388. Dumb 1935

This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge. Watch the Hitler Show on Netflix. W Hello? Hello? Hello and good afternoon. Good afternoon, Merlin. How are you? I'm very well. How are you? I'm alright. Do I sound okay? Oh, that other than that little No, you don't. Oh. Oh. I don't I don't know if it's anything you can fix. Not not right now anyway Hmm. I don't well I mean, how would you like to sound? Um confident and not arrogant with less of a vocal fry as long as it doesn't make my voice pitch up when I'm going to I admire that you know these things. That's really cool. No, honestly, it's very cool. Confident. Yeah, yeah. Never give up, never give in.

Yeah. Remember, remember the doctor the doctor told her that there was a promise. Oh wait, I can't well I thought you like Chris Fleming. Uh it's when uh it's in Day of the Doctor when Clara starts crying. And I say Clara, I don't care. And she starts she starts she starts tearing up and uh thir thirteen? Right now twelve? Whatever. Your guy. Your guy. Nope. My guy. Eleven. Matt Smith Matt Smith is eleven Says uh what what like what what's going on, remember? And and then and then they do that wonderful shot. I believe that is one of the three documented times that I cry during that episode of television. Th uh th doc by documented. Is it in a spreadsheet? Do you have a a like a spreadsheet of Times you've cried during television shows because that would be really interesting.

Yeah, that's a that is a good project. It's interesting. Um That's an insane question. The answer is no. No. No. Okay. But uh, but it gets at something that's actually something I'm thinking about a lot right now. Um the It's not very it's not very interesting to talk about on a podcast. But thinking about um thinking about instead of like I've there's a lot of like little bits of my world that you could consider, you know, tech tech and tech adjacent stuff where I'm I'm trying to think at two ends of a problem. Title. I'm trying to think about the like oh my gosh, what is and specifically I'm working on some web stuff. I wanna like I want to do something different with my web stuff. And on the one hand, I'm thinking about like, what is it that I think I want?

How do I want that to look? How would it be presented? Is it federated? Blah blah blah blah. But the thing that I've realized that I think makes this time different is I'm even more importantly than like where does this live and does it have a JSON feed? Is the like do I like the options that I have for creating new things? Do you know what I mean? Aren't you more aren't you more apt to use an like aren't you more likely to use an app or a service or an anything if you well, start with the easy one, don't dislike using it. Yes. And this has sort of led to the dilemma, I think, in a lot of our overlapping friend circles over the past, oh God, since nearly twenty eighteen of okay, all these places are bad.

Twitter for a while, at least, you know, despite leadership, you still had an option with RSS. And uh for a while Substack was interesting because there was the RSS option and there was no algorithm and no recognition engines. Yes, as a right, as I don't even want to say as a consumer. As sorry, as somebody who would theoretically enjoy reading what I have to say. Okay. All right. So not someone who is making something, but someone who just wants to be able to do that. Well they certainly they obviously they certainly affect each other. But I I take your point though. I mean there used to be a lot more ways that you could play nice with other services. And I think you don't have one does not have to be a terrible cynic to realize that There's been changes in various parts of the ecosystem that make that kind of cooperation.

Used to be kind of feel like table stakes uh for like the ones that I would want to use. And nowadays it's you can't really count on all that stuff to work together in a similar way. Which oddly enough leads me back to the important part of my thing, which is like do I like using the app to put it in? Like for example, I really like Ghost. There's stuff I really like about Ghost. I like the way Ghost looks. I like its markdown formatting if I'm doing it on the web. I'm just I'm kind of surprised, bummed out, curious about why there's You've got these apps that are pretty you've got i've got apps like the blue sky app and ivory, which are fine for like posting four photographs or a video. With, you know, and in the case of, you know, that works works pretty well.

And I like that interface because that's a lot of the micro content I want to put out is that kind of stuff. But it's interesting it's so interesting to me. I have my reckons about this, but Ghost seems like it could be so good for this stuff, but it doesn't have like a it doesn't have a mobile app I have in uh not a good or uh interesting answer, but probably obvious one in that there are folks just who have tried to make this exist. It was almost on a project that was trying to make this exist, but very quickly it becomes, oh, there's both not enough people who use it. And uh because of the way that Ghost's licensing works, you can't do it uh th now that might change with some activity pub stuff.

I'm just I'm just amazed that the company hasn't made uh a mobile app and that's where my reckon comes in and my reckon is that this is for people who used to be on substack and they want a substack that doesn't suck. And and so you're kind of meant to do this A on a computer and be with a team, I get the feeling. Right? Oh, so uh do you want or the real answer from like the ghost the The ghost guys? No, I don't. I don't. I'm just trying to give you a lot of things. Well, I mean we can if you want. If you have if you have facts you know that you'd like to share, I don't want to get in the way of that. I uh just the way it's not really about ghost. It's like that was my first Sally, my first Fuselade into like trying to explain this, but yeah, but go ahead.

But this is I mean it's it is more about ghosts because a lot of these services were really kind of elevated to m not like m th more of the public, but people who were interested in using Substack and who read Substack and were like, ooh, I'm seeing things that I don't want to read and also I don't like scrolling and seeing pop-ups. And uh there are uh more than enough people who will read ghost stuff, but it is not yet. Just like that. Just like with Pika it's a good thing. If the first box is can I get off Substack and get into this new thing and not feel like I'm part of an organization I don't want to be associated with? Like it seems like it ticks that box. to me anyway. But I'm always finding about new ones of these I didn't know about.

I think David Farrier, uh he talked you know, he's got I think he's got someday, someday, not today. Someday, somebody needs to talk to me like I'm a three year old and explain why newsletters are a big deal. Um, not today is not the day, but that's the other part of this that's not currently interesting to me, but is obviously interesting to a lot of other people because Ghost does it. Um I think micro d Microblog does it. There's all kinds of different ways, but but the the the gating Here's a funny thing. A funny thing is when I when there was no such thing as mobile, apart from taking a phone call and playing Snake, I did everything on a Mac and everything that I want to do right now, up to the point of how easy it is to use on a modern smartphone.

uh I was able to do in two thousand two or three with movable type. Like I want to be able to have a sidebar with entries from a different block. Because what I went you know, I wasn't far from the first person to do this. I had a bunch of different movable type blogs and then I would use them together. Like so like I want I want to have stuff like Waxi or Kotke, but I think what Kotke first called remaindered links. which could also serve as a post. What are remainder links? Time was when at least for me and I feel like the culture in the early what I would consider the early blog days was you have blog posts. And there were certain things that if at least to me, if you wanted to i if if you in my opinion to be respected as somebody who has a blog, there's certain things that were considered good form.

It's got a t usually got a title. Maybe not. It's often a link to something. You sit you provide the link. I always would provide the link at the very top of the post Because like this is my post is a really about something related to this link. Maybe I have something to add to that. Maybe I just want to highlight this. But just to get some of the other this this dumb, like weird culture out of the way. Well, you go and you provide a via link. And I use that word so different differently than everybody else. To them to a lot of people, via means I read this in the New York Times. When I say via, that means via Andy Bayo, not the New York Times. It's who I got the link through. Again, another part.

This is something that then uh six apart uh tried to their best to t to have work which is trackbacks. You know, where you could see like what other people in the blogosphere were linking to this, but of course then that became a huge spam problem. But so It's dignified to have a proper blog post that you've checked for grammar and spelling. You've got the link to the original thing. You said who you got it from. But also then getting away from to me that very mature culture that all the A-list bloggers understood was You generally wouldn't just post you could do you could do this on File Pile. You could just post a link to a YouTube video and say, uh, this is good. Right? But you wouldn't do that on your blog.

You you got you want to provide some context for it, so you have a post. The innovation believe it or not, was people like Kotke saying, well over here on my side rail, I've got something I'm calling something like remaindered links. And that's one that's the highlight, really that's what Andy mostly posts. Right. If you subscribe to Waxi, you're gonna see these tweet link things that are just links you put in the side rail. Right? With a min with a minimum of context, as opposed to a post. You could think about this also in terms of Daring Fireball Most of what he posts is the equivalent of mature remaindered links, and you see you clearly see the full solid five-sided star at the title when it's something that he's like written from scratch as like a a real post that shows up on the homepage.

I was going to ask about that because this seems to have come back in a big way f from I guess what I call them the n like new school bloggers, like the bir like Birch Tree and Max stories and all those people but what ha where this has always existed and uh when you said that I was like, oh it's like Tumblr. Because that it's still via still means where you initially got it from. And that had that built-in ability to show you through quoting where the the provenance over time of like how it started and got to Hero, which I always love. It was wasn't very pretty to look at, but you could very clearly see like the path from who made it to how it got to you. Yeah, that's just still a huge thing within Tumblr culture.

And a great way to discover, sorry. A great way to discover like minds. Like whether you're there for Doctor Who or porn or whatever, you start re seeing these same names pop up and you go like, oh, this is something I need to look at. Yeah, that's why Tumblr is still the best place for fandoms. Whenever I've tried to find I'm trying to find a really obscure gif of something, automatically On Tumblr, easy to find. That's how people who still can like quote organically grow an audience. It's I mean no one's making like a living off of it, but Wow, what a test of t time that a whole uh sort of ecosystem became simply because links are still the most important part, even though The like most people that I know of and including surprisingly the the youths, they don't use the Tumblr app.

They use the uh website as much as they're like. Well MB MB used to give me so much hassle that I about how much I hated and refused to use the Tumblr app. The website was so much better. Back in the day anyway. Yes, and I liked her app. It was good. And then you know Well, it's not it's not MD's app, it's Tumblr's app. Uh fair, fair enough. The the beta of lickabilities app was I I know that. I know you don't need to point it out. Uh that's like saying I don't want you to get too much self-esteem. Oh I know. A lot of other people if I'm being honest. I I agree. Good. Good. On Colbert, his wife Oh noted that Andy Cohen, who uh I wouldn't know who he is. He's he's the like after show host of um He's featuring a John Mullaney bit, but you wouldn't remember that.

Okay. I know the name. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm like Andy Cohen in one of those Real Housewives reviews. Yes. Yes, exactly. That is how I know him. But he referred to God, I wish I remembered her name, but she only comes on Colbert's show like for the little bits, and apparently she's now known as a bossy bottom. Yes. Well then they wrote a cookbook together. Oh god, that's so cute. And I'm like, oh yeah, that is a bossy bottom. And I I don't even want to uh I I couldn't want to talk about blogging, but She's a bossy bottom. What does that mean? That means that means okay, never mind. I don't want to know. Okay, I think I know. The reason I brought that up is because on Tumblr, I sound. It's not an effective voice I it no.

We do we need to work on that. That's why I'm a bottle of time. Please, I want to hear about blogging. No, no, no, no, no. I forget why I even started talking about it. Except it's on my mind. Because you were thinking uh it's been on your mind where you want to put stuff on the web where people can read. Well, yeah, kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean but the the the the two parts that I'm trying until I get more information to tell me different questions that need to be answered. My two my the th the the the second thing is I would like to be able to take things that I've made and have it show up where people would like to get it in a way that's sensible. But the problem is if I focus completely on the morass of various ways of trying to please everybody and hook all these things together and like I mean right now people I feel like at least I'll speak for myself.

I feel like I'm I I'm not writing I I'm always writing for myself. QED, but like I'm also not when I when I end up posting something in two or three places because nobody sees it anywhere, like that's that's cutting into like a like a value for me Because it doesn't all belong in the same place. Right? That's why I have this at least this idea of like, well, there's blog posts. There's things I just want to write that might as well be a blog post instead of being not seen on Ivory or on Blue Sky. But then there's stuff that's just like if you want to just see these remaindered link things, that might interest people. And maybe there could be tags. But so the second part is how do I having made things that I like, how do I get that into places where people would like to find it.

And they can even decide what level of engagement with my bullshit they're interested in. They don't necessarily like one at all. And s I can promise you they don't like all the music stuff. But then I keep na I think intelligently, I hope, I've I gotta keep coming back to that first part, which is there is not a silver bullet, especially on a phone. for doing all the things I want to do. And you can all feel free to like have a conversation about that. Well, why don't you just use drafts for everything? Uh okay, how do I put the image in drafts and preview it and make sure it looks good? Well she's Mars Edit. Well Mars Edit doesn't work for everything. But uh on let's create on a Mac, it does all those things that I want.

It's fantastic for all those things. But like then how does that cover? I don't want to have to tend to six different apps just to say some shit about Beethoven. Like that's just that's this is too m it's too much overhead. Do you know what I mean? And I need to like I need to like using the app to put it in 'cause look at my fucking ghost site. It just sits there because I have to go and like enter into this prayerful relationship with the website, which is very fun to use on a Mac, but Jesus fucking Christ, it's no fun to do on an iPhone, which is where I'm gonna be posting. So I n I I need I had need to think a About I don't want to overthink this and hopefully I'm gonna get some help from a couple friends with helping me like think through what it is that I want.

But uh It's sort of like, you know, when you get a new you get a new app, you get a new task manager, you get a new calendar, you get a new whatever, you dick around in it, you try all the things. time was before sinking, you'd have to move all your information into there and hope you didn't lose anything and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I I have this sense of trust that if I'm very clear about Part B which is where where can I look forward to some people who are interested finding these things. I also need to very much tend to part A, which is do I like the apps and services that get stuff into other stuff. And I'm trying to keep a very open mind about both and like all of those things Because just putting up a website and hoping somebody finds it is not satisfying to me.

Like I I want to know that the people who want to see it can see it and the stuff they don't want to see. And if they just want to follow me socially and mute me, that's fine too. But I want to have some way to not just be posting to this app or in in the sense of like There's a phrase you might if you I don't I don't know how much of the Hitler series you watched, but my favorite episode my episode favorite episode is probably with the like the I mentioned this last night on Blue Sky. Probably didn't see it. But I I said uh something about, you know, the uh given how things are going right now, it's the fourth episode that I think is really appropriate, which is once the fella got into power.

like what did he choose to do? And it's actually a difficult episode to watch for me this week because it's so similar. But there's a phrase there's a phrase you hear at least twice in that episode that I'd never heard before And I think it's a good phrase, which is the head guy lays out this kind of an agenda. He makes it very clear that, you know, you're gonna whatever it is that he wants, you're gonna do it, but you get a pretty good idea what the head guy wants. The phrase they use is you're constantly working toward Hitler. Did you hear that phrase? Yeah, in in multiple places. It fucks. He likes it. He likes it. He likes it when he has a bunch of people under him who have an incentive to come up with the idea that he's gonna like the most and he wants them to feel competitive with one another.

And and once you get to like the two oh two level of this stuff, you realize and this is why that movie Conspiracy is so interesting interesting to me. It's like why these documentaries are so interesting to me. This was not a monolith by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, not not just the German people, but you can just look at five people in that administration and they're wildly different. uh priors and goals and incentives, their motivations for each one of those. They're so different. And in that movie Conspiracy that I've now watched twice this week, it really comes together at the Voncy Conference. It's not like every, and I know it's dramatized, but it's not like everybody there's to tick one box, will Hitler like me?

Everybody's got a different incentive for the way that they want to run this. Right? Which feels kind of oddly familiar, I'm I'm very sorry to say. But the whole idea is the culture s is telling you to work toward Hitler. And what does that mean? That means that whatever it is you're doing, whatever you're charged with, However you spend your day, you need to always be finding ways to have what you're doing reflect something that the head guy's gonna like. You need to have your projects work toward him. Rather than feeling like you're executing on some kind of a light gray memo. Yeah. In fact I started watching a less uh well I it's not a well-made documentary series. Everyone's l limited, whatever.

But um Hitler's Circle of Evil, I think it's called. It's also on Netflix. It I think it's the same or similar people. Yeah. Yeah. Emo emo Hitler shows up a lot and that same actor shows up. Yes, yes, I'm going to show you. There's bits of footage you'll see reused over and over again. Well, even the pundits. There's that there's the handsome pundit guy. There's Richard Sir Richard what's his name, the old white haired guy. You see these same guys. That that guy with the slight walleye, who's the the most amazing German commentator in this series. You know, that one guy who always is he's very calm. Is that the guy with the glasses? Yeah, I love that guy. He's the one who's like dropping the truth bombs in the driest way.

And I was like, I know, I know. No, I know. But would you agree that Blondie was a good girl? Oh, I loved Blondie. But Circle of Evil is specifically focusing on his Yeah, well and just how they all, you know, completely Completion like you mentioned, but it was just i i it was kind of though. Like first on the a d agenda was tick the Hitler box but also figure out what Box Hitler wanted at that moment. Like how do we get to date a daddy Adolf first? Because he didn't have any actual agenda other than control and hating the Jews. I love the way they describe how like disorganized and lazy he is. Oh I love the laziness. What the that is something I didn't even know from reading the Shearer biography, which is amazing.

Uh well the short I read the shorter version of million years ago. Uh no, it is stuff. We should probably talk about the challenge. Yeah. I know, I know. That's the I read that in the nineties, but there's you see it in the corner And and and part of what I want to do in pitching this show to people, because as a as a as a somebody who m who might be regarded by some people as like, I don't want to say a Hitler enthusiast, but as somebody who's very interested In what 20th century conflicts what what we have to learn or should know from 20th century? I would happily call myself a Hitler enthusiast. I knew I'm one of many, many, many, many. But many people are saying this. But that anyway, whatever.

Um I uh sorry, sorry, sorry. But um I want to pitch this to people once we're into the proper challenge after I've rung the bell, um, is is that there's a couple through lines to this that I think are very well to my mind any very well done and make this a good series to watch if you don't wanna have to follow your nose for six months to to just y sift through the entire slop of YouTube to find the the the occasional insightful thing that isn't just made. of archives and getty images samples. Mm-hmm. Because boy, I'm I'm getting good at smelling those a mile off. Oh yeah, there's you can tell it's it's not quite like a stock footage educational YouTube situation. But I no this one's very as these things go, this is this this is I think personally this is really well done.

Oh I I agree, I agree. Just I mean if you if you're interested in this kind of thing, I'm just telling you that like However you feel about the landscape of Hitler shit, I can tell you that I I'm ready to be corrected on this, I suppose, but like I've watched a fair amount of fiction and nonfiction about this period in history. And I'm not an ex I'm so not an expert. I'm not learned at all. I haven't had classes or anything. But you do you do pick up a lot and you start to e you start to recognize when this has something new to say. And if it opens if you're if you're on you if you turn on your YouTube and it opens with a funny credit about the channel and then any drone shot Turn it off. Unless.

Unless. I mean, not always, but like if it's drone shot of like a mountain range, that was that's is that the best first shot you had? Like you're already telling me, you've warned me, you've you've told on yourself that you're the sort of person who's gonna slap together videos out of stock footage. Wendover break my heart. He really broke your heart. He broke my heart. He uses really high quality stock footage though. His his the the videos that Wendover finds of planes moving slowly on uh landing strips is top notch. 4K easily, maybe 9K. I don't know if this is a okay, it's a bit. 9K is all right. Hmm Well, I I just f f uh he did not break my heart. I wasn't as much as in the right. I know, but unfortunately not enough As uh uh Trump recently said, I'm exaggerating for laughs, but then not as much.

Um d d d how are you doing, you good? I am, yes. Also, I wrote down here that I'm thinking of calling my new web project HyperTab, just so I have a way to compete with uh Syracuse in terms of namespace pollution. Oh his new app is hyperspace, so I thought I'd go with HyperTap. Oh that's gonna be a fun little fight. I like it. Or I'm sorry, it needs to be it. It's gonna be tough. Because you know he's the one I'm primarily relying on to keep me sane about this project. But um do you do I mean like okay so is this officially the challenge? Well the uh the challenge was officially to watch the first episode of uh um oh god, the trial of Hitler. Yes, trial of Hitler and the Nazis. It'll be in show notes.

I'll probably do my my new thing now, I think might be doing very abbreviated show notes that I try to do while we're on break. I uh have watched and listened to so much not World War II content, like specifically Hitler. Adjacent. Oh boy. If you ever if you're ever looking for good stuff, I can totally point you in the right direction. Here you've already kind of mentioned the problem though. A lot of oh, I almost turned on my video. Goodness gracious. Um a lot of the YouTube stuff Now that I've kind of gone to the shore source of Ian K Kershaw and um That book sounds great. They are talk they talk about that constantly on the rest it's the biography of Hitler, which I don't know anything about except they mention it so often on the rest's history, which is a good endorsement as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah. It is like the uh Is it recent? Is it recent or how old? How old? Oh, I believe it was in the nineties, the abridged version, which I've read, which is still about um a coup like like the size of the power broker is it is so yes. I felt very impressive when I was reading the uh the uh what's the opposite of a trade paperback? Reading the uh the cheap paperback version of the sharer book. I felt very impressive carrying a book that thick around. Oh yeah, uh a a mass market paperback. I was I found out what that r was recently and I I was in one of those bougie bookstores trying to find a very obscure. I miss those. I miss those paperbacks. They used to be everywhere. Yes. And I I think if someone's like, what the fuck is that?

The way I was, th the the w the uh sales Clerk, what the hell? Sales clerk? The sales clerk? The sales clerk. You're talking about the new shop girl? It's got a good look. Between fingernails. This is what we you might know as an airport book and I was like, Unlike his book. I'm the AI I'm the AI voice of Rob of Is it Robert? Robert Shear, what's his name? I'm the AI voice of Robert Shearer and they can make me say anything they want I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt. I'm Robert Shearer. Pouring to you live. Very frustrated about how they've treated my wife. Now, here's the through lines. And I I was trying it's fun it's fun and funny because I'm happy to say somebody responded to my remark about how we're doing this challenge and how I recommend episode four for good context for why this week feels so uh a term I invented yesterday, dumb 1935.

Yes. I've also realized you can put dumb in front of almost anything that's happening and it really works. I mean same with In My Pants. So I don't that's not exactly a I'm sorry, continue. Yeah. Okay. So the uh In My Pants 1935. Yeah. Is that you do you say it before or after? You usually say it was 1935 in my pants. Is that what you would say? Well, I mean if you want, but Like this one needs a comment. Like in my pants. 1935. I mean 1935 was peak. You're missing my really good Yoda impression. Anyways. Or Grover. Or Bert Um but Here's the here's the so somebody very kindly responded and said, Oh, that's so interesting, because right now I'm reading Shears and no, I mean like he I think he didn't know the through line.

He said, Oh, that sounds interesting because I'm reading the rise and fall of the Third Reich right now. And I was like, Well In that case, let me pitch you on this show, because there's two through lines to this show that doesn't make it unique, but I think gives it a mooring that makes this different from just another like, oh, here's a bunch of information about the thirties. So the m the main you tell me tell me if you th what you think about this, please. I think the main hook for this in some ways at first is, hey, even the opening shot, right, is the Nuremberg trial. And they're saying in 1946 there was this trial. And maybe one of the behind-the-scenes hooks is they've got this audio that they can then, you know, make video around.

But the point is, hey, this is you need everybody knows bad stuff happened, right? 33 to 45, not great. Well That was all that was addressed at this Nuremberg trial. And the Nuremberg trial, as you'll see, is a thread throughout this. It's a framing device in some ways for saying, okay, we're going to talk about what happened with the Nuremberg well, sorry, namespace conf pollution. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Uh well let's look at what that means then also in terms of like how that was prosecuted in 1946. We get our next hook, which is my favorite hook title, which is, and guess what? There was this guy, played here by this actor, who was at the Nuremberg trial Please tell me his real is it I know his last name, Shearer.

Shire Shire because because my mnemonic was it starts with Shy. Okay, they say it differently in the documentary because I wanted to get it right. And Shearer and Shire are referenced or are talked about Differently on William L. Shire. Yeah. William L. Shire. And so guess what? Here's the thing, 1946 Nuremberg, we got all these fat men in sunglasses on trial. What is going on here? Well, guess what? s slowly push in on this this guy sitting there taking notes. And that that's a guy named William Shire. Well guess what? That's one of the if you like for this series anyway, not for his writing, because he wrote a lot, but for this series, that's the right side bookend. The left side bookend is that Shire was there In Munich, I think, right?

It was initially in Munich and then Berlin. But the point is, he was an American correspondent in Germany while this was happening. Could he report everything that he saw? Absolutely he could not. But he kept a crazy detailed diary that's very well written. And I think then gave him so much context, it's this Mike McClintock, you know, uh calendar book that's gonna help him remember everything that happened and when it happened. Right? So yeah it's not what I'm trying to say is like I I know I I suggest a lot of like undifferentiated Hitlership, but I think this is good. I think it's well made. And I think those two through lines, those two hooks make this very, if you like, watchable and easy to follow.

And to understand again having those bookends of Shirer n near the beginning and at the end. And then like and and admittedly they did use, I would say, it seems to me, a very good computer to recreate his voice from his writing. And so he sort of not narrates, but you can hear parts of it. If it's him speaking on CBS radio and they've got the clip, they play that But d well let me ask you that off the off the dev first of all, was that a g do you get what I'm trying to say? Does that make sense? Those two through lines, those two hooks. Yes, but I think that it actually is unique in terms of your definition of there's literally nothing like that out there because it has the framing device of the Nuremberg trials, which I uh is what initially put me off when I just saw the it you know, in the Netflix like carousel or whatever because I'm like I just I don't wanna just hear I know all of the not no, but I I just just don't want to see more footage of uh like I know what happened uh but they don't it's it's an it's it's not it's not dissimilar.

I mean there's been more than one occasion where I know just enough to know that, okay, that B roll you're showing me is from a very different year than what you guys are talking about right now. You're showing us something from pr I would pay gas nineteen thirty eight while you're talking about nineteen thirty four, which is may not seem like a big deal to us, but a lot happened in those four years and those signs and those banners being up alights the most one of the most critical parts of this and the part that makes this week so difficult for a lot of us is it started out Real differently than how it ended up. And it was a slow, fairly slow accretion of bad shit. And th that is another thing that makes this show unique.

They the lower thirds and references are phenomenal. The comic book rectangle that tells you what book this is from, that she's speaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they j they don't just have a bunch of different World War II and Hitler scholars that you've seen many times, but they also have William Shire's daughter, who was kind of like his conduit because I believe he passed away, but also I think which it I I've never seen him before. m oh yes, sorry, granddaughter and his biographer which was he's like on the he's talking about like he's the expert on his diaries and like going through the nightmare years like the lesser known work he's done. And a time when he just when you there's what's depicted very well in that usual documentary slow motion stuff where like, no, you can't say this, you can't say that, you can't say that.

All you can do is basically read Read from this hey A five sheet of paper. That's exactly what we said you can say. With the one i not exception, but the the first time that someone had broadcast from Germany to the US. Um he traveled to m I believe he like traveled from Munich to the rally at Nuremberg to talk to his CBS. Or somebody else. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like they almost should have been like as witnessed by Shar I I don't know how they could have branded this better because I know that Netflix has a certain kind of audience that likes w when evil is in the title. But the all uh the way that they have remastered the audio is so so good. It works for the purpose of the series. Yes.

And they do make it very clear. I was never confused when something was a reenactment. or the audio is like cr if that's real or whatever they did to that to hear I'm sorry I'm forgetting that amazing Supreme Court guy who was our head prosecutor. Like to be able to hear his voice and then how Garin responds is it's kind of gives you shivers a little bit. Oh, it's fucking chilling and I mean, it it was just that the I was I didn't find a ton about this documentary, but it just seems like, well, no one had ever edited that footage together because at the time it's not like you could you know, sinking lucky on video. They had a certain amount of video and at least according and and well two things to get out of the way.

I have not done anything to vet if if William Shearer should be canc Shire should be cancelled. I don't know anything about him. I don't know if he's considered a dingling by historians. I it's I mean, that's uh sounds like a valuable thing for people to pursue on their own. I have not done that. And I also I'm I'm I'm I I think we probably said, I hope we will say, except in the pitching of this, that it's not it's not doesn't get in the way and it doesn't feel stupid and fake when they do stuff like create footage with actors that then plays alongside the original what purports to be the original audio. I f I didn't find it distracting and I don't I hope anyway that it wasn't dishonest, but I don't I don't have any v I'm not a historian.

I can't vet that. I uh uh I did try to sort of just just be like, hey, what I am watching here feels less hyperbolic and by hyperbolic I don't mean they're like watering down any atrocities, but some of even the videos on your Hitler Pill playlist just inflate certain things that don't All the music and all of that. Yeah, I know there's a word I'm searching for because I know what you mean. It's not that it's over overly dramatic. It's that it's not hysterical, but it is some a lot of this stuff is definitely It's meant to feel like oh you're watching the most chilling thing you've ever seen in your life. And we've got to constantly up that ante. I would just point out. Did you know he was on morphine?

It's like okay, yeah. Like if you've ever watched the most horrible thing uh ever put on film, which is the allies movies of the different camps. Um, there's no music in that. It doesn't need music. Just seeing a bunch of Polish people walk out of a room, a charnel uh room full of bodies with a handkerchief over their nose tells you what you needed to know. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's sort of how right. They're it's not telling you how to feel Like it's a the uh there I I think it it was the one it's a series of like Hitler's secret um There's like si Hitler's secret drug use, Hitler's secret sex uh sex like Hitler's secret. It's like, alright, that well first of all, none of this was a secret.

the like Himmler's obsession with the occult. You know, like all these different things that are that are like s m meant to be very provocative and like but the story of Europe in the 30s I mean there's very few things that are more dramatic. Well, and then if you encounter start going into the forties, really like and then include the very stupid invasion of the Soviet Union. Like Pff, that's pff we haven't gotten to the Pacific. That is a lot of very interesting shit that happened in six years. in the case of the war, you know. But I'm going to uh s sidebar, going to recommend another weird Hitler book, which is Eric Kurlander's Hitler's Monsters. If you're really into the just wild occult stuff and it doesn't just make it really melodramatic, but it it integrates how suddenly the weird uh satanic rituals and like how it they were they were able to use that as propaganda and how it wedged out You say it's called Hitler Hitler's Monsters?

Hitler's Monsters, yeah. And it's it's about uh oh here it is. Um a supernatural history of the Third Reich. So it's not like Uh I mean, yeah, it's got that title, but it is about, you know, like yeah, when they say it was satanic, there were some of Hitler's goons were like oh yeah we want to kill the Jews because they're satanic. Not like it it's and there was this uh I have not gotten to the part about the holy gr Himmler's um search for the holy grail. That's just one. That's just one thing. Yeah, that's just like one of the th one of the Well the th it's funny 'cause the actual episode of the rest is history, I forget which one it is 'cause I listen to a lot, but one I was listening to this morning is one of the up one of the Hitler episodes and they get into um the need so part of was I mean I I'm I'm gonna push back a little bit on the whole like Jewish people are satanic thing.

I think it's worse than that. What if I understand correctly what they're saying is I think this is an actual quote from the big guy. Um, if if you know if a rat runs into your room, do you feel bad for killing it? Like it's not because you hate the rat, it's just because you cannot have a rat in your house. And and on top of it, what if that rat had caused you to lose the Great War? Yeah, sorry, I was referring specifically to to Himmern. That was like his uh s checkbox he wanted to uh check to closer to Hitler. But part of his Hitler's thing was making everything that's that's what I was gonna say. Is that he needs a way to show if he's gonna say all this banana's stuff about how the the superiority he starts out with the superiority of German people.

And then that kind of widens I don't know the exact history of this, the exact order, but the it isn't very long before in order to show the the Germans and German-ish people, which eventually he includes the Greeks and the Romans in. Like to do that, he needs to find more than some broken pots from the Dark Ages. Like if you the I don't get I'm just quoting Tom and Dominic here, but um Dominic, but like, hey, you know, the the Greeks made the Acropolis A piece of busted ass Tupperware is not a big deal. Like w how how are we the master race if a thousand years later we didn't have so there's more and more reason to dig up things that they can then bolt on to this longstanding I would call mythology, but they want to make into what appears to be a legitimate history that says step by step, century by century, here is the proof that the Germans are the best And it's also proof, again from a quote, as Dominic would say, inverted quotes, um science that proves that the strong must win and that we are not benefiting society by protecting the weak.

Which I think in retrospect i is an idea that we should now pay a lot of attention to. It's not even just like who's allowed to be here, who's allowed to be a doctor, who's allowed to be a teacher. It's that there's this there's this turn. From the long-standing anti-Semitism of the pre-19th century than into the end of the 19th century, it becomes much more focused on race rather than religion. And that ends up having a huge impact on a lot of things. And all these pieces end up these guys hustled. They worked really hard to make all this bullshit make sense. Except Hitler. Everyone except Hitler. He just slept in. He just Did you know he let Bond he let Blondie sleep in his bed? Yes. That's sweet.

Then he killed Blondie. He killed Blondie. I know. I've got the record as the worst thing that Hitler did was killing Blondie. Show me the lie. Show me Dinah Lie. Um I mean I uh how but he say in German. He said he didn't like it, but he had to go along with it. Oh sorry, I'm quoting Peter O'Hanrahan Rahan. See I I actually wait, is that the Mr. Show show? I should have uh I know that it's a little bit of a. Okay. So you've seen the Peter O'Han Rahan Rahan. Yes. Is he even there? No. What did you say? No. Do you know what he said? I don't know. Well my favorite part is the way Peter who's a great actor. I mean like if you watch the first episode of The Day Today, which is fucking great It's in the pilot and it's in the official first episode of the date today.

It's a cutaway segment to going to the United States to go to Tennessee to meet uh a guy who's about to be executed. um for a series of grizzly murders. And somebody who's from Tennessee's decided he wants to die like Elvis. So he's gonna die on an electric toilet. But after eating like enough enough like hamburgers to give him health problems, he'll be killed on an electric toilet. And that's played by I forget the actor's name, but that's played by the same guy that does Peter Han Rahan Rahan. Oh god, I love it. Those oh man. Yeah, the British, man. It's a good series though. It's a good series and um I mean it's not I don't know. I was I had to have a moment of reflection the other day. I did a screen grab of this and put it on the internet, but looking at my tract uh viewing looking at my letterboxed reviews I was like oh man I'm having a regular like feel good movie marathon over here and I realized how much of this stuff and I think I'm doing an Alex I think whether I'd like to admit it or not, there's a lot of I don't know if I'm I'm as if it's necessarily avoidant behavior, because some sometimes it's a kind of avoidant behavior that gives unintentional context to what you're avoiding.

And sometimes, not only is Schindler's List one of my favorite movies, it's just it's a real good movie to re-watch sometimes, you know, when he puts that pin on. I've never I or rather I haven't seen Schidler's list in two decades. It's it's not a it's not a fun thing to say, but it is an extraordinarily photographed movie. It just it it just the everything about it. I said I think Greg Tolman would approve of this movie. The way everything is framed and and photographed is just and I I often forget kind of forget that's Liam Neeson. Yes, it's yes, yes, yes. And I'm not real I'm I'm not stupid, I'm not deranged, but I mean I don't think You're not me. I don't think of him as the guy from Taken In the in the third act of of this when he's realized he's saying I sh I I could have done more.

I could have done more. He has a very specific set set of skills. Oh God. Oh, yeah. Involves enamel pots. I thought in my own. Polishing the shells with their tiny hands. That doesn't that shouldn't get a bad thing. What a great cast. What a great goddamn cast. And the way you follow families, like throughout the movie. You should watch it again. It's good. The other movie I'm gonna recommend to you, because I've already said it like six times, and I think it's a really fucking good movie. I can't believe I had not seen. It's an HBO movie from 2001 called Conspiracy. I forget who directs it. And so a name you've probably heard cropping up quite a lot is Hydrick. The guy who was I mean every b a lot of people I'd always heard, you know, oh the S the SS, Himmler, that's that's what happened, that's why we had the final solution, which, you know, absolutely is is true in a lot of ways, but Nobody was more of the model SS guy.

Nobody was more bloodthirsty and organized and fucking smart and talented than Heydrich. And he's the one who on you've might not have heard of the Vonsee conference, if you've ever heard the phrase solution, final solution to the Jewish question. That's a phrase that I think became famous because of the Vonsee Conference, which contrary to the movie and contrary to a lot of what people believe, it was not where everybody like goes, oh my gosh. We we we have a Jewish storage problem. Well, everybody knew they had a Jewish storage problem. That was something that the point of the movie is that all these people have a stake in what do we do with all of these people? But, and again, planning, they thought they were gonna win in Russia, even or in the Soviet Union, even though they were getting their asses handed to them, they were thinking forward to like, well, there's 12 million people we want to get rid of at least.

What do we do with all these people? And this is why I say that movie Conspiracy is so good. There's a contingent from the East. Um w including like party people, SS people, one of the guys who participated in the Einsatzgruppen uh two day event that killed thirty thousand people with bullets and dropped them into a trench. That guy was there. Now we see there to say that We need cyclone B. No, he was saying, look, you get out there and do that and see how your day goes. Like my guys are suffering because this is really, really hard work and get this. This is why remember last week when I said let's not just put Nazi sauce on everything? These are in some cases, like the CSS that's doing a lot of that stuff, but in coordination, in a lot of cases with the Wehrmacht.

The Wehrmacht might have been idealists person to person, but more than anything, they were the German army. They were soldiers. Let's they defend Germany. SA goons. S I what's the Wehrmacht? Wehrmacht is the you know, the the I think it means warmakers or Wehrmacht. No, no, I I know, but how are they different? Oh, it's a German. So I I lo when I say Wehrmacht, I might be saying saying it saying it wrong and I might be meaning it wrong, but think of that I mean it's the establishment um military arm of the German country and people. And again the only reason I'm annoying about that is because SS does it include the Kriegsmarine? I would say yes. And yeah, like the difference between the SA like and actually soldiers.

No, no, no. That's totally different head. Yeah. No, no, that's what I'm saying. Like a lot of People confuse the brown shirts. Yeah, 'cause it's uniforms. Everybody's got uniforms, yeah. Yeah. And like we've put so much Nazi sauce on them. I'm like And like I'm not saying you like need to know this, but I am trying to say in the way that I I fit I'm not even a teacher. I'm not even hardly a TA. What I am saying is that just be aware that those terms don't all mean the same thing. And if you do care It's way more confusing than it first looks. Because the SS, I mean Himmler is basically in charge of Himmler and later to a great extent, Heydrich are in charge of security for the entire Reich. But the SA there's S or the S the SA at this point was gone, but mostly, mostly, at least Rome and his buddies were gone.

But you've got the Gestapo. But you've got the SS Gestapo. You've got the SS Totenkops. You've got like I think that's what it's called, but the Deathhead, the really bad guys who are out there with the Einsatz group, and but like, you know, this all just sounds like word salad, but Not only is it meaningful, the reason I want I want to suggest that you watch this movie Conspiracy, whether or not it's 100% accurate, it will give you such a It will help situate the idea that these are very different people with very different motivations. Does everybody want to please Hitler? Fuck yeah. But one guy, one guy's worried because he wants his Jewish people taken out of Poland before they take the Jewish people out of Germany because he can't These the ghettos are out of control.

They're full of disease. Now somebody like the like this this one guy who's from the party in Berlin is like boo-hoo. And he's like, hey, you come work here, you get typhus and see how you feel about it. And he's like, build a build a taller wall. That guy is all about pleasing Martin Bormann, known as the Brown Eminence, right? That's one that's one thing. He's got to please Martin Borman. Borman is this guy who's kind of come. Then you got this guy over here, uh, who's head of the four-year plan, director of the four-year plan. He he answers to Gehring. The four-year plan is a whole different idea that gets torn up and thrown in the air after the Vonsee conference. You got the guy over here, played by Colin Firth, who wrote the Nuremberg Laws because At first you think, oh my gosh, is he actually a nice guy and he wants to save these people?

He is not. He's just saying that the world will not if if we kill these people Extrajudicially, the world will judge us. We don't need to apologize for this because we're basically squashing a rat under our heel and we oughtn't act like these people are some kind of like folk demon. They're clever, smart people who need to be eradicated. Well, that might surprise a lot of people. Like that's not the obvious story o of this. You've got the other guys over here who are in the SS who are like, hey, like why are we here? Why are we just not here like killing everybody. You got other people over here saying the way we hold this coalition together is through the legality of what we're doing and we're gonna lose support.

among a lot of people, if they feel like we're doing this extrajudicially. At one point in the meeting, uh um Hydrich, played by Kenneth Branaugh, says, Everybody here is a lawyer, raise your hand. And almost every person at the table raises their hand. W wait, when w when's that? Oh geez, you're gonna make me look this up. Forty two? W A. Is that in the series? I know about that. I'm basically like, oh God, no, the God, I know Nazi leadership like Pokemon at this point. Good lord. Von C Conference is uh January 20th, 1942. The thing I keep coming back with, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of answers to this, is how much of It was intentionally confusing to the allies because the German people certainly did want to cover their tracks on a lot of stuff.

Partly the Vonsee Conference, one copy of the Vonsee Conference notes got out by mistake. But they were all supposed to have been destroyed. Like the way Himmler totally got Himmler's such a piece of shit. The way he chickened out and like s m had all these people death march away. or like cover the bodies, because he thought at least we can minimize the obviousness of what we did. But the critical part for Vonsian after is, no, this needs to be secret so we can get this done. Like we d that like this this is part of our strategy is and it wasn't like, you know, T hee hee look at what we're getting away with. It's more like For the scale of this to work. It's way more evil and terrific to me.

It's certainly wicked, but all of putting all of these people on eastbound trains Guess what? One of the guys is like, hey, look, if you use all that rolling stock to take Jews to Poland, like that's so much stuff less ability we have to take supplies to Russia or whatever. And Hydra kind of ties it all together early in the, in this case in the movie, he goes, look, you know, there's all this buzz before the meeting. Everyone's talking about how things are going so badly in the Soviet Union and There's differing amounts of correct information about what's actually actually happening, but he lays it right out, which is, hey, look, we need to win this war. And to win this war, we're gonna need to do something about this big question.

And people come in with their ideas and their reports and hand them along and Kath Brano is so fucking good in this. I just being like, yeah, you'll all be heard, but I'm mainly just here to make sure you guys understand what you're gonna be doing because you guys all need to be working together on this. There is a plan and a lot of you are not gonna like it. Not because you're a great uh semitophile, but but but but because it's gonna generate a fuck ton of work for you. Well at one point one of the guys is like, okay, so you're gonna uh they're talking about the the part that's one of the most in some ways low-key harrowing parts, which is figuring out what a Jew is, who a Jew is. This has been accomplished to some extent with the Nuremberg Laws One of the reasons Colin Firth is so mad.

I I hadn't seen that of like the equations they were doing of the family trees of like, okay, so which are because w because do you just get sterilized? 'Cause some people were like, look Colin first was like just sterilize them. It stops the the but then Kenneth Branhoff says, well, the most effective kind of sterilization is the code war was evacuation. That was the most effective thing we can do is evacuate them. Yeah. But it's like, wait, is it is it just a is it just eugenics or is it also y religion and like all of the infighting around that and it's just too ooh too familiar for comfort. Yikes. Yeah. But uh I'm s I'm very frightened by Stephen Miller. That's so funny you should say that.

Because I I'm um I'm I don't want to make this silly and make you take it less seriously, but he's really somebody to think about. And it kind of fits into you know here's another analog. Do you ever see the movie Twelve Angry Men? It's a very really good movie. Um I've seen the a p a couple of Play version of the case. Twelve angry men is about a jury of literally twelve men who have to decide whether somebody's guilty of murder. Spoiler alert, Henry Fawn is the good guy that makes everybody realize. But that that m what makes that movie fascinating, like if they make you watch it in eighth grade, it's you might as well be watching Romeo and Juliet. It won't make a ton of sense. When you watch it when you're a little bit older You appreciate 12 angry men because, at least for me, from my POV, everybody's got their reasons.

Every single person has their reason, whether you like it or not. But denying that people do have their reasons is really fucking stupid in life. You may not know their reasons. You may not like their reasons. Refusing to acknowledge that they have their reasons is not a good strategy for anybody. And but then this gets complicated because everybody has Perhaps allied, sometimes overlapping, but often very different reasons. Killed Ernst Rome, like he had his reasons But right, do you know what I mean? Like and that's to me that's the beauty of that conspiracy movie that I've watched twice this week is oh and it's also got a touch of the tooch. Stanley Toochie is Eichmann, so Oh, I sorry, I thought I thought uh I misheard that as the mooch.

Um Anthony Uh no no um beloved uh shortest member of the Trump administration, Anthony Scaramucci, who I don't think he was because he's deeply unserious. I think he was twelve. What's the other thing? He's like a big deal now. He is. He he hosts a Um the show no, I'm sorry, because he was co-host a show with some woman on like a regular network, right? Yeah, and it's it's kinda good. Um and but he was the whatever he was on at the time. I uh Maybe we moved on to Stalin pills. Okay. Maybe You're Stalin. It's kind of a problem. I like I do like trains, so you know. Mm-hmm. Wow. What? I do like trains. I didn't say it says millennial pole. Did you ever dance on a millennial pole? Oh, it's funny in a lot of offensive ways.

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