Behind the Bastards
Hosted by Robert Evans
Robert and Sophie continue to answer listener questions. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
7,165 words · 7 speakers
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Welcome to Behind the Bastards Q and A special, Happy New Year. I am Sophie Lichterman, and I'm here with my business partner, Robert Evans. Robert, how are you?
Ah, you know, bracing for the new year, getting ready to really...
Take 2026 on, you know?
Somebody asked the last time you ate inside an Arby's. Is that their lore to that? Or is that just somebody asking?
I don't know. No, I don't have a history with Arby's. I don't like Arby's. As a kid, I loved Hardee's. I don't know why. I think because.
Hardee's? Hardee's is Carl's Jr., though, isn't it?
I know they're owned by the same people. I swear to God, as a kid, I felt like the curly fries were different. Like, that's what I loved about Hardee's as a kid. Because I was born in St. Louis and I have a couple of memories from there before we moved to the farm in Oklahoma. And one of them is eating at Hardee's and them having the best curly fries. And then they're not being Hardee's around. And I felt like as a kid, all of the other curly fries were inferior to Hardee's curly fries. Now, this is like a six or a seven year old me. So I'm not, I'm not speaking up for modern Hardee's. I'm not even speaking up for the quality of Hardee's curly fries back then. I was a child. But I don't have any Arby's lore is, I guess, where I'm ending.
I have Arby's anger because it was like one of the last fast foods I ate before I stopped being able to eat gluten. And it was terrible. It was not good. I would have liked, you know, any, almost anything else. So fuck you, Arby's. Unless you want to sponsor us, then I love you.
Yeah, if you want to sponsor us, Arby's, I'll tell people never to eat any other food. I'll tell them that their lettuce is killing them, you know? I'll spread whatever lies you want. There's lead in fucking Chick-fil-A, you know? I don't care.
Of all the bastards you've covered, have any surprised you by how awful they were?
Uh, yeah, I mean, that's definitely. I mean, Georgia Tann would be a great one where I, I wasn't aware of this person. And then I read the summary that like, yeah, she basically created modern adoption, but she was also really abusive to kids. And I was like, okay, so this will be pretty bad. And I was still shocked by how bad it was, right?
Yeah.
It is, it, she, that story is fucked. And then, you know, the one episodes we just did on the slave owner in Jamaica, whose name is escaping me right now, but the guy who kept like a diary of all of the times he raped enslaved women. I knew rape was a massive part of slavery. I've known that for a long time, you know, in, in the United States and everywhere else, the slave trade was, the Atlantic trade was, and obviously, every time people have been able to enslave other people, sexual violence has been a part of that. I was aware of a particular aspect of the plantation system, all of all that stuff. Like, this was not, but even so, the details and, and the details
of stuff like pickling, like rubbing pickle spices into open wounds, making people shit in each other's mouths as a form of punishment. The, just what that said about the mix of laziness and cruelty, that was a major driving force. It was these people who were not respected elsewhere in society, had in a lot of cases, kind of failed out of other parts of society, or just didn't, weren't ever going to fit in within like, the high society back home. You, you get this sense of both like frustration and this lazy kind of cruelty, where it's clearly like, you're, you're just fucking around, trying to like, figure out what you
can get away with. Like, there's not even, I, I don't know how to describe it, but like, it's, it was upsetting to me in a way that I, I kind of was surprised by. Like, the, the boredom inherent to a lot of the cruelty in the slave, the slave trade and, and in the way slavery worked. That really did take me by surprise.
That, and I think for me, the episodes that you, you've done a variety of different episodes about this, but, you know, like the Elon School and the Wilderness Camps and survival schools and, just like that, nobody, uh, nobody said, "Hey, maybe like, don't abuse those kids."
Yeah. And just how common child abuse is, you know? I, that, that's also like, another thing that really wears on me is how central abuse of children is in every...
Bad movement, bad political and cultural movement in certainly Western history, and not to limit it just to the West, but and the fact that violence, the ability to abuse children is the center of the conservative project today, you know, it's a core pillar of fascism. Children are the property of their parents. And so if kids become aware of ideas that are uncomfortable to their parents, or become inspired to be a kind of person that is not in line with what their parents want them to be, that's not an example of human beings being human beings. That's a problem, right? That's like, that's
an injustice that's been done to that parent, that they have to see their child not become a carbon copy of them. And the fact that so many people that that's like a dominant political belief for a lot of the country, it's upsetting. And it's difficult because like, kids can't just be independent people immediately. They can't just have the same rights as an adult immediately, because they don't understand the world. We do, in fact, have to teach them things and guide them. And that's going to mean sometimes saying, no, you can't do this thing you want, because you can't just have chocolate for every meal. You can't stay up till 2:00 in the morning every night. You have school to go, right?
Like, there's, there are things you have to, you have to, there's like, discipline. Kids do need discipline. Kids need to be punished sometimes. They don't need to be hit, but they need to, like, that's the only way I know of to make people understand the world they're coming into, is like, you have to raise them. And that means that you are going to be invested with a degree of power over them. But I don't think that that should translate to ownership. And I think the fact that it so often does is like, one of the root evils of our society, that makes fixing anything major very difficult. Because unless you fix the way children are treated and educated, and how we as a society
see like, what we see the rights of a parent as being, you can't fix a lot of the other problems.
Um, somebody asked, uh, this is a question they asked me. They said, what are you up to during the recording of an episode? And then they want to know, like, why it looks like I'm messing on my phone. I'm following the script, you guys. Scripts on my phone. Following the script. Uh, we use different platforms. Also, like, the camera is like above my head. So I'd be looking up like this, which is not great. So I'm just doing my job, my friends. Um, believe it or not, that question has come up many times in my DMs. Doing my job. Anyways, uh, Robert, do you have any Australian bastards planned for the future?
Uh, well, we did one, uh,
last year.
We did, we did do one late in the year, uh, that I, I felt was a really strong episode, uh, about the, uh, the island of, of Gari. Um, and, you know, the bastardry inherent to that and like the, the myth that got spread about the brutality of the, the natives that was not really accurate or fair and how it, it led to justified a lot of violence, um, in days afterwards. Um, and yeah, like I, there's definitely more Aussies I, I want to cover. Um, I am not as knowledgeable about, there's two things that, that have pulled me back from doing more in the past is number one, I just don't know a lot about Australia. And number two, the Dollop guys
have done a lot of, um, Australia episodes. And several times I found myself, and obviously we have overlap with the Dollop. There's some episodes I've covered first. There's a number that they covered first. That's unavoidable. It happens with lions led by donkeys. I don't, it's not a big deal, right? It's history. We're all allowed to talk about history.
But I try to avoid it happening too much. And I have had several times where I'm like, oh, this is an interesting Australian bastard. And they're like, oh, nope, Dollop guys just covered it. Um, and a lot of times it's recent enough that I'm like, well, I don't want to just immediately, you know, hop onto the same thing. But like, yeah, I do, definitely will cover more Aussies. Please do post on the, uh, the subreddit, you know? I, I've been meaning for a while to ask the moderators to have like a stickied thread that's just-
Suggestions.
Suggestions. I do actually find it really helpful when people suggest bastards. Cause like the big effortful episodes, bastards, I know, like Nixon, I know I'm going to get to Nixon. I know it's going to take a lot of time. I don't need help with that. But it is really helpful when like periodically someone will just like, oh, here's an article that leads me to like, reading for 10 hours about a piece of shit. And then I can write an episode about it and it's something that happened in the news or it's something that like, I don't need to do as crazy an amount of research on. I'm not reading three books or whatever. Um, I, it's, I'm not spending four or five days, you know, full time reading about this. I can do my research in one or two workdays and then write the episode.
It's really helpful when people suggest stuff like that. So, uh, you know, if you've got some Aussie pieces of shit you want to hear about, suggest them.
We got the same question about bastards from Mexico. I'm assuming it's the same answer.
Yeah, I will add, I've been wanting to do the Pancho Villa episodes for a while. I'm not fully certain if I'll come down on him more in the bastard or freedom fighter category. I think he's probably a, he's some A and some B. I'm not super knowledgeable about him yet, other than like the broad strokes, but I've always found that period of time interesting and wanted to report. And it's also really important for like the evolution of modern counter insurgency tactics and doctrine. Um, and just like armored doctrine, right? It's arguably like the first use of, uh, armored vehicles in, in combat, or at least one of, it's on, it's one of the, one of the conflicts that's sort of like, you can make a case.
Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm interested, uh, in doing more Mexican bastards for sure.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Sure.
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We're back. Do you have a favorite bastard topic of 2025? Was there somebody you covered or something you covered that was your favorite?
I mean, in terms of... What I've felt was like the best work I did and the most useful thing.
Zizians.
Cause there was, there was a really good article about the Zizians that was in depth, but it didn't really, it was more an in-depth article about their crimes as opposed to how they got from A to B, you know, how, how the belief system started, how Ziz really evolved into a cult leader and how they wound up, uh, being what they became, right? Like how they wound up believing all the things like, because you get, even in that, I believe it was a Wired piece that was very good, uh, or Rolling Stone. I, I, it's in the episode, you know, I, I, I quote, I cited the sources and whatnot, but there was a really good long form piece, but it's still, a lot of it came out as like, and here's a crazy thing they believed. They believed, you know, this about AI, right?
Or they believed this about, um, you know, like you, you would just kind of get the broad strokes of like the game theory shit that they, they believed about like, here's why you have to murder people in all of these instances because otherwise this like cascading chain of logic will happen. But you didn't get like a, here's the thought process that led them to that. And I thought that was really interesting. I thought that was the most interesting part of the Zizian story is how you, you, you end up, you start from like some fairly basic logical arguments that lead you to this completely unhinged and murderous worldview in a fairly short span of time, just by never looking back
or, or really questioning where your previous conclusions have taken you. I found that really interesting. And so I was definitely like most satisfied with how those episodes came together.
Which bastard do you wish you'd spent more time on slash would revisit if you could?
Hmm.
I mean, we, we, we, we didn't finish Himmler.
Yeah, we didn't finish Himmler. There's more Himmler to do. There's always more, you know, I, it's, it struck me this year that I still have never done just like
Hitler.
Hitler episodes.
We've done a lot of Hitler episodes, but they're all because there's so much to say about him. We've done like, here's a two parter on his sex life, right? Here's like some weird facts that you don't know about the man. Here's like some, you know, a, a two parter on his history with like drugs and substances, right? Um, and he shows up as like the B character in a lot of other bastardry stories, but I haven't just done a, here was Hitler's childhood, right? Here's, here's, here's where he came from. And I, I, yeah, I, I should do that. I'll make sure that happens in 2026. I wish I could do more LRH episodes. I think I've just covered everything Hubbard really did. I don't know that there's that, anything else to say about him, but I do miss talking about him.
Yeah. You just miss that guy.
Mm hmm.
He's your special boy. Do you have a dream guest on the podcast that we haven't had on yet?
Uh, I mean, Paul F. Tompkins is a dream guest and we have had him on. I'm hoping to get him on. He gave us a very nice shout out, uh, as Santa Claus on a podcast recently. Um, and I would love to have him back.
Wonderful man.
Future. I just, I'm always with Paul. I'm always, I really, not that, I, all of our guests are great. I appreciate everybody who comes on the show. With someone like Paul, I really want to make sure it's like the perfect episode for him.
Right? And, and so I'm very like discriminating as to like what I want to, uh, pitch in that regard. I, there's some guys that like, part of me thinks would be a dream to have on that I know it probably wouldn't be great. Like
Don't meet your heroes.
I would just love to hang out with Werner Herzog, more than doing a podcast with him. If I had the opportunity to do anything with Werner Herzog, it'd be like cook an elaborate dinner together. Try to like cook with him because I feel like that would be the best way to like get to know that guy.
He, he could be, it could be a fun guest. I don't know that that would actually, is actually how that would shake out.
I want you to, I want you to, uh, read a crazy, crazy script to Shaquille O'Neal.
I don't know much about Shaq.
Shaq daddy.
Why would Shaq be a good guest?
Because he would. He would. Because he would 100% would. He's a good time. He'd be up for it.
Which historical era would you say contains the most bastards per capita?
Hard to beat the early 20th century. Late 19th, early 20th century. That's like the, from like 1850 to 1950, we are in just prime bastard territory. And I, I don't know entirely if it's, I'm sure a, a big chunk of it is just that that was the first era in which modern historiography and modern journalism were really firing on all cylinders. And so you had a lot of detail about all of these pieces of shit. And a lot, a lot was explored and investigated. And guys who in an earlier era might not have been covered because while they were doing terrible things, they weren't one of the big names. We have, we know about guys like Eichmann, right? Whereas
if Eichmann is helping to orchestrate a genocide in the 1600s, maybe we don't get nearly as much about him, right? Maybe we get his name a couple of times, but there's not even agreement about like what he did. Just because of how the media worked, we had a lot more detail. I know that's a big chunk of it. But I also just think it was also opportunity. Like the technology was moving so fast and there was so much political disruption that there was an incredible amount of opportunity for a bunch of people to seize and grab positions of power and influence that they wouldn't have had access to earlier or later in more settled times. And, you know, those are, like the poem said,
it's, those are the times of monsters, right? Like that's, that's when, and we're unfortunately in a similar time now where I'm, I don't, I don't know if, I don't think I would say that there's a higher percentage of bastards than now than at any other time in history. But they've never been so visible. There's so many of them that have. And because they are running the entire media ecosystem, not just like news outlets and television and whatnot, but like social media, like all of the big social media apps are run by some of the monsters who have tailored their algorithms to support other of the monsters. So it's never been, it's, I don't know if I'd say there's more bastards now than ever, but it's never been so hard to avoid hearing from them, right?
They're, they're, they have the, the biggest microphone that they've ever been given. Um, and also it's a time of, you've had a bunch of different governments over the last 20 years collapse or reach, you know, moments of near collapse. You have economic turmoil, uh, you have social turmoil and a bunch of new technologies that have given a lot of these assholes an opportunity to get the one thing they want, which is power. And they are all scrambling to position themselves as highly as possible. And ideally they're trying to become a permanent overclass, right? A permanent, they're trying to make themselves into the new aristocracy on a global scale.
And that, I think it has, it's had a tendency to activate a lot of people, including a lot of people who maybe in a different era, wouldn't have been bastards. Like, not that they would have been good people, but they wouldn't have had, seen an opportunity to reach out and grab in being a monster to other people. Like, I wonder in a different era, if, if J K Rowling, you know, has incredible success in the early 1800s, right? She probably never gets known for anything else. Uh, it, you know, maybe people would have come, found her letters, you know, decades after her death and been like, oh, she harbored some really bigoted views, you know, but it would have been more like H P Lovecraft, right?
Where you've got this guy who people really like their writing. They've become very popular. I mean, Lovecraft was after his death, but, and then also, oh yeah. And they were like super racist in like a lot of their private correspondence. You can see some hints of it and some signs of it in there, in some of their stories. Like as opposed to what Rowling is where she, this is not just a person who wrote some books people liked and also has. Some bigoted opinions that people became aware of later and oh, you can kind of see bits of it in her writing. No, this is a person who has turned themselves into an activist and is dedicating their time and their money to hurting a specific group of people as much as she possibly can. A group of people who have no like organized systemic power
or wealth to even begin, you know, fighting on at the level she is fighting on in like financial terms. That simply doesn't exist. And, you know, what she's doing is deeply cruel and unhinged. And I don't think something someone in her, someone would have been like her would have been in a position to do in an earlier era, right? Not that she would have been a better person. She just wouldn't have made her bigotry everyone else's problem to the extent that she can. And I think there's a lot of that, too. I think there's a lot of guys and girls out there who are major figures of shittiness to all of us that we know that in a different era, they probably just would have kept that shit to themselves.
Take a quick break. We're back.
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And we're back. Robert, has doing the show changed your views on anything?
Hmm. I don't know.
How could it not, though? Like, knowledge is, knowledge is power.
I guess, like, it depends on what you mean by changed my views. In like, a fundamental sense, it hasn't changed anything big in that, coming into the show, I felt it was probably a bad idea to give people power. And I felt like it's probably a bad idea to give people huge amounts of money. And both of those things put together damage people in ways that makes them harmful to themselves and others, right? But I came into the show believing all that.
And all of that has only been reinforced. I believe it more strongly than I did before. I think one of the things I have come around on, I have a much darker idea of what needs to be done to people who are trying to destroy civil society, trying to destroy the lives of millions or billions of other people for their own power and wealth. I am not a rehabilitation person when it comes to those. People, I am not a forgive and forget, I'm not a reconcile person like I am a if if
anyone progressive or liberal takes power again in this country, the responsible thing to do is a reckoning and a reckoning that will end very badly for a decent number of people like I am a I am a believer in punishing the folks who are doing this right now. And I simply don't see any other way that this country can move forward and have any hope of a better future. Without going through a period of extreme ugliness. And that is not something I really believed in the same way prior to doing this, but I have become convinced that one of the great, I mean, one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century
was that we really botched the Nuremberg trials. We botched a lot of aspects of the peace after World War II, right? We did not punish nearly enough Nazis and we didn't punish them with the brutality that they deserved based on what they had done. And as a result, this that's the only thing I think might have made some of the people sticking their heads up now so boldly less willing to do that, right? And the same thing is true with like the Confederacy after the Civil War. We should have hung a lot of those guys. I mean, every elected leader in the Confederacy should have been hung. And I think most of their military officers as well.
You know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been against just hanging all of the slave owners, quite frankly, you know, by that point. And I think if we'd done that, there wouldn't have been a lost cause narrative. We wouldn't be dealing with a lot of the problems that we're having in the United States at this point. Now that there wouldn't be other problems, not that we'd be a utopia, but I just don't think it's ethical to let people who do stuff like that go live their lives peacefully afterwards.
Um, what do you have any gardening plans for 2026? Anything you're excited to grow this year?
Oh, not really. I I kinda half-assed it this year on the gardening. I didn't grow nearly as many potatoes. I just got kinda lazy and exhausted. Um, I did, I have a bunch of potatoes, uh, flowering in my front yard right now that I didn't plant. They're just endemic to the yard, which is nice.
That's cool.
That like, I just kind of have a permanent, uh, community of potatoes always growing. Um, so I'll, I'll grow more potatoes. I'm hoping I can really, uh, get back and into the swing of things there and grow more than I did last year. Uh, we're really trying to reduce the size of our, of our herd, uh, of the sheep and goats this year, you know? Giving some to friends. Uh, it's time to harvest some of the older ones. Um.
Don't get rid of, don't get rid of Sophie.
There's just, there's just more animals that I want to be taking care of right now. So I'm, I'm trying to find places, uh, you know, there's people who want some of them. Um, I'm gonna keep, I want to keep like a, you know, three.
Don't get rid of him.
I, I, there's too many right now.
But don't get rid of him. We've bonded.
I don't know what I'll do with him.
But we've bonded.
Yeah, he's, he's, he's a good, he's a good ram. He's too good at his main job, which is making more goats. Um, so I may try to find someone who is looking at starting a herd of their own. Um, cause he's, he's really, he's hand-trained, he's sweet. Um, but I also may just, you know, keep him with a couple of, uh, weathers, which are like males that have been castrated. And they can just be a little community for a while. I don't know. Um, I don't know what I'll do with them.
I love him.
I'm, I, I am. This year was a real like half ass on all of the guy. I was just so tired and exhausted after 2024, the election, my dad die. I just, I couldn't get my head around it. To the extent that I usually do. And I guess I'm waiting to see, I don't fully know, am I gonna like wind up half assing it again this year? Or am I gonna get back into the swing of things? I don't actually know. So we'll see what Robert does in the new year.
Sophie's gonna do some, some spring gardening. Sarah, Sarah Marshall, my friend Sarah Marshall, the legendary Sarah. Sarah's a very, very good gardener and we are going to, uh, there's a good, good, good spot of dirt at my house that we're gonna take advantage of. So we'll grow some things.
Hell yeah. You want some goats?
Um, if you get rid of Sophie to go, I will be so butthurt. Anyways, last question. What brought you joy this year, Robert?
Uh.
Huh. Great question.
Your wonderful business partner.
My wonderful business partner Sophie brought me joy. Um, I in general, like I feel, I, I have a lot of satisfaction in what you and I have built here and how many of our friends have jobs and health insurance and, um, you know, can pay their mortgages and or pay for kids or just like live. Uh, I, I feel good that we've been able to build basically like a little sanctuary for, uh, a small chunk of like weirdos, uh, that I love. And I'm, I'm proud of that. It's a good thing to be able to do. And I'm proud of the fact that we, we actually deliver news that I think is important to like a million or so people. Um, and it, it seems to matter to a lot of folks. We get a lot of messages from
people talking about.
Are you talking about it could happen here? You're talking about it could happen here?
No, I'm talking about all of our shit in general.
A million?
That is, it could happen here itself gets.
Well, yeah, but I'm talking about in terms of actual people. I think we probably have somewhere around a million, you know, regular and semi regular listeners.
I think it's more than that.
Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to tell with internet numbers, you know?
Sure, sure.
We're like well over 500 million listens on Behind the Bastards. How many people is that?
You know what brought me joy was seeing you and, I mean, I was there, but you and Prop doing that live show we did.
The live show was great.
You guys were great that night.
Raising all of that money for the bail fund. I really felt good about.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I, I just love, I try not to do too many fundraisers or ask, I mean, thankfully, you know, ads and stuff, we're supporting. We don't have to, uh, you know, ask fans for like money to keep the lights on. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've been misinterpreted in the past as saying, I think it's like immoral to do a Patreon. And that, not at all how I feel. It'd be a very silly, uh, belief for me to hold, but I, I do feel good about the fact that, um, I, I try to be like really cautious about like when we do fundraisers and for who.
And I'm really proud of the fact that every time we do, we raise a lot of money, often tens of thousands of dollars, and we can do it in very short order, in a matter of days or like a week, you know, sometimes less. Uh, our, our audience, I think because we're fairly careful about when we do it, our audience, you guys, listeners, always do show up. And I feel really good about that because we, we were able to, we've really helped a lot of people doing that. And we've done it kind of, uh, with a lot of intention, um, because I, I do, I have a lot of respect for how hard it is to make money and the amount of work people put into having any. And, uh, so if I'm going to ask our listeners to donate,
I'm going to be really careful about it, um, because I, I do respect that a lot and I, I want to be, you know, respectful.
Any final thoughts?
Anyway, I feel good about that. Um, huh?
I don't know. Uh, hang in there, everybody. You know, you're the, you're all being, all of us are being slammed face first with like all of the worst, most hopeless news that can be put in front of our faces every single day and every single night. That is, uh, just how life is right now and it's miserable. Nobody likes being bombarded with bad news at all times.
And it's, it's meant to keep you angry and keep you wanting to fight and keep you on those apps and like sharing and scrolling and raging. And I, I guess what I wanna, and I know that you all know this, we always talk, everyone is always talking about how bad social media is for your mental health. And we all keep using it anyway. We all keep using the phones anyway. And I'm not, you know, I, I, I spent an hour and a half this morning going between Reddit and fucking Blue Sky. I'm not coming at this from like, uh, oh, I figured out how to, you know, cleanse my life of these things and I'm, I'm not looking down on people for not.
No, not at all.
But try to keep in mind, when you feel like completely hopeless, everything's fucked. There's no way to fix anything that like you are feeling that way because billions of dollars have been devoted, tens of billions of dollars have been devoted to making you feel that way because it's good for Mark Zuckerberg's bottom line, good for the bottom line of a couple of other assholes, right? And while we all live in this muck and you can't fully separate yourself from it unless you have the money to just like buy a homestead in the mountains and not interact with the rest of the world, which most of us don't, you just, you, you have to keep in mind what, no matter how angry you get, no matter how justified the anger is, no matter what real
problems you're looking at, that your emotional state in that moment is not purely based on the reality of, of what you're reading about, of what's happening in the world. It is also the product of a concerted effort to make you hopeless and enraged at all times. So just keep that in mind.
Find people that like the same weird shit as you and become friends with them.
That's what I did.
I love all you weirdos. You know who you are.
I love about forty percent of you.
Statistically speaking. Bye bye.
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/AtBehindTheBastards.
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