Primo Podcasters: My Favorite Murder, Bowen Yang and More

Podcast lovers, this one's for you! We've compiled the best clips from our favorite podcasting celebs on Season 4 of SNAFU - Karen Gilgariff and Georgia Hardstark from My Favorite Murder really brought their true-crime sixth sense to our tale of the kidnapping of William Morgan. Robert Evans, the head honcho of the Behind the Bastards Podcast, illuminated the Iran-Contra debacle of the 1980s with such wit and gravitas. And on a slightly more tech-oriented episode, the co-hosts of Hard Fork, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, provided first hand accounts and reactions to one of Facebook’s most epic blunders. So enjoy these hosts and several more on this week’s compilation episode from Ed's absolute favorite “Primo Podcasters!” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition. Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  I'm not great at costumes, but I know which bottles to bring. Every Halloween, I stop at Total Wine & More before the party. Cold beer for the crew, ready to drink cocktails for the night, and a bottle of tequila for whoever wins best costume. Halloween plans come together fast, and Total Wine & More makes it easy to bring something for everyone at the lowest prices. I'm ready for Halloween. Are you? Get the party started for less at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Wanna know you're on the best path to the right car? Start at CarMax, where every car is CarMax certified and backed by a 10-day money-back guarantee at a price that's upfront from the start. Visit carmax.com for details. Wanna drive? CarMax.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Greetings to the Snafu faithful. If you're listening to this, you're one of the good ones. You're, you're bigger than a fan. You're family now. And speaking of familial bonds, I never feel more embraced as a member of the distinct podcasting community than when I meet and befriend other fellow podcasters. I even had the privilege of inviting a bunch of my favorite podcast hosts on to Snafu this past season. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark from My Favorite Murder really brought their true crime, sixth sense insanity to our tale of the kidnapping of William Morgan. Robert Evans, the head honcho of the Behind the Bastards podcast, illuminated the Iran-Contra

• 2:06Speaker 01

  debacle of the 1980s with incredible wit and gravitas. And on a slightly more tech-oriented episode, the co-hosts of Hard Fork, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, provided firsthand accounts and reactions to one of Facebook's most epic fuck-ups. So enjoy these hosts and several more on this week's compilation episode from my absolute favorite primo podcasters.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  One of the things that might set our shows apart is that a lot of murders go unsolved and whatnot, but in a lot of murders, like, people go to jail. In the stories I cover, accountability is virtually nonexistent. Like, Snafus, big blunders, the big mistakes throughout history, like, people just bury it.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  They walk away.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Or walk away. Or they're just people who have such extraordinary power already that, that they can't be held accountable.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Which kind of feels like part of it, because when it's like a secret society where they have all the power, but it's such a small group, doesn't society always kind of wanna get rid of those? It's like they're waiting for that, you know, that takedown. It's also very modern day, the internet attack or whatever, where it's like...

• 3:23Speaker 01

  We love a good, a good collapse.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  The OG cancel culture.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Right. Well, as for old Willie Morgan himself, nobody ever found out what truly happened to him. In the years that followed his disappearance, unverified sightings trickled in. Some claimed to have spotted him traveling through the Ottoman Empire. Others swore, "I saw him. I saw him." He was on top of an elephant.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  He had a thread, he had a string in his mouth, and he was yelling murder.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was walking along the top of the Great Wall. I swear, I saw him.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  That's so funny to me, just like, they saw him in the Ottoman, traveling through the Ottoman Empire. Others swore he'd turned up in the Cayman Islands, living as a pirate. Of course, this is the famed Captain Morgan.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Is it?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  That actual pirate, that is a real pirate who, who has an actual story, but...

• 4:20Speaker 05

  And some nice rum.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I think some people, yeah, some yummy rum. But I think, I think this sort of got convoluted with, into that. And then there's, of course, the Niagara River theory, which, which several people actually maintained to their death. And in, in my very amateur historian view, is, is the most plausible, right? He was just dumped in the river.

• 4:45Speaker 05

  You don't think they would've found some trace of him? I mean...

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, I skipped over this before, but they, they, a body did wash up. And Lucinda, it was like a year later, so badly decomposed, but, but Lucinda said, "Yeah, that is him. I can tell by his teeth." And, but then another woman was like, "Ah, no, sorry, honey. That's my husband. I can tell by the clothes he's wearing and the fact that he has a full head of hair." And, and our guy was bald. So that's not very conclusive. I don't know. The Niagara River is huge.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Also, what if it's the, like, stone mason bricklayer thing where they knew, they know exactly what kind of stones to weight a body down with to make it disappear forever? Mafia-style?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is so My Favorite Murder of you. I love how you're thinking.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  I'm just like, how do we...

• 5:46Speaker 01

  You're like, "They knew how to do it."

• 5:48Speaker 05

  They knew. And you're acting like they didn't get together every Tuesday night to talk about how to murder. That's what the secret was.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  But Karen, I love that you also said, like, "They knew what stones to use."

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Like, if you wanna hold down a body, you gotta use granite. You can't use sandstone. It's not gonna work.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  No pumice? You can't have holes in the stones? We know that, all of our...

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Forget it. It's gotta be igneous. It can't be volcanic, whatever it is.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Geologists, back us up here. Georgia does cold cases a lot, and I've been trained to be like, "Well, maybe I'll fix it. Maybe I'll solve it," or whatever, 'cause it's just like, it's so frustrating when you don't get to have that kind of, like, and then these four stones were found near this thing, whatever. You don't get to have that nice, solid ending.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  From your perspective, what actually makes a perfect crime possible? Is it the, is it like, the planning and the intelligence? Or is it all luck? Is it having those levers of institutional power? Timing? Like, what, what is it? What, what makes a perfect crime? And, and, and I'm not asking 'cause I wanna commit one. I'm just saying, theoretically.

• 6:59Speaker 05

  We know firsthand. If you wanted to write it down, step by step, that'd be great.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Telling as few people as possible, because people talk.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  You can't get people to shut up, even in the masons, I'm sure. You know, there's always a loose thread.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 05

  But these are the people, they're so good at keeping secrets.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. This is like part of their culture. So in that sense, like, if you're gonna have a group onboard something, like, make sure it's one that already values secrecy, right?

• 7:33Speaker 05

  And already has the handshakes pre, pre-choreographed. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. I also think there's, like, back then, well, compared to now, obviously, but, much easier, because I think those, like, first of all, they had the, they were centered in the power as the masons. They had like, "Hey, I know the mayor. I know the judge. I know this lawyer," whatever. So they had those people kind of in place. So it's like, "I know a guy. I own the, the lumber mill, and we have an incinerator there. We have this." Like, those kinds of things. Now I'm planning them.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. This is getting real specific.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Throwing in theories.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, just making it up off the top of my head.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  But that idea where there's like, you've got people with connections willing to all be in on the secret.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Right. And then when everyone's a little bit responsible, no one's gonna speak. I'm going back on what I said. You get everyone, everyone to like, do a little bit.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  When everyone has, like, some skin in the game, there might be more beholden to the secret. Is that something you see a lot in these murder stories that you guys talk about?

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Well, that's why I love cold cases. I'm so fascinated by them and wanna talk about them, is when it's not solved, it becomes this, like, legend, and becomes bigger than what it really is, which is some horrible person who isn't that interesting, did something awful. It's not like a legend. It's not powerful in any way. And so, like, making it into some kind of, you know, fairy tale, it just gives it more power. But solving it and showing how sad and simple it is, I think, takes that power away from it.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Right. Interesting. Well, Karen and Georgia, that is today's Snafu, and this has been an absolute delight. Thank you for coming on.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  So fun. I love that story. That was really fascinating.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a cool one. It's a cool one, you know, in part 'cause I just love how the scale explodes after it happens. It's like, it turns into this national crisis.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  I gotta say, I think he went to Canada. I think he was offered a new life.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I like that take.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  He said, "Fuck it."

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's like, "Lucinda's really getting on my nerves."

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Exactly. She's not 19 anymore.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  "I got two kids going to college. Forget it."

• 9:54Speaker 05

  And the book came out, so there's a chance that he, like, made the money off the book and was up in Canada. Like, it all did happen.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  It was like kicking him some dividends. Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Maybe. We'll have to do a part two.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Trying to navigate this insane moment that we find ourselves in. Welcome to Snafu, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  Thank you. You know Scott is the definition of Snafu. That's, you know, how we got started. It was a Snafu.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  That's my stage name when I'm a stripper.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. No, it's your porn name.

• 10:26Speaker 06

  Snafu. There you go.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Snafu.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  What do you, well, how do you mean that you got started through, through a Snafu?

• 10:32Speaker 05

  It was a mistake. It was a mistake. We were, I was... Yeah, I was, I've told the story before, but I was hosting, I was looking for another partner and ran into Scott in Germany, of all places where he was giving a, this speech about, his trend speech, which is really cool. He had all these charts and I was watching it and I kept learning things and I think I know everything, obviously, because I do. And, but he kept giving me insights. I was like, oh, that was smart. But he was so obnoxious on stage. He danced around, he showed off his stomach, he did all manner of things and the Germans were perplexed. But I was completely entertained and also horrified. And so I went up to him and I said, you really are a jerk, but boy, are you smart. And we

• 11:15Speaker 05

  come on my show, which is, you know, that's the, you know, meet cute kind of thing. And he did.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Do you see yourself as a jerk? Or is this, is this a fair characterization?

• 11:23Speaker 05

  Jerkish.

• 11:24Speaker 06

  It was my first book, so to get on with Kara was a big deal. But just to finish her story, she called me and said, and Kara gets pretty high profile guests, she said, it, your episode is, according to our data, the most downloaded episode in our history, and we think it's a mistake. So we'd like you to come on a second time. That was my favorite part. We're pretty sure it was a mistake. So come on a second time. Anyways, the rest is history.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  There's no conceivable reason we could, we could, uh,

• 11:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, doesn't make sense.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  How did you beat Elon Musk? That's exactly what I was saying to him. And it was like perplexing, but people seem to like our little dog and pony show.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I am one of those folks. And you guys are like a Voltron of, of podcasting, because you have, you're both kicking ass in your own lanes and then you kind of stack up as this giant powerhouse on, on pivot. And you're so well informed, but also clearly insanely busy. So I have been dying to ask you this. How do you keep up with the news? Like, what are your news consumption habits? What are your go to sources? Kara, you first.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  I've lately been using Blue Sky and Threads to keep up with news. Like, I watch them, but I do read the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, when things are suggested, the New York Times, obviously. But I look everywhere. I find news everywhere. Weird stories, people, things sent, that's sent to me. But I have a pretty strong news diet. And then I watch a lot of TV and et cetera, try to keep on cultural stuff and read people I like, right? That are really smart, including Scott. I read his stuff that he reads, writes all the time and no mercy, no malice. But I, I, I keep up with it rather actively. And I think Scott does too.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  So my media go to is The Economist, the BBC, and the Financial Times. And all of that is a lie. I get all of my information, I get all of my information from Instagram, TikTok,

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Threads.

• 13:19Speaker 06

  And occasionally Threads. And I hate to say it, but I don't, I am, I am, my mind is being shaped by algorithms run by psychopaths. So

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  That tracks.

• 13:30Speaker 06

  I get all my news from social media now. And it wasn't that way two years ago.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  He's also somehow turned crippling anxiety about the future of America into a wildly successful media empire. Please welcome the one and only John Lovett.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  Hi. What an intro. Thank you.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Hey, yeah, that's, that's what we do here. We, we honor our guests. We elevate them. And I've been, I've been on your shows over the years many times. I'm so glad to have you on here. So in your job at Crooked Media, you basically spend a lot of time analyzing the daily horrors of American politics,

• 14:10Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Particularly Trump world. And yet somehow you stay quick and clever and weirdly hopeful.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  What's your secret? Like, what's the, like, are you, is it just therapy? Or are you on black market ketamine? Like, how do you not collapse into despair all the time?

• 14:32Speaker 05

  I want you to know something. If I ever am on ketamine, it will be from a prestigious Los Angeles based pill pushing fancy doctor. I'm not going to do black market drugs. That's not why I moved to this city.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I should know better.

• 14:46Speaker 05

  But, um, so it's interesting. The truth is, for me, I think hope's important. I think it's important that people feel it, because I think without it, they may not be as involved or invested. And it has real genuine value. There's a whole, whole media apparatus that wants people to feel cynical and negative and to view all politics as corrupt and all politicians as useless. And if you give into that, the, the people that want you to feel that way, when? They really do. And as bad as things have gotten, as bad as they could continue to get, there are always places where we have agency. And if you're giving up, it's not because you can't make a difference, or you can't be

• 15:30Speaker 05

  involved, or you can't have an impact. It's because either you don't know the way to find it, or you've decided it's too hard. And maybe that's okay. That's something people can decide. But like, I think there's a way in which people try to tell themselves things are worse than they seem, or are irredeemable, because it makes it easier. And the truth is, hope makes demands of us. It does. And it requires you to do things.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Well said. Thank you for reflecting on that with me. I actually, I kind of only want to talk about this stuff with you. I just like how you communicate about these things. Just a quick question. You were on the show Survivor.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Did you guys at any point on that show ever consider eating one another? Just like casually, as a backup plan?

• 16:14Speaker 05

  The truth is, I was only, I was only surviving for three nights, which meant I only really missed three dinners. And eating a fellow person doesn't come up after three dinners.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  You're already taking this question too seriously.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  But, uh, so it never comes to that. The other thing too, is there are coconuts strewn about.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  Right? You know, the exact number of coconuts one might need to survive happened to be randomly distributed by, I think, God.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Well, today's naffoo does involve actual cannibalism.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  It's one of the most famous disasters in American history. We're talking about the Donner Party.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  Hell yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 07

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition. Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just going to shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Picture this. You're the owner of a plumbing company descending into an 18 inch crawl space to hydrojet a sewer line. Don't ask.

• 17:30Speaker 06

  Oh, boy, this is tight. I knew I shouldn't have had that extra helping of mashed potatoes last night.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Now let's say your phone rings.

• 17:40Speaker 06

  Uh oh.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  It could be a lead on a very big job.

• 17:44Speaker 06

  I better get that.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Or it could just be a spam call.

• 17:48Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  But thanks to Ruby's call screening and seamless integration with the CRM system you already use, by the time you come up for air, your next job will already be waiting.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  This is Ruby, the team of remote receptionists who answer all your calls live. We do everything a great receptionist does, only better. Experience the new Ruby for yourself. Visit ruby.com. Or better yet, call us. 866 GET Ruby.

• 18:20Speaker 05

  The Halloween party is at my place this year. It's my favorite party to host. With the lowest prices and the huge selection, Total Wine & More is my first stop. A bottle of wine for me while I'm preparing the snacks, ready to drink cocktails for the party, and beer for the friends who always end up on the couch. Between hosting and grabbing something to bring, I love getting the lowest prices. Now I'm ready for Halloween. Are you? Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of

• 19:04Speaker 05

  five star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  It's funny, our shows have some, some thematic similarities. You focus on bad people throughout history. I focus on bad events, or incidents, or mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to the dark side, Robert Evans?

• 19:35Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there's, part of it's just like this little piece in all of us that's encoded by evolution to where like, if somebody else screws up in a major way, you want to like, pay attention to see. It's like, if you see a car wreck, it's like, what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make sure I don't get into that kind of problem?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It's funny you put it that way, because I feel like that's a well intentioned, or it's sort of a positive spin on why we're drawn to these things. I feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us. Like, why we, why we look at car crashes? It's not because we, it's like, we're looking for ways to avoid that. It's because I think, what? What is it? It makes us feel safer to see other people injured or something?

• 20:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. That is a good one. Because like, one of my favorite ways to relax, like when my friends and I, a couple of years ago, we all got laid off at the website we've been working for. And I had everyone over to the house and I just put on hours with the footage of like, people injuring themselves trying to cut down trees. Because it'll be like, a guy and his kid and like, a 300 year old oak tree. And he's got like, a $40 saw that he bought from Home Depot. And he's like, I can take this tree. And I just love watching like, the hubris meet with physics. But there is a darkness to it as well.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  I think we all have a sort of schadenfreude gene in, in us that's sort of like, it can be soothing to just know, we're not alone in our pain and misery in this world.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  It's, it's pretty universal.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Someone always has it worse than you do. Pretty much.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Now, you have a background in investigative journalism, with some pretty serious chops in that area. What, what drew you into that space?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  You know, I've always been fascinated by conflict. I came into it sort of as like a military history nerd, someone who was interested in that. But really, what kind of like, broke me into like, a significant role in media was I just happened to be paying attention to these weird little corners of the internet, right as like, the alt-right erupted and, you know, 8chan, 4chan kind of like, became major things in terms of like, people were carrying out attacks and stuff based on, you know, having been radicalized in these little fascist Corners of the internet. And I just kind of been watching them for a couple of years. And so I I've realized at a certain point like, oh, there's not a lot of other people who understand how these communities work.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I should probably explain them to people because members of those communities are now killing people. Right? It was a mix of like accident and, uh, uh, I guess happenstance.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, it it was a product of your own curiosity. Right? And I think I feel like that's one of the traits of the great journalists out there is like this relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place. It's not just like, how do I get the next big scoop? You know, it's like, yeah, I really, my sense, and I'm not a journalist at all, but my sense of it is that the journalists, the great ones, really have like a personal, like unquenchable thirst to know. And this curiosity that drives through because investigative journalism is tedious, is incredibly time consuming. It can be, uh, it can be dangerous a lot of times.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that thirst for, for the truth or for knowledge or for clarity on something is really powerful. I think it's such an admirable space to be in. Do you see great investigative journalism happening today? Like, who are the people that you think are really standing out or doing great work? I mean, besides Tucker Carlson?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Of course, of course, Tucker. You and I are both big fans of, uh, of Tucker. You know, my, my old colleagues at Bellingcat continue to do great work. You know, the New York Times Visual Investigations Desk has done some really impressive open source, uh, reporting on conflicts, I mean, over all over the world over the last, like several years. I, I find myself really interested in BBC Africa Eye, which is their kind of open source covering like particularly like war crimes in places like Cameroon. So there's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work being done by folks who are are willing to do things like spend hundreds of hours combing through like footage that

• 23:45Speaker 02

  we know is a war crime, but we don't know what militia was responsible or where it was done. And like laborously matching, like you can kind of see a mountain in the background. And so they'll just spend weeks going through Google Maps and they're like, it's this mountain. And because of where it is in the frame of the shot, we can like now locate this exact point geographically. And we know that these militant groups reacted. Like, that's really impressive work to me. And it's so much more of a pain in the butt than what I did, you know, when I was covering that stuff. So I have, I have tremendous admiration for that. And anybody who's doing like financial crimes investigative journalism, this, the wonkiness required, the ability to dig deep into like the financials of a company that's doing something

• 24:28Speaker 02

  wrong is so labor intensive.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  I can barely balance my checkbook. I can't, I can't even wrap my head around that stuff. And then it's not, it's not only the, the digging into it and the figuring it out. It's the, it's then the ability to translate it into English and in an interesting way that, that laypeople can understand. Well, kudos to you and your, your, your colleagues and, uh, all the people out there doing great investigative journalism. Do you have any specific snafu from your life that you can tell us about?

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Can be huge, can be tiny, doesn't matter.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  So many, there are so many. I'll tell you, for folks who don't know, I took a two-year sabbatical from acting with the intent to always come back, acting and performing is my first love. But I was, uh, the president's liaison to, uh, young Americans and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in an office called the Office of Public Engagement. Think of it as like an outreach office. And on my third day, the National Security Council.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Are you in the, in the White House?

• 25:28Speaker 02

  In the White House, in the actual White House. They add me to a massive email chain. And these email chains have like a hundred people on them, real serious national security people in those days. And everything in government is an acronym. Right? So like, for example, if you get an email from the National Security Council, it'll say National Security Council, then any other time in the email, it'll just say NSC. And so they had, they said, you know, plus Cal. Cal, because you're the president's new liaison to the Asian American community, you should know about this delegation from the Philippines that's meeting at the White House. And the thing that you should know is about this terror group in the Philippines that you might get questions on. They're called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  And then in parentheses, it just said MILF. And then the rest of the email, I'm not fucking with you. The rest of the email said, uh, MILF is considered highly dangerous. MILF is known to recruit young men. And then things like, things like, you know, many young men grow to the, to regret their affiliation with MILF over time.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  This is the opposite of a snafu. This is delightful. I love that there are these little, uh, these, these, these little nuggets of governmental awkwardness.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Great. So I thought this was so wonderful that in my head, I'm at my desk laughing my ass off, I hit reply all and I wrote, yo, their main terror group are the MILFs. Amazing. And I hit send. And as soon as I hit send, I was like, you idiot, you are not in a writer's room at Universal. You are in the White House on an email chain with the National Security Council. And I couldn't unsend it. And I, and it like, it was silent after that. And in the hallway, coworkers, many of whom in the, in the pod world, you all know, a lot of the, the Pod Save America guys and, and Tommy Viator and Ben Rhodes and these guys who I worked with at the time, in the hallway were like, yo, that shit was so funny. We were all thinking it.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Like, will one of you please hit reply all and just say LOL? That's all I need. I just need one of you to LOL me. And they all were like, hell no, man. This is going to be a public record one day. I just don't want my name associated with you calling out the MILF thing. So that was my, one of my professional snafus.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I love it. You know what? The only thing that would have made that snafu better is if Obama himself had like walked up into your office, like leaned against the, the door jamb and just been like, Cal, buddy, what the hell? We're gonna have to fire you. Like you're gonna, this is not, you can't do this.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  If that were the case, I felt like it would have gone the other way. And he would have just been like, did you see the name of this terror group?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  I feel like the government needs more people like you, Cal. It'd be a lot more fun, a lot more like chuckles in the hallways.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I enjoy my time.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It's so serious all the time.

• 28:24Speaker 07

  The scariest part of Halloween isn't the full moon or a chainsaw starting up in the distance. It's running out of Reese's cups. Because when you open the door to four princesses, six superheroes and three Draculas all reaching for your Reese's cups, things can get scary fast. Especially when you were kind of counting on some leftovers. So this Halloween, buy extra. Because your neighbor Jeff dressed like a kangaroo? That's scary enough. Running out of Reese's cups doesn't need to be.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Picture this, you're the owner of a plumbing company descending into an 18-inch crawl space to hydrojet a sewer line. Don't ask.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  Oh, boy, this is tight. I knew I shouldn't have had that extra helping of mashed potatoes last night.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Now let's say your phone rings.

• 29:13Speaker 06

  Uh-oh.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  It could be a lead on a very big job.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  I better get that.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Or it could just be a spam call.

• 29:22Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  But thanks to Ruby's call screening and seamless integration with the CRM system you already use, by the time you come up for air, your next job will already be waiting.

• 29:33Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  This is Ruby, the team of remote receptionists who answer all your calls live. We do everything a great receptionist does, only better. Experience the new Ruby for yourself. Visit ruby.com or better yet, call us. 866 GET Ruby.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  The Halloween party is at my place this year. It's my favorite party to host. With the lowest prices and the huge selection, Total Wine & More is my first stop. A bottle of wine for me while I'm preparing the snacks, ready to drink cocktails for the party and beer for the friends who always end up on the couch. Between hosting and grabbing something to bring, I love getting the lowest prices. Now I'm ready for Halloween. Are you? Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, be 21. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  At the time, his digital operation was basically nonexistent. So Cambridge Analytica saw an opening and they moved fast, pitching themselves as the high-tech edge the campaign needed. Before long, they were brought on to handle all of the digital responsibilities for the campaign. And from there, they got to work shaping what voters saw online. The strategy was simple in concept and unnerving in practice. They'd figure out what worried you, what scared you, and then feed you content that leaned into those concerns while positioning Trump as the solution. So basically, anxiety and uncertainty custom tailored just for you. Just a spigot of fear.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I don't know, it feels like a horror movie. It's how cynical is this?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so cynical, but also like this just is how we have built our social networks. They're optimized for engagement. So whatever gets you to open the app more, to spend more time there, to do more things in the app, that's what you'll see. And it turns out that if you scare and upset people, they look at the app more. So like that kind of brutal calculus is one of the reasons why we're in this mess we're in today.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  This is the first place that I've seen or heard about fear and terror being like a deliberate effort on the part of a campaign, of a social media campaign. And yet, we have heard a lot about how algorithms have sort of naturally steered things in that direction. So which is it? Or what's the bigger force at work here, do you think? Is it the built-in programming or is it like bad actors?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  So, I mean, like negative political ads have existed for a really long time. You can go back to like the Daisy ad and you know, do you really want this guy's finger on the button and you know, vote for him and we're all gonna die in a nuclear holocaust? So that kind of stuff has a proud tradition in American politics. I think where Cambridge Analytica felt really different was this suggestion that they could essentially micro-target and add to your particular fears and neuroses and they would manipulate you into voting for somebody without you even understanding what was happening to you.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  So, and you know, they could do this at like a massive scale, but you know, because the vast majority of Americans were on Facebook, they could just sort of reach all of those people instantaneously in a way that they would not have even been able to do with a TV ad. Well, I think there's some additional nuance to that here, which is that it's not clear that what Cambridge Analytica was offering to do actually worked, right?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  If it worked really well, President Ted Cruz would have been elected.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  So this may have just been a sales pitch that they were giving. I think it is also true simultaneously that the Trump campaign appears to have done a very good job of using Facebook as a way of getting voters to engage with whatever they were sharing, to inspire people to go to the polls. They ran a very sophisticated, essentially, marketing operation on Facebook. But it's not clear to me that they did that, like using the tools and techniques that Cambridge Analytica gave them, rather than just the advertising and marketing tools that are available through Facebook's own ad platform.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Sure. And also, the incredible instincts of Donald Trump, right? Like his just unbelievable ability to tap into cultural tides of anxiety. And his humor, like the way that his, I think his undeniable charm was just feeling so fresh and kind of unbelievable to people at this time.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I think he's like a human newsfeed algorithm. He just, you can sort of see him as he's giving a speech. He's just like sort of testing out stuff and if it gets a laugh or people get excited about it, he like does it again. And if people don't seem to respond, he doesn't do it again. He's sort of like running the A/B test in real time on his audience.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  You just put a book out. Congratulations. In addition to your amazing podcast all about sports, tell us about Good Game first.

• 35:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Good Game with Sarah Spain is the first and only, as far as we know, daily women's sports podcast. Yes, daily. It is a lot of work, but it is what was necessary. The folks who started the iHeart Women's Sports Network reached out and one of them was Sue Bird. And you can't say no to Sue Bird about really anything because she's a legend. But when she said, "We want you to do a show for the network, what would it look like?" And I had just gotten out of 13 straight years of daily radio for ESPN. I was enjoying my first year of not having a show every day and I stupidly said, "It's gotta be a daily show because that's what's missing." Because in women's sports, you really just need the same cadence of learning about the star-stake stats and stories that are out there so that you get excited about the games

• 35:52Speaker 05

  and want to watch them and attend them and buy the merch. And so we're offering that to people and people seem to love it, which is great.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  That's awesome. So you have a book. You just put a book out called Runs in the Family: An Incredible True Story of Football, Fatherhood, and Belonging. Give me the quick like breakdown.

• 36:10Speaker 05

  Well, I wanted to be like you, so I wrote it all in the two weeks between when your book came out and mine came out. Can you believe it? So fast. No, so I wrote a story for ESPN and did a feature for ESPN a handful of years ago about this guy, Dylan McCullough. He's the running backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders. And grew up in Youngstown, post-Dylan Mills collapse, was adopted, never knew his birth family. His adoptive dad leaves when he's two, so sort of a troubled relationship with father figures. Gets into football, gets recruited, has a great career until he gets a knee injury and becomes a coach. And finally, in his 40s, the laws change in Pennsylvania where he was born. He can get his birth certificate and he discovers after finding his mom, who never told the

• 36:52Speaker 05

  dad that she had gotten pregnant, was sent away to have the baby in private like they used to do in the 70s, finds out that his college football coach and mentor of almost 30 years was his birth dad all along. And neither of them knew it.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  So it's this really unbelievable story, but also there's a ton in there about nature versus nurture, what we inherit through blood and DNA, what we inherit through family systems, emotional DNA, messages, lessons, all the things. And so I really wanted to be a book about him because his story is so incredible, but also a book that anyone would read and think to themselves like, what are the irrefutable things that I've been passed on that I can't reject or deny? And what are the things I get to choose to hang on to or pass on?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I can't wait to read this. It really, really sounds insanely inspiring. And congrats.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Writing a book is a big freaking deal.

• 37:46Speaker 05

  I know.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 37:48Speaker 05

  I know you too. Congrats.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  It's a ton of work.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post-production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halsin, and Caroline Johnson.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

• 39:07Speaker 07

  The scariest part of Halloween isn't the full moon or a chainsaw starting up in the distance. It's running out of Reese's cups. Because when you open the door to four princesses, six superheroes, and three Draculas all reaching for your Reese's cups, things can get scary fast. Especially when you were kind of counting on some leftovers. So this Halloween, buy extra. Because your neighbor Jeff dressed like a kangaroo? That's scary enough. Running out of Reese's cups doesn't need to be.

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Halloween's almost here and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, be 21.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.