduced family values in 94 after Dan Quayle called out Murphy Brown being a professional single mother on TV…and the traditional family values was born to the RNC platform
Irony is lost on "conservatives" such as Newt Gingrich who is a serial adulterer and cheated on his wife while she was dying of cancer.
Wiki Paul Weyrich, no one is more responsible for today's crazed gop than this guy.
@ I’m well aware of Paul Weyrich.
I’m stating a fact as to when traditional family values was added to the RNC platform.
when i was in grad school and teaching undergrad communication classes, i was talking about participatory culture/transformative works/memes/etc. and i used the example of the original leeroy jenkins video and then various riffs on it - a car commercial, a short film, etc. and first i asked "how many of you know what i mean when i say leeroy jenkins?" and like two out of my 30ish students raised their hands. and i was like EXCELLENT, i am about to change your lives, let's watch this video. and that was one of my favorite teaching moments, watching like 28 undergrads discover leeroy jenkins for the first time.
I know you don't normally do historical figures of the middle ages, but I think a fun one would be King John of England. Dude was the reason the Magna Carta was made, he became the villain in the Robin Hood legends, and no other king has been named John since, and is often considered the worst British monarch in history.
Too late to be known as John the First, he's sure to be known as John the Worst
Do you think Newt counts his first two sets of wedding vows as works of fiction?
FaMilY vAlueS!!!
Very disappointed he didn’t speak in an old jowling british accent while reading Churchill’s lines
SeaQuest was such a good show! I'm really enjoying the SeaQuest portion of the obscure sci-fi references arc.
15:22 "53-47% chance of making it" But 100% the fault of Newt
Would love if weird little guys was on UA-cam! Or more reminders to watch it inserted into BtB . Because I do forget...
Future listener here. The election went better than I could have hoped. I was worried my torch and pitchfork would be rotting in my closet forever.
my buddy at work was JUST talking about Michael Ironside and Seaquest. eerie.
Of all the places I expected to hear about prolog programming this was maybe the last
I (do not actually) wonder why modern fascists never mention, when they quote the end of that Niemöller poem who exactly, according to it, they came for first.
IIRC, socialists and trade unionists were the first 2 groups, but I don't remember which was first. I'm thinking it was the trade unionists, followed by socialists and communists....
@@goodun2974 yep
@@goodun2974 There's a short version and a long version. The short versions goes
Socialists -> Trade Unionists -> Jews -> Me.
So if we remember that Niemöller, as a Lutheran priest, was a conservative, it's very intentionally a progression from more to less Left wing.
The long version has the same progression, but adds Communists at the front.
@RvEijndhoven , of course, the not cees also made sure to "come for" gays, the mentally ill, people with genetic disease or disability, and people with crippling injuries that made working difficult or impossible.
What is hilarious is that the co-author, William Forstchen, also wrote an awesome series called The Lost Regiment about civil war soldiers from the Union getting sucked into a wormhole and end up on a planet where humans are slaves to giant orc like aliens. The entire story is so pro Union, pro New England, and pro abolition it could have been written by an outright anarcho-communist and you wouldn't know the difference.
Until you realize that he seems to be using the Aliens as a stand-in for Native Americans.
@peternicol3439 unless he is a mormon that does not follow at all. At worst the aliens are coded as Mongolians or Huns or possibly even Arabs given they use scimitars and there is absolutely nothing about them that has anything to do with Native Americans. And even if the Mongolian coding is a problem, plenty of lefties in the 90s and now have extremely negative opinions about Genghis Khan and the Mongols.
Either way the values espoused in The Lost Regiment are completely absent from anything conservatives, or Newt Gingrich, believe today.
@@peternicol3439I haven’t read it, could you elaborate on that?
@@Gloomdrake At the end of the series, after the big bad aliens have been defeated, they start talking about confining them to reservations and thats when the comparisons with The Treatment of Native Americans hit me, reinforced with the fact that he has done numerous books with Newt Gingrich.
This was the only reason I read this book
Whoever wrote out the “sexy” scenes is just as good as George Lucas’ writing of same.
Inspiration for the "sexy" scenes likely came from Ayn Rand books.
Thank you for your work.
Finally dared to look at my Spotify Wrapped. Last year Behind the Bastards was my most listened to podcast, this year it was overtaken by Knowledge Fight (and BtB was followed by Worst year Ever which I've been listening back to, so more Robert for meee!). Must have been close though. I listened to pods for a total of 53577minutes, and that's just on Spotify.......... 🥴
You have great tastes.
I actually learned about KF because of the BtB episode that Dan & Jordan guested on!
@Goblinkatie I suspect that was how I found them too!😂
Cody Johnston I think I found on my own but almost peed myself from joy the first time I noticed him appearing here with Robert! 😍 I was actually kinda surprised that some more news/even more news wasn't on the list until I realized that I listen to/watch those on UA-cam... But the BtB episodes with Cody and Katy are some of my favourites because of how unhinged they become ❤️
As someone whose studied a lot of Soviet history, its always funny to me when alternate history novels just kind of hand waive away the red army’s role in wwiii. “Oh yeah the soviets lost because America wasn’t there to help” yeah sure, the soviets were prepared to throw bodies at front indefinitely
10:57 If you have to omit most of the poem you're referencing in order for it to support the point you're making, maybe the point you're making is bad and wrong.
Newt Gringrich is a real person????? I though he was a Harry Potter character.
Hate to be that person but Leroy Jakins is very much still a funny meme to gamers in their twenties
Leroy MMMMM Jenkins
At least I got chicken
17:45 You're correct. Oak Ridge National Labs was part of the Manhattan Project even after Los Alamos National Labs become the hub for the project. There were sites for the project all over the US including Chicago, Dayton, and Hanford (WA) as well. Oak Ridge worked on refining the fissile material for the devices, the Dayton project refined polonium for the triggers that would be used. It was a massive project that is kinda reduced to just "Los Alamos" in histories and depictions of it.
I love hearing all of the talk at the start of Robert being old, knowing that I'm older than him by less than 3 weeks.
That back cover looks like a last minute press conference for a prosecutor team that calls themselves the "bad boys of Texas Roadhouse" because they meet there daily for lunch.
God.... Damnit Leroy...
At least i have chicken.
omitting 1x 'e' from prologue probably saved the publisher a whole $0.25 in printing costs
auf Deutsch the rule is you pronounce the vowel that follows in ie/ei. so its Neemowler, E long O, with the Umlaut on the O.
O umlaut, or Ö, is pronounced as œ, like in the french word oeuf( =egg).
@@deepwuwu you are correct its more like mew than mow.
My only context for Leroy Jenkins is World of Warcraft circa 2010
I'm so glad decided to start watching this channel a week before the election... I've watched nothing but, instead of dwelling on every bad bit of dreadful news coming in I'd rather examine how we got here structurally... Tonight i made it to the episode where you're talking about covid just hitting europe for the first time with billy wayne davis.
Way funnier than the last one!
" One named Twittler shall become the captain of greater 'Murakey/ no law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be....." Paraphrasing from The Eyes of Nostradamus by Al Stewart.
A Tiffany lamp on an art deco nightstand?? Thank goodness no art director ever would have to put that in a movie set.
Oh god, is it where his favourite team DOESN'T lose this time?
I've never seen Roberts' tattoos. They look pretty cool!
Nice, they picked up the gift from the clearance section at Half Price Books.
Two things: One, I guess in this universe Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek don't exist for some reason, since defeating Japan left America "the only military power in the Pacific". Two, apparently Italy doesn't exist either, since there's no mention of the Scramble for Africa. Did Hitler and Mussolini just draw a line down the middle like the Pope giving Brasil to the Portuguese?
Perfect ad break moment:
Robert "Speaking of people who look at you naked"
Patrick Stewart "Hello, I'm Patrick Stewart"
Way to go, UA-cam.
"Prolog" is the German spelling.
"speaking of people who look at you naked" and then i immediately get an ad LOL perfect timing
17:30 me exclaiming from my desk in the middle of the work day "Oak Ridge!"
Baen books is nuts to me because despite being a really conservative publisher they're also known for publishing the 1632 series by Eric Flint, literal card-carrying socialist, who was so surprised they were willing to publish his book that he wanted to know if they'd fucked up somehow.
I read a couple of those books and didn't know that. It makes me rethink the whole scene were he shits on the big business city dude in the first book. I thought pretty much all of the authors that published through them were some level of right wing with John Ringo being the worst in every way possible.
I think the Baen's personal political leanings have to do with it a lot less than they carved out a pretty successful niche with the military sci-fi authors, who tend to be right leaning.
'you can only go back in time and view it' - yeah that's what they told Denzel in Deja Vu too
Seaquest dsv ruled. So many cool people were on that show. Roy Scheider, a dolphin, Johnathan Brandis, Ted raimi, others.
Oak ridge TN is where the Manhattan Project started and the facility is still in use and owned by the Department of Energy. Parts of the US nuclear weapons program are handled there. They have a great deal with the TVA for cheap electricity for the site.
Literally me, a Tennessean, yelling at Robert and saying "Oak Ridge!"
I watched Seaquest with my dad. Do you remember Earth 2. Clancy Brown was actually a good father in that one.
HOTDAMN SeaQuest mention.
I kind of want to ask what he thinks of season three, but I'm also afraid of the answer.
Everyone in the comments speaking up for Seaquest, but I'm here to show solidarity for Alien Resurrection. Absolute work of art. Underappreciated. Directed by the guy that made Delicatessen and City of Lost Children and fucking Amelie. Alien Resurrection is sandwiched right between City of Lost Children and Amelie in his career. It has Ron Perlman in it. People just don't appreciate it because it has a very "weird french movie" vibe to it that doesn't make sense until you learn who directed it.
I didn't like "Delicatessen" but I enjoyed "Amelie". Audrey Tatou was wonderful in "Dirty Pretty Things", a very grim, dark movie, but well written and acted. And then some idiot decide to pair her with Tom Hanks in "Angels and Demons", ugh. Dan Brown is one of the worst famous writers I've ever had the displeasure to read.
I love it as a dark comedy. We had horror movie Alien, action Aliens, action horror Alien 3. Dark comedy was what the franchise needed next.
I think a lot of the hate is more for Joss Whedon (AKA human turd extraordinaire) who wrote the movie. Which is kind of a shame, because writing is probably the only good thing Whedon ever did.
SeaQuest had the most unhinged but amazing season finales
4:59 this is exactly how i felt listening to Spotify's ai podcast about my wrapped this year. Like yes, fake people who sound incredibly real, tell me how good my music taste is and how interesting it makes me
4:48 Counterpoint to the "let Hitler paint" idea: they let JD Vance write "Hillbilly Elegy" and now he's the vice Trump *because* it came out.
Oak Ridge, Tenn was the site of several parts of the Manhattan Project and was still used after the war to develop nukes. Nazi Germany had a massive flyingboat that could in theory carried a small nuclear bomb to America but you're thinking about the paper design Amerika Bomber that never went anywhere because they never had the resources to develop a heavy bomber program.
They _did_ have one heavy bomber program, but it kept catching fire because Hitler wanted dive bombers, so they had to put two engines in the same pod to keep the wing loading down during a dive, so the cooling wasn't enough, so it caught fire all the time.
judging by the Gizmodo section, the book is on about Silbervogel, which is even funnier.
Turtledove! Massive fan. Still mad my friend's dog ate the copy of In The Presence Of Mine Enemies i lent him
One time in the 90's I opened a book and saw a review by Newt Gingrich. It was weird af. He was right though, it _was_ a pleasant read. Don't know how to feel knowing I have the same taste in books as that weirdo :|
IT ALL GOES WRONG, ROBERT AND SOPHIE
Oak Ridge Represent! It started there.
21:42 Hi Robert, I believe it's actually pronounced "foreskin"?
So, it’s historical alt fiction with the language of Conan the Barbarian? Interesting choices Newt…
Listener from the future here,
the election did not go well.
" The future? Imagine a booted foot coming down on someone's face, forever". Huxley, or Orwell
I read that book. It was hilarious. Really sad what happened to Oak Ridge.
He wrote one book 1901 Price of Empire about ths German Empire (Kiaser Wilhem II) invading the U.S. (I think around New York after the Spanish American War. Cause we would not sell the Phillipines to Gemany.
It gets weird civil war generals come out of retirement (from the south). Native Americans are set loose as scouts and raiders.
That was a summary was so weird it gave me whiplash.
The illusion is shattered! Three of my favorite voices now have real human faces. I am both devastated and entertained.
Omg! Robert, you need to interview people who know stories about Gingrich's second year of life. Get all the deets and publish your own '1945'
44:30 That scream, should it be atonal?
I love how part of the scenario in the book is the assumption that Nazi Germany goes ten rounds with the USSR, and not only wins but comes out stronger than before.
Because, like, no. That's not happening. Newt loved talking about the US's massive industrial might, and ignored completely this also applied to the Soviet Union.
The cover makes me think only of the cover to Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard.
Can't believe y'all forgot about Oak Ridge Lab
Everyone needs a hype man/emotional support therapist like Sophie @6:22
The world went bad when an intern taught Newt about Game Theory sometime in the early 90's.
I am younger then my 30s, but I know who Leroy is. Mostly because I know somebody who plays Heartstone.
Raytheon is definitely masc presenting. They make missiles