Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Happy New Year, everybody. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. I'll be leading this episode. I am your executive producer, Sophie Lichterman. I'm going to ask Robert some of your questions. Robert, how you doing, buddy?
I'm doing, you know, it's that fun time of the year where... The holidays are over. We still don't quite have to work, but also I can feel it coming, the real world, having to get back into the real world, you know? Yeah.
So that part's not great, the looming knowledge that the stuff that you were like, ah, the world's over, news is over, I don't have to pay attention to anything for the next period of time. Well, that period of time has come to an end, and it's time to re-engage with reality. I'm at that part of the year. So, you know, mixed.
Yeah. What was a highlight for you over your semi-time off?
I don't know. Not really any particular highlight. I just didn't do much.
Excuse me. We had a party. Thank you. And your highlight, was it starting fire with the lightsaber torch I got you?
Yeah, you got me a lightsaber torch that I started a fire with. That was fun.
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Chapter 2: How do Robert and Sophie reflect on their holiday experiences?
Unless you want to sponsor us, Mountain Dew, then.
Yeah, sure. Then it's great.
Then we'll say whatever you want. Anyways, what are your tips and tricks for identifying false information while doing your research?
Well, hmm, that's tough because there's such like a wide variety of false information, right? And some, there's not really any basic tips that can help. I call this like good natured disinformation or good natured bad information. And it's, no one's trying to propagandize you. No one's trying to like fuck with you.
It's just a false version of reality has spread because somebody got a story wrong and started telling it and other people have been like retelling it and adding into it. And if there's not like an agenda, That's kind of hard. You just have to actually dig into like what the work historians have done.
I would say as a general rule, if something sounds too good to be true, like if it's exactly what you want to believe about a really complicated and difficult situation, you should take a second look at it. And if it just sounds like too cool and wacky and like something in a movie, like a lot of times that is true. A lot of times history is crazier than anything that winds up in a movie.
But if there's like a specific anecdote that I'm like, I don't know, I'll just like type a description of that anecdote in. And then I'll put in like, ask historians Reddit or something like that to see if... And that gets rid of the low-hanging fruit, right?
If it's common disinformation or a common just like inaccuracy that gets spread around, someone who knows their shit will have talked about it there and will have sources, right? So you're not just relying on a Reddit post. You can look back. You can find where the myth has been busted. You can also just like...
type in again like a brief description of the anecdote comma myth comma you know something like that to see if like it has been discussed in that context or if there have been a lot of times what you'll find is historians who are analyzing it and who have found okay this these couple of parts probably aren't true this part might be surprisingly true but like that's that's kind of how i go about doing that sort of thing if you're asking about like how do you tell if like
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Chapter 3: What listener questions are answered in the New Year Q&A?
It's this yearning to be close to power that I think often predicts a lot of like the worst people, like the folks who will do anything for their career to like improve the perception of their place in society. That's like the biggest warning sign. I think that you see that somebody is going to do some really bad shit.
Let's go to a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more questions. We're back. All right. So, Robert, what made you initially want to become a journalist? Was there a specific journalist or publication that inspired you to take that path?
I mean, I remember as a kid during the Yugoslav Civil War and the genocide in Bosnia, catching some news, like live news footage from Sarajevo and thinking that like, wow, like what a... Like, what is an important, serious job? Maybe I'll do something like that as an adult. Like, you know, the reporters on the ground that were talking about, like, what was happening in the city.
I remember thinking that, like, that's something adults do. That's a serious job for serious people. And so I definitely, like, that's the first time I can remember thinking that, like, something in line with the career I wound up picking out sounded intriguing. Yeah.
um and then i don't know like as a an 18 19 year old reading transmetropolitan for the first time it's a comic book series with a journalist as a protagonist that's set in the in the far future it's very good um it's one of the best illustrated graphic novel series i think i've ever seen and i i really i i still revisit it every couple of years that definitely like jazzed me up as a as an adolescent as a you know young adult um
And then I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street. You know, I was there at Zuccotti Park for a couple of days.
I saw little bits of some of the regional ones, and I just was never happy with the coverage that was going on, either like the mainstream media coverage or the stuff that was really celebrated at the time, which was like a lot of the people who were like within the movement and kind of doing movement coverage of what was happening. I mean, that's kind of where Tim Pool came out of, right?
So I think maybe I was... Maybe I just could see that a problem was coming. But I was not happy with what I was seeing. And I was becoming, as I became more, you know, in my early 20s, more acquainted with like history and particularly like the political history of Latin America and U.S. interactions in the Middle East. I grew like more and more frustrated with
with the news, with what I still saw as this like really important job that I thought was being like kind of systemically done badly. Um, I took, when I was in college, I took courses on the Holocaust and remembrance that was about how the Holocaust has been covered in like movies and fiction, but also how the Holocaust was reported on at the time.
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Chapter 4: What tips do they share for identifying false information?
Because when I think back on like my time in school, I can think I can I can only really remember like one teacher, two teachers by name that I had in like the whole 12 years. Yeah. But I remember moments, more than one, like three or four. But there's a but I do. There are like some moments.
And really, for the most part, they were singular moments like three or four of them that like were absolutely foundational moments. to who I became, which is always interesting to me, the degree to which like both great, like school is just a complete blur. Like I barely remember it. And also I can point out like three or four moments where I'm like, well, that changed everything, you know?
Yeah.
I guess that's how it is sometimes.
It's definitely how it was for me. Yeah. There's several different questions that basically sum up to the same, same question from folks that they're asking, who's the oldest bastard in history?
The oldest bastard. Like, I'm assuming they mean, like, chronologically, like, the first bastard in history.
Linear, yeah. That was asked several different times.
I mean, we certainly don't know his name, right? Like, there... Because here's the thing, and this is... Because I've talked a lot, you know, about, like... something that gets that, that anarchists bring up quite frequently, which is how you had a lot of in prehistory among these hunter gatherer tribes, a lot of like extremely egalitarian communities, right.
Particularly compared to like a lot of the settled cultures that followed them, right. Where there were, was significantly more equality between men and women. Uh, there were significantly flatter hierarchies, you know, a lot less power being invested in single individuals. And I, I talked about, um,
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