Dave Davies

But it was a party beset by corruption.

You know, patronage, employment, self-dealing were kind of the rule of the day.

There was no such thing as civil service, which Garfield was determined to change.

And the scene we're going to listen to is where Garfield had been president a short time and his opponents within the party were blocking all of his cabinet appointments in the Senate because he refused to give these corrupt politicians the control of key federal jobs, especially the port collector in New York because that was a big center of money and patronage.

Anyway, in this scene, there's a bunch of senators and cabinet members gathered in the White House, and they're all arguing with each other because you, as Garfield, are determined to stick with this fight that they think he's never going to win.

They think he should just give in and play ball with the machine.

You've been listening quietly while they argue, and then you finally erupt with a stern message.

Let's listen.

And that's our guest, Michael Shannon, in the new Netflix series, Death by Lightning.

That's a powerful speech.

You want to talk a little about that moment?

That's your character, right?

So let's talk about Nuremberg.

You play Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court justice who is the lead prosecutor in this trial, trying former Nazi leaders for their crimes.

People of a younger generation might not be as aware of this as you and I. But he also really kind of organized the whole thing.

And I thought we'd hear a clip here.

You in this clip are speaking with the army psychiatrist who has been sent to the prison –

where these captured Nazis are being held.

His job is to keep them from committing suicide, for one, and then to pursue some combination of therapy and also building psychological profiles to assist in the prosecution.

And in this scene, this is well before the trial gets underway.