History Meets Galaxy with Tony Gilroy and Mike Duncan

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When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. We'll be right back. The files, apparently a gentleman named Jesse Epstein who was sex trafficking hundreds of people. There were hundreds of victims of this, but apparently acted alone. There are no files. And then maybe tomorrow they will have the files. And it turns out all the files were written on with lemon juice on paper. Oh, they just had to hold them up under the light. And then they appeared again. This has been such a surreal experience. Watching this administration in this moment. Look, Donald Trump very clearly came to power. The fuel of his rise was the kinetic energy of conspiracy. He rode the power of, quote unquote, the secret knowledge to conspiracy. And then, uh, light up his audiences to, to drive them, uh, mad with injustice and how they were going to fight it. There was this deep state and they all knew about it. And there was a liberal conspiracy and there were children involved and they were, and, and Trump and all his influencers and all those individuals that force amplified, uh, the conspiracies. Are we? What I think drew his movement together. It was in many ways, it's the glue that holds the, the MAGA moment much more than I think patriotism does. It's the glue of secret knowledge of unknown forces that work against you to cause your life. And one of the main forces was this exemplified by this Epstein thing. And everybody talked about, oh, when they got in there and they were gonna, uh, where we go one, we go all, and we're gonna clean this thing up. And it is so fucking bananas to watch them. Now try and diffuse this bomb that they planted watching Pam bonding. I don't know if you saw the cabinet meeting where somebody, uh, the, the, the first moment they, they brought up Epstein in the cabinet meeting and Trump immediately jumps in the, uh, really, you're gonna talk about that guy, that guy, the guy that, uh, my audience has been like clamoring about for, for 10 years. That's the guy you're gonna bring up while children are missing in Texas. And you're like, man, you like you were golfing the whole weekend. What are you talking about? How dare someone ask a question? It's desecration. You were on like the 11th hole when all this was going down. You didn't, you didn't change. And it's a very reasonable question. But to watch Pam Bondi have to go from, and it's the same that happened with Bongino and Patel to go from conspiracy theorist to reason to expert is just mwah chef's kiss. Oh, there's a minute missing from, uh, uh, the prison videos. They had security camera footage from the prison, but there's a minute missing from 1159 to midnight. And that minute, man. You can, you can fit how many conspiracies can you fit on the head of a minute? Like you can fit them all. And watching Pam Bondi have to go, you know, I, yeah, no, listen, I get it, you know, minute is missing, but it turns out there's a very simple explanation and it's somewhat innocuous. So it's not the, the sinister motives that everybody thought it was. Uh, so I'm sure that will, uh, uh, take all the air out of this conspiracy because I've just explained to you. It's a very reasonable, uh, uh, explanation for why that doesn't exist. Watching them dance on the head of this pin is going to be, and I will guarantee you that ultimately the you're already starting to see it. It's fire, Pam Bondi. It's not fire. The guy who's in all the pictures with Epstein and who said, I don't know if I'm going to release the files because there's a lot of phony stuff in there. And Trump said there was phony stuff in there. And we all know the definition of phony when it comes to Donald Trump. Anything that reflects poorly on Donald Trump is phony or fake. So by the very fact that he used that word specifically tells you something, uh, very much so, and I'm sure it'll morph because somehow dear leader will, we'll find his way out of it. It'll be a Pam Bondi or it'll be somehow there, or it'll be the most sod or they'll come up with some fucking idea that, oh, actually, uh, Trump has been really smart. He's got all the information and he's using it. As compromise, uh, to get, uh, to, to bring peace to this world, uh, but man, what an upside down, it's like watching the movie speed where they're all in, they're all, they've all been in the bus driving 80 miles an hour and suddenly the driver turns out to be one of them. And he's like, actually I planted the bus. I planted the bomb. And I'm the one who said we couldn't, uh, uh, uh, drive less than 80. It's man, we're in such a weird moment, man. And that's why. So we have, we have a great, uh, couple of guests today that can actually talk about this, uh, weird moment that we're in through the lens of history and through the lens of art and, and fiction, uh, two people that I just, I so admire, uh, the work that they both do. So I want to, I want to get to that, uh, and get out of the absurdity of the moment that we're in. So, uh, uh, let, let's get to them. Uh, folks, uh, I, I'm excited to hear, I've, I've got two fellows. I'm huge, uh, fan of, of both of these individuals. We've got Tony Gilroy who, uh, if you're fans of the, uh, the born series, the, the writer, sometimes director of all those great films, the creator, uh, of Andor, Rogue One, obviously co-wrote and Mike Duncan, we all know bestselling author. And if you're a fan at all. Uh, of history podcasts, a creator of the history of Rome, one of the most fabulous podcasts ever done. And all those revolutions podcasts, including the upcoming, it's now over in the podcast, but as you know, in the future, there will be a Martian revolution. And uh, Mike Duncan has, uh, very graciously informed us about the various things that are going to happen in the, uh, uh, uh, Martian revolution. But the reason I wanted to have you both together on the podcast in this moment, because I feel like. This is one of those fraught moments in time where we all feel we may be on the precipice of one of these, uh, schisms that leads to rebel or leads to something, uh, historic, but maybe people always feel that way. But the reason I, I wanted to pull the two of you together, uh, Mike, as a historian, I think what historians do so well is they view revolution or historical. Events, and they deconstruct them. They allow you to take a core sample of these moments in time that we all believe we understand really well. But the historian goes through and shows you the component parts may not be what you imagine them to be. And then the artist and the writer and the director like Tony, you take those deconstructed moments of revolution, the ingredients. and you reconstruct them to create beautiful works of art that kind of give insight into maybe the more emotional aspects of what of what these are it's almost as though you're two sides of uh the same coin so i i want to start with with mike deconstructing history and revolutions what what drew you to that what what do you find that you learn from kind of taking that fine-tooth comb and going through these large-scale movements and moments that we all think we understand but showing us their component parts yeah like i mean i got into revolutions like i started the revolutions podcast because revolutions i think are inherently interesting moments in time right like this is where so much is happening and like so many of the pivots of history like exist in this and i think it's a really interesting moment in time and i think it's a really interesting moment in time and i think it's a really interesting moment in time and i think it's so chaotic there's so many like there's the french revolution is inherently interesting the russian revolution is inherently interesting so i did want to like go through these and i thought it would be a make for a great you know format for a show and then when i'm doing you know the individual revolutions i'm not really thinking about like how these connect necessarily to other revolutions i just want to explain the one that is right in front of my face right now like i want to explain the revolution of 1830 in the specifics the specific context of 1830 and then when i do the mexican revolution i want to talk about the specific context of the mexican revolution but then when i was all done with uh like these 10 seasons worth of revolutions that i had written i did produce like i forget how many episodes it is now like 12 or 15 episodes where i went back through and really did a big compare and contrast of every revolution that i had covered from the english civil wars to the russian revolution and there are sort of similar structures similar character types similar orders of events there are reasons why things happen that you can sort of you know extract from this like an abstract structure and then we would never want to take that abstract structure and like put it you know on today and say that means this is how things will go or put it in the future and say that's how things will will go but when things then do roll out if we get another revolution i'll bet you anything you could go back through it talk about the specific context of that particular revolution and then see oh yep this is exactly like it was in the cromwell era and exactly like it was for rob spear and danton and that is sort of how things go because you know history does not yeah history doesn't repeat itself but it absolutely does rhyme it's amazing and tony as you when you're creating these worlds are you then going through work like the work that that mike does as or as a fan of that how are you compiling those kinds of ingredients that he's talking about to create the worlds that you're creating because what you do so well is you're creating the worlds that you're creating because what you do so well is you're creating the worlds that you're creating because what you do so well is you're creating the worlds you make them resonate there's a reality to them they feel three-dimensional which is such for for an artist for a director for a writer that is such a challenge what's your process like then well i mean i first of all i need like a booster seat or flotation device to participate in a real historical conversation because i am not a pro like i am i'm not a pro i'm not a pro i'm not a that's what mike's here for man me and you i mean you guys have you guys have the kind of um you know you guys have the kind of memories and the kind of minds that that that that that hang on to all this stuff i'm i i'm liberated i i get i really i i mean in 40 40 years of doing this or 35 37 years of doing this i have never once done a true life story for a script you can imagine how many scripts i've written you can imagine how many things i got offered over the years i mean how many and i've never done one my brother and i touched on one but the character was so obscure it really didn't matter i've even i've even hijacked projects that were non-fiction and fought hard to turn them in against to fictionalize to turn to fictionalize i'm saying i can't do this if we're going to stay real so i um i get this absolute instantaneous free pass so i don't have to tell the truth it's really it's um you don't have to tell the truth but when you're building the foundation of a story to make it resonate to make it believable yeah i'm getting there i mean it's it's it's it's it's the best it's the best possible situation i can i've listened i've now listened to all of my i didn't do it in order i would look today what am i missing what didn't i do the only revolution i did not do with mike was the american revolution oh that's fine i don't know why because i because i did it in school that's the only one i didn't do yeah you could skip that one and marsh i didn't do martian because i didn't want to get i didn't want to have any i didn't want to like i didn't for five years i didn't listen to any oh you didn't want to go through a whole nother science fiction revolution after having just spent five years doing one maybe not and so um and then but this but the reason that i listened to it wasn't just because i was working on the show the reason i listened to it because i've been a freak for this my whole life so i mean the library in this house is just a chaos of you know of uh random books from the street and and bad history books and great history books and weird things and so i i have that i have what you were describing before i use history as a catalog i i really get to use the entire catalog of incidents it's almost as if it's it's it's it's um you know i shop for what i need as i go along and um i have my i have one i have i have one requirement that that that is uh above all that which is it has to be it has to be behavioral it has to be relatable to character it all has to be something explain that explain that i mean all of these i i you know i don't necessarily i don't really have a dog in the fight of the great man or great moment philosophies of history you know when i read history i am always uh if it's not being presented to me overtly i am always trying to dig behind the what's going on for the behavioral aspect of why is mussolini doing this now why is garibaldi doing this right now why right why would they do that and what does he need what is he so afraid of that what is she what is she so desperate to have so i that's my oh you're looking for motivation in a lot of ways i think motivation is uh is just motivation is a word that's just right up front i think behavior is much more important than motivation in a way but um so i don't have any of the moral or objective uh criteria or judgments or comments coming at me about truthfulness that that that anybody else is going to have but i do have a very high bar and that the behavior has to be honest it has to be real it has to be consistent and i think it's important that i find a way to get my people my characters um into situations and i can't i can't i can uh i can set the trap i can set the things in motion i can light the kindling on fire but i cannot once the characters are involved in the in the machinery i can't i can't manipulate the machinery to do what i want the characters have to take it where it goes that's my responsibility uh hey everybody you know as you know i'm a very modern uh man very tech savvy i'm a big vpn guy and i'm going to tell you surf shark it's a modern vpn it's designed with the user in mind you know a lot of them vpns they're not designed for the 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country netflix libraries including the u.s and japan by merely connecting to a server in the right country go to surf shark.com steward and vpn that's surf shark.com slash steward to get four extra months of the vpn we don't think of history in itself as a series of behaviors uh or motivations and those things we see it as there's a certain inevitability to it i mean everything tony just said is like what i do in revolutions I'm obsessed with why people do the things that they do. Right. large structural forces that people are existing within, like, of course, but it is like individual choices and individual, like motivations, like what is getting people up out of bed and driving them to do things. And then especially when we're talking about like, you know, people like Czar Nicholas or, you know, Marie Antoinette, like, you know, Czar Nicholas was not sitting down and being like, I'm going to be an evil tyrant today and oppress people. And then, and then they will, you know, they'll rise up against me, but that I don't, but I hate them, right? No, he, he, he was convinced that he had been given, you know, his position by God and that it was his job to like steward this responsibility that the Romanoff family had, you know, to, to reign over Russia and hand that off to his, uh, hand that off to his heir. That's their principal motivation. That's what they're focused on. They're not focused on anything else beyond that. And inside of, you know, Nicholas's mind and Alexandra's mind, this makes a ton of sense. And what they're doing makes a ton of sense and is internally consistent with their own belief system, even though it appears from a different perspective. from the outside to be like, well, you're just awful people who need to be overthrown. That's nobody, nobody actually works like that. So anytime I'm reading a biography or I'm reading a history of, or something, I'm very much focused on, you know, what is the psychological motivation for people and the things that they do? That's a huge part of the show. See, that's such an interesting, I think that's such an interesting point. And I wonder, Tony, how you deal with this, uh, in the way that you're constructing these things. I think we view that there's a difference between genuine belief and cynical manipulation and in revolutions. There's always that moment in Orwell sort of, you know, spoke to this, I think really well, that idea of the people that are in charge, are they behaving based on true belief or are they manipulating systems for maximum power? Like czar Nicholas, you, you might look at it that way, but then when we look at like maybe the more modern revolutions where propaganda, you know, when you talk about, uh, the Nazis or Lenin and Stalin, uh, do they believe that what they're doing is right ordained by God or are they manipulating for, for power? Does that, does that enter into, as you construct either villains or heroes, Tony? No, I will say, I mean, it's going to say about Mike's, uh, Mike's, the revolutions podcast. I mean, he's dead on. I mean, the reason that makes it so entertaining and the reason why it's so, you listen to it so compulsively. And I just, it really is a lot of hours I put into that. And you don't just do that. It is personal. It is, he, he's delivering characters all the way through. Um, I don't think, I don't think I agree completely with the basis of the question because it's like, I don't see, um, I don't see power or rebellion or, uh, uh, or insurrection as I don't see anybody having a, uh, having a firmer grip on cynicism than anybody else. I think cynicism is, uh, I think there's some very cynical revolutionary leaders along the way. I mean, really cynical. Right. I mean, people that are just, you know, Who are the people that come to mind for you? Well, I mean, look how Lenin uses, everybody around him for crying out, look at Mao. I mean, No, but that's, that's what I mean. Look at Mao. I mean, Right. I, man, I don't know if there's ever been a greater, I don't know, maybe Mike, maybe this book's discredited. Maybe Michael no more, but I think one of the most incredible books I ever read was, cause I don't think there's ever been a personal, personal account of someone who was so close to a, an historical, uh, dynastic leader is Mao's doctor's book. Um, that book that Mao's doctor wrote is like, it's just, and the cynicism inside it that, so I don't think anybody has. So I never look at it that, if you look at, if you look at our show, if you look at what I do, I think in general, um, I'm really interested in what people wake up in the morning, I guess, and what is really driving them. I think just as many Nazis were driven by, by who had the best parking place and who had the best corner office and who got the best typing and anything else. The banana. The banana. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't think anybody, I don't think a whole lot of people woke up in the morning and thought, you know, it's really great. We're nationalizing the industries and I really hate Jews so much. I want to go out and do mass graves. You don't think any of them thought that? You really, it couldn't have all been parking spaces. Oh yeah, sure. No, no, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But you can't write a character like that. That's why, um. Oh, that's interesting. That's why that movie, the, uh, the zone of silence was so incredibly effective without doing anything, man. I remember that, you know, the, the, the Auschwitz movie that was out two years ago where they never went into the camp. The zone of interest. Right. There's a scene where the, where the wife tries on the coat in the room and you realize when she goes to the pocket that it's someone else's coat and she loves it. And it's like, man, that's what, that's where I want to live. That, that's where history is for me. That's history's in, in the tendency of those people, uh, to want things. Um, Mike can speak much more eloquently, I'm sure, about how individual behaviors get shaped into a lump and a lump gets shaped into a, you know, into a movement and it moves forward. And, and those title, those title shifts are, are, are, you know, they're important in their story, but I can't start characters from the point of view of anything other than how much chaos they have inside of them. What do they really need? What are they afraid of? You know? But then what is that, Mike? Is it, you know, is it the conductor or is it the orchestra? You know, does somebody. Yeah. have to be a conductor in revolutions for this? Because I think if you look at the, the span of human history, oppression and violence has always been with us, but it doesn't always combust into revolution. Uh, those moments are really specific. And as we're talking about sort of character and behavior, does there have to be a conductor as you look at it? It, must there be. somebody. Yes. you know, when you talk about Nicholas, who is, you know, this person who believes I'm ordained by God and, and these are the things I'm doing, not to be evil, but because this is, this is biblically, you know, written. How, how do you view that, Mike, as you, as you look at those? Well, it's a giant like interplay of things, right? Like the orca, the orchestra can play without the conductor and the conductor can wave his arms without the orchestra. And the two things like. Yeah. are enough to come together in order to make the revolution happen in the moment that it does. And yeah, like to your point, there was, you know, there's a line from Trotsky that it's like, if you're talking about, um, sort of what are the, what are the things that cause a revolution? Like what are the triggers of a revolution? You can't really say the misery of the, excuse me, the misery of the peasants is a cause of revolution because the peasants are always miserable. Right. The peasants are miserable whether there's a revolution or whether. The nature of peasantry, yes. it's the very nature of peasantry at the time. So you can't, you can't say like, oh, it's miserable and therefore there's a revolution because human misery is omnipresent. So it takes all of these other things fitting together up and down the socioeconomic line from the very inner circles of power all the way down to, yes, the peasantry is miserable and they are ready to like rise up. In my experience with revolutions, this gets sort of, as I've gone through history, you know, starting with these very early modern revolutions, then moving all the way up into the 20th century, you can see revolutions sort of professionalizing. Right. As a like career path and like a career choice. Oh. Because in the early days, you know, like the American Revolution, the French Revolution, like these things, chaotic things happen. And there are leaders and there are people trying to do things, make reforms, do this, do that. But like usually events start to spin out of control. Nobody's really in charge of it. And then inside of these chaotic revolutionary vacuums, leaders do pop up and movements do pop up and parties do pop up. And then those groups start to like bend events this way and that. But at least in the early days, it's never people being like, okay, we're going to sit around, we're going to stage a revolution and then it's going to work. Like the first time that even happens is in August of 1792 when they do get together and overthrow the monarchy. But that's three years into the French Revolution by the time they're even getting down to business and planning stuff like that. But then you move forward a hundred years and yeah, Lenin is a professional revolutionary. Right. That is what he is trying to do. Like that is his job. And so he's trying to create the conditions that will make this revolution happen. And that's the first time you really see that being exercised. Yeah. Yeah. It, you know, it comes along in the mid 19th century. There were definitely precursors to Lenin, but even when like the Russian Revolution gets going, like where's Lenin? He's in Switzerland. Like he didn't even know it was happening. He was, he had to cut a deal with the Germans just to get back there so he could lead the revolution that he had nothing to do with. And then he did. And then, and then him and the Bolsheviks do like, you know, bend events their way. But like, this is really, I mean, revolutions at their bottom are just really out of any one person's hand for sure. Right. You know, John, remember, I mean, it's usually, I'm curious if Mike thinks this is true, but it's in the end, it's, it's body, it's a body in the street. It's, it's, it's like the guy who started Arab Spring because he started himself on fire. It's the, it's the women in Paris marching to Versailles. It's like someone just says, Hey, it's raining. I don't give a fuck. We're going to, we're going to march to Versailles. I, and demand that we get our bread. I mean, and it's in the end, it's Somebody goes to the street or somebody blows up the Reichstag or somebody – or has the false flag or somebody does – but it – yeah, I'm sure the Spartacus League and various revolutionary groups have a very highly articulated checklist of things that will start a revolution. But I have a feeling it's probably pretty sad. Yeah, that could be a Thursday. It could be two years from now. That's what I'm getting to though. It's sad, that list. It's sad, yes. But as you deconstruct these revolutions, what you end up with is in some ways a to-do list. And you have a variety of choices and options. Like you say, the Reichstag fire or you have the false flag. Tony, you had that in Andor. You have that massacre in the square. And they lure them in. And you see the planning of the empire. And they're saying – you have that wonderful Dedra who says you just need the right people to do the wrong thing or the wrong people to do the right – you need the people who think they're the revolutionaries to commit an act that allows the empire to massacre them. Okay, just look at that. Just look at the one thing that you've said because you're just – you're going to hit on a whole bunch of things that have their own – these are all part of the catalog. Right, right, right. They don't go into every revolution probably. I don't know how – but building the enemy you want is a key tactic. Boy, that's a nice phrase. Building the enemy you want. Well, look. J. Edgar Hoover puts people in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. Right. The Brits put IRA – they have provosts. I mean a lot of people would argue I might agree that Netanyahu built Hamas. I mean he took apart everything else and he put – he built the enemy. You do that. That's what she's saying there. She says we need people that will do what you want them to do and that is in the authoritarian playbook for sure. I mean Mike could probably give you 19 other examples where that happened. Well, I mean the head of the SR combat organization was like taking money from the czar while also planting bombs, right? Like yeah, there is that – there are those connections like all the time. Again, like we're getting back to like the checklist of stuff. Like those guys can have a checklist and you can hit every single part of the checklist and then no revolution happens because there isn't actually like a series of buttons that you press and then like have a revolution happen. And even like in February of 1917, the Bolsheviks – I mean that – the February revolution gets going because the women went into the streets. It was National Women's Day and they wanted to – the women wanted to go out into the streets and protest. And the Bolsheviks were telling them like, no, we don't want to do this. We don't want to – we want to keep our gunpowder dry. We're going to save it for May Day like which was just a couple of months away. And then they went out there and it was a bright, sunny, warm day after a long winter in St. Petersburg and the whole city just like went crazy outside of everybody's expectation of what would happen. So these things, they happen or they don't. But you're never just going to sit down and do like check nine things and then be able to stage a revolution. That is absolutely not how these things work. Folks, you've heard me talk about this before and I'm going to talk about it again. And I'm not going to stop talking about it until you people get on this damn thing. Ground news. It's a website. It's an app. It's a website and an app. It's on a mission. It's going to give readers an easier, more data-driven way to read the news. I don't understand why they didn't do this before. 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Do you find – is it – you know, when we think about America in the way that we've mythologized our revolution, and I think it speaks sometimes to fiction because the Star Wars universe is so interestingly – you know, I think people look at the Rebel Alliance as the liberals and the empire as, well, that must be conservative. The liberals, look, they're all different species and they're living together in sin and doing all kinds of different things and the empire is much more kind of fascistic and authoritarian. And they're doing those. But revolutions don't neatly play along. The liberals are the good guys and the conservatives are the bad guys. You know, Orwell wrote – his was Stalinist, you know. Yeah. I mean – no, I mean, the empire is pretty clearly fascistic, I would say. I don't think there's much – I can see it seems to have some fascist overtones to it. I don't know. Stormtroopers. I don't know if anybody gets that connection. The color palette. Maybe a little bit. Anyway. But they – you know, and look, I don't – I am – I win no Star Wars trivia contests at all. But I do know the – what I was given was five years. I have a five-year piece of the calendar and the five years that I have is a furnace that's just about to go nuts because the empire is at this moment making a huge effort. And this is the five years prior to a new – It's the five years prior. Prior to Rogue One, yeah. Prior to the blowing up of the Death Star and the whole thing, yeah. So I get those five years and I have a couple canonical incidents on the calendar that I have to pay attention to. But the general – the general understanding of that period of time is they are consolidating power aggressively because they know they're building this energy project that will dominate everything. They are – they are doing what every fascistic government does. Which is nationalizing all the corporate entities first. They are stripping the legal system. They are rewriting. They are emasculating and completely neutering the political organizations. They – I have them write a, you know, a public order resentencing directive in the first season which just changes all of the laws about, you know, arrests and they're building factory prisons. And sending them to detention. To detention centers that are – Factory prisons. That's right. Where they're working. Yeah. Yeah, where they're working. And all those different things. I mean, they're – they're on a big power grab. And the other – the other really – the other liberating thing about what I'm doing, I suppose, the other – the other thing that makes it easy – there's a lot of things that are hard about it. What makes it easy is not just that I don't have to tell the truth or have to be beholden to any specific revolution. But I also – I don't really have anybody espousing their ideology of what they want the galaxy to look like when the fight is over. Oh, wow. I don't have anybody saying, when we're done, this is what it's going to look like. And I thought in the beginning when it came on the show that that was going to really be a very big thing for me. I think I – probably somewhere in this office I have, you know, a couple weeks of work on that trying to figure out how I was going to try to deal with that. And I gradually realized that. I just didn't really need to do that. And I thought, how long can I get away with that? And then it turned out to be – I don't miss it at all. People don't miss that. It's – Man, you just blew my mind because I hadn't thought of it that way, Tony. But you're right. In the entirety of that five-year period and with Rogue One, I don't think I ever remember – there's no moment like there is like with Padme saying, so this is how liberty dies. No, no one's saying when this is all over, we're really going to have collective bargaining. Right. That's right. That's because Tony's a really good writer. No, because I really – That's why you don't hear that line. I'm an old, sneaky writer. But it's surprising to me that that – I mean, I have some – I mean, I tiptoe around it. I have a thing very early on where Forrest Whitaker's character, because he's a real outlier, you know, partisan, uncontrollable. And he has a long speech with – He's a real rebel. He's a real revolutionary. Yeah. And he says, man, what are you? Are you – and he names like seven different groups. And some of the names I just made up for the moment, you know, human cultists and the Maya Pay Brigade and different things I've put in there. Which who are you? But I never – I never pin them down to what it is they want. That fight is going to come later on. I do want to suggest that that fight is going to come in coalition, and I do spend a lot of energy as in every revolution. And every – Every revolution. revolution that Mike's dealing with, I mean. fighting fighting authority is just one third of the battle right now one third is trying to get food the other third is trying to get food and the other third is fighting with the people you're working with mike how how what when you look at those real revolutions the thing that tony's talking about sort of that governing philosophy the isms that are associated with it what what part does that play in being able to coalesce these kind of revolutionary groups into something that is more successful or less successful how much of it is ideology and and what the world should look like well i think in the beginning tony gets it right because it usually is opposition to a single shared enemy some kind of opponent that you all share a common you hostility towards created or otherwise like created or imagined okay yeah and it's usually and the way i describe it is like they're basically whatever you want whatever it happens to be on the ideological spectrum there's a there's an obstacle to getting what you want and so a lot of people like the king is the obstacle to me i'm a liberal noble i just want to reform things and then like over here you have the communist the king is a is an obstacle to me because i want full you know i want full luxury communism and we got to get rid of the king so that makes these two sides at least in that part of the revolution allies of course because everybody's sharing the same obstacle and so that brings this huge disparate group together and they all charge at that one obstacle together and they blow it up and then yes they are left with what to do next and in the revolutions podcast you know this this started this pattern showed up very very early on which is any revolutionary group that wins immediately breaks into at least two factions and they start fighting each other is that the most fraught stage mike that you that you see in in these types of movements that well i mean every every stage is fraught but oh yeah dude a power vacuum is nobody likes because because yeah because you're just making it up as you go right we declared a provisional government on whose authority we don't know uh but we just declared it and hopefully people will believe it because all this stuff just exists in our mind you know like sovereignty and accepting like who has power and who doesn't these are all just like emotional states and psychological states getting back to that and so but but when when they achieve power they're they're going to wind up fighting with each other because even though they shared an obstacle they did not share an ultimate goal and so this is so i call this the entropy of victory which is that any time a group achieves victory then they just start to spread apart and it usually breaks down into some kind of binary because then these guys over here roughly say to themselves where are our new obstacles those guys over there and these guys are saying well our obstacle is those guys over there and then they start fighting this group wins and then they split this group wins and then they split and then suddenly you got rope spirit blowing his own jaw off and then frankenstein wakes up and it turns out he's not dead after all yeah he's not dead after all yeah no oh my god napoleon the 19th yeah no and and tony this is this is what's so brilliant about sort of how you construct these in the fictionalized universe and even star wars it's it's a new hope and then it's you know or it's uh rogue one but then it's the empire strikes back and then it's the force away you know this ebb and flow of i don't have to worry about any of that john i just had to do andor i just do an andor right and i and i could not have been more disappointed with what they decided to do with those sequel movies because you know the whole point of the original three movies is like we defeated the empire now we're going to go forward and and let's see what happens next and the idea that there is not drama and conflict and incredibly fascinating things to deal with you know after you've overthrown the empire now you're trying to like restore the old republic and how does that work right right that stuff that stuff that stuff is all over the place is out is is beautiful fodder and now we're left with sort of a franchise that like you end the sixth movie and they're dancing on endor because everything is great and then the first scene of the next movie is like oh we're a resistance again we're fighting who like what is the new i don't know what any of this i thought i thought we beat all these guys mike said that i just want to make sure mike said that i'm saying it's a nobody else i was well done i was i was really yeah thank you i was really bummed out by that because those and and people talk about like you know when i do the show like nothing ends on bastille day right like nothing ends when the czar is overthrown that's the middle of the show or even just still occurring in the first third of the show and then it's everything that happened and they haven't even introduced the new character of napoleon yet yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah these guys show are showing up like very very late in the game and yeah so all of that stuff is as fascinating and as much a part of the revolutionary process as the initial overthrow which is like the first wave of the revolution is usually united it's usually very democratic words like freedom and liberty are just like on everyone's lips and and we see this all the time and then yeah as soon as you get power then it's every every group starts breaking against every other group tony i thought what was so interesting about and or is you know what he's talking the way that you handled you know this idea of of what cassian andor's journey to it what was so interesting is oftentimes in fiction there's sort of this idea of the ordained there's neo or there's skywalker cassian andor is just some guy like he doesn't he's not a revolutionary he has to be like kind of roped into this and his conditions become so extreme that it seems like his behavior really changes how did you resist that kind of ordained trope oh i mean it was well it was baked into the very concept of what i was doing they tried to do several other uh prequel uh shows with the same idea and they you know what's the what's the smart what's the obvious thing to do so they wanted to have a show where where cassian and k2 would go do adventures and stuff so they tried to do that a couple times and uh and and after they did the first one it was very slick uh the script and the the package and everything but it was uh kathy kennedy sent it over to me uh not not not to work on but just as an just for advice and said hey what do you think about this and i go well you know this is very smart and slick and entertaining i go but i don't know what the hell you're going to do after episode five i mean what are you going to do just storm the citadel every week there's nothing to do you'll die on the vine here i mean there's just there's no pro there's no story protein here at all right so what should we do and i said well man if i was going to do this show you you you take this guy back to a roach and take him on the pick him up on the worst day of his life and try to see how how far away from you know in rogue one he's all singing all dancing revolutionary warrior leader i mean he has every skill there is right he's a butterfly so like how far away from that could you take somebody to get there in five years and um that was too radical for them at that i at that moment and um but when they when they came back they came back a year and a half later and go you know that idea doesn't sound so crazy so it was baked in for me i don't see any other way that you would do it i don't see how you'd how you'd get there and um i don't want to make it seem like i've got a chalkboard here and a calculator but like i do want to i do want to pull from the menu of what radicalizes a human being what what are the what are the stations of the cross that make somebody wake up um to political consciousness and then past political consciousness how do you how does somebody wake up to the to the point of um personal sacrifice and and ultimate sacrifice really and so that first season is him you know is me you know i'm kind of i'm kind of working the menu there i mean he's a he's a thief he's a killer nobody wants to see him he's broke he's cynical he'll be a mercenary he'll stay a mercenary he'll go on a party with the money that they stole and everybody that he meets along the way his mother even and every single person has an effect on him i have a trotsky character who i who spins ideology to him you know nemec reads his manifesto he meets people along the way whose whole families were slaughtered people there for revenge he meets all these other influences and then all of that was uh i try to you know pack that musket as tight and then i send him to prison and in the prison the only way he's going to get out of the prison is to lead a revolution because no one else is going to do it and so he he builds a mini revolution in the prison and and by the time he gets out and the success of that um he's fully committed and and that's so i mean i'm trying to show what it takes to get somebody all the way there and if you look at the characters that you know that that mike's dealing with in the show all the time i mean i don't know i mean some of these people are there in the prison and they're instantly i mean if you're in the haitian revolution and you're you know you're a slave it's pretty easy to figure out where you want to get sure i would think but it is interesting how often prison seems to play a role in either the hardening of these revolutionaries or of the awakening of them or of in the you know setting that feeling of like and now this will be look at hitler who who more than hitler right if he didn't have time to write that fucking book what would happen i mean holy cow i mean right really but it is those little moments and again this is one of the brilliant things and i'll ask tony about this because then and then they go to mike but the brilliant thing about i think the rogue universe and the andor universe is you take this one moment that is the climax of the very first star wars movie which is this one in a million trust the force shot of a you know uh a bomb into an air duct that goes in and you build out this entire world of how did they make that shot how did they get it turns out the guy who designed it was doing it under direct he had placed that in there but they had to get that plan there's there's this whole universe in this one moment and it's so brilliant that you you you played that out and created this entire world of it's like mike said you go tablespoon by tablespoon you don't ever look at it as a big thing you just go step by step you can't can't look at it as it it's like he goes into a brothel to look for his sister you could say oh if he doesn't go in the brothel look for his sister you don't blow up the death star of course you could everything that way but it is it is stitch by stitch and what feels good and what's behaviorally right and what's politically interesting and what will people really believe and i don't know yeah mike do you when you look at the actual history i think it's it's easy for us when we look at fictionalized representations to think of the inevitability of revolutions or the inevitability of the victors are you surprised by the lack of inevitability and and the way that they fall apart and uh and and all the ups and downs that occur that that these moments where we look at it as oh sure the assassination of an archduke how could that not lead to to revolution right is is that is that what's surprising to you as you delve into these well i mean surprised isn't the right word because i mean i got into revolutions after you know like doing the entire history of the roman empire which is again you know the history of the like those aren't necessarily revolutions but you can definitely see how nothing is inevitable and there's there are times in history where it just feels like every single thing is locking into place to make a revolution happen and the revolution is going to explode and then just like nothing happens it fizzles out there there's you know if you look at what was going on between like 1955 and 1968 in the united states like there's every reason to believe there was going to be a 20s and 30s i look at the anarchy the anarchists of the 20s the absolute economic collapse of of the late 20s in the early 30s it's almost stunning and there's not a revolution yeah and then there are times like in french history there was there was damn near a revolution in france in in the early 1820s that was basically called on account of rain like everybody started getting like in paris like everybody starts getting together and it just rained so hard that day like literally that people were not as able to get together and they were not as able to get together and they storm out into the streets whereas in february of 1917 the opposite happened like i said when the women went out it just so happened to be like a very balmy spring day after a long winter and so like everybody's like yeah let's go out into the streets let's let's let's do a thing and then that becomes the revolution and then there are other times where nobody expects a revolution to break out nobody thinks anything is going to happen and then the next thing you know things start running away from it like i wrote this biography of um lafayette and there's there's a really fun moment where they're they're having all these battles with king charles in early 1830 like he's annulled elections he's rewriting election laws he's canceling free press and they're like we're gonna we're gonna have these battles with him but but like we're gonna come back like for the fall session and do all this stuff and there's a note from lafayette saying like i'm gonna leave paris and i'm gonna go back home to lagrange because like nothing's gonna happen over the summer and then like literally 36 hours later people are manning the barricades in paris and charles is on his way to being overthrown and like lafayette has to immediately turn around and come back to paris because the revolution he did not think was going to happen suddenly broke out you know contrary to anybody's expectations so that stuff is the stuff of history and nothing is ever inevitable like nothing is written and you might think it is but it is not and then things will things will happen that will surprise you and things that you absolutely are dead certain will happen uh just do not happen at all you you know this company is mint mobile i don't want to give you keep you in suspense in any of the things they got themselves maybe the ad uh spokesman of the century ryan reynolds but apparently they need a little extra push and they're bringing in i guess you know it's like anything you gotta you gotta sub in one guy can't do all of it so you you bring in a couple of scrubs see if they can push a few more over the finish line and that's what this is that's me for for for mint mobile but the pitch basically essentially stays the same you got overpriced phone bills and you can lose them by switching to mint mobile you know the fucking thing's 15 bucks a month what are you looking for better what are you thinking you're going to grab one for nine it's 15 bucks a month high speed data unlimited talk and text largest 5g network in the nation to get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mint mobile.com slash tws that's mint mobile.com slash tws cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com slash tws that's it there's no catch upfront payments of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 months plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability speed and coverage varies see mint mobile.com i really hope they speed that up so tony creates these uh incredibly uh just layered plays of behavior and things that that and how people become these revolutionaries and what they have to do to do it and you're looking at you know the different ingredients that went into these things but we all live in the present and it's really difficult i have a hard time doing this not looking at the present and gathering up those ingredients that you guys put into that tony you put into this you know brilliant show about a revolutionary and mike you put into deconstructing and not look at the ingredients in this moment and think boy we we are in a tinderbox there's there's not an ingredient john john yeah we're in it we're in a tinderbox well that's like a history oh yeah don't don't don't even worry don't even worry about that man oh yeah people are people are flicking matches at a tinderbox right now now whether or not it's going to go off nobody knows but dude yeah we're dude we're there we've been there for years where has all the karma gone i mean that's what i want to know it's really bad no i mean i think uh i wondered if this question was going to come up because it is that's what i've been leading up to for god's sake the inner the inner uh sort of uh muffled uh response that we just had the sort of stunned past six months is just it would be i'd be really interesting to hear mike's podcast in 75 years about this moment what it would be like how he would cover you know for like six months it's just like nothing happened i mean people just so uh yeah it's this it's it is getting packed man it's packed we're current we're currently in about i don't know episode 13 or 14 of a treatment of you know the revolutionary upheavals of the you know middle 21st century it may be yeah like we would be if so if so basically like my point is that if something broke out tomorrow it would be the easiest thing in the world to explain the big major structural forces and like individual incidents that brought us to this point it would be the easiest thing in the world to explain the big major structural forces and like individual incidents that brought us to this point it would be very easy to tell that story and it's not hard to predict what the i mean if i was people talk about the predictive quality of the show all the show is like and and we're even i mean we were you know i've been ducking those questions for four months while we've been out selling i'm a little bit more i'm a little bit more uh freed up at this point but i mean the the you know as the show started to click out all these things started to happen we have gorman and the and the mineral rights and that happens right when greenland happens and we have the immigration issues we have ice and we have the the the we have the senator from iran arrested from the senate at the same time that padilla is being arrested from the right and we're like oh my god well you know all right so if we're so predictive it's really you know it's not hard to predict a couple things that are going to definitely happen i mean there i shocked that there has not been an immigration kent state moment at this point i mean that just seems inevitable something sure that is absolutely going to happen at an ice yes and an whether it's an accident or whether it's uh whether it's it's fully uh motivated that's going to happen that's going to trigger uh uh you know martial law or an attempt a reaction right totally and we always forget and you think about kent state and you think oh that's the moment that the revolution but in truth public opinion and we had talked about this uh previously i think with the another guest the public opinion after kent state was fuck those students yeah and there was There were Nixon played that that there were the hard hat riots in New York where- Yeah, but I think it hardened each side. It hardened each side. Yes, I would agree with that. I mean, I was- What you would think is it would have lit a fire under a popular uprising in a way that didn't occur because of the view that law and order was under attack and that Kent State represented chaos, that the society led in there. And that's, you know, when I look at MacArthur Park, you see a tank and a bunch of guys rolling through there. When I look at what's happening to press freedom and those other things, it's hard to contextualize it in the pantheon of moments that lead to revolution. Like, Mike, is the bar to revolution in a society like ours higher than it was in the 1800s where society is maybe not as industrialized, not as developed? Was it easier to inflame revolution then? I don't know if it was easier or less, easier or harder by comparison. The United States of America right now does not seem particularly primed for a giant revolution, honestly. Like, I think the thing that we are dealing with right now is not like, are we on the verge of revolutionary upheaval? I don't see that. Are we on the verge of civil conflict? Yes. Are we on the verge of a regime actually succeeding at planting itself in an authoritarian way and just getting away with that? Yeah, that's absolutely the thing that I'm most afraid of because I don't see the kind of large-scale aggressive action that would make me think that a revolution is on the way. I certainly do not see the disaffected elites being willing to do anything outside of their comfort zone. Which is something that I think is essential for any revolutionary project. And that's, you know, Tony nailed this one. You know, with the monmothmas of the world. Like, what are the monmothmas of the world doing right now? They're certainly not engaged in revolutionary upheaval. We just had a guy get elected, or he's about to be elected as mayor of New York and everybody's just like wanting to turn on him and like talk about his SAT scores because one of the great obsessions going, speaking of Kent State, like one of the great obsessions of American- And which box he checked on his Columbia. One of the great obsessions of American, is like elite college admissions. Like, it's so crazy how obsessed people are with like elite college behavior. Right. Talk about that. That's interesting. Tony, talk about monmothma because what a crucial figure. Revolutions were sort of steeped in this mythology that revolutions are from the ground up, but it really isn't that way without the elites. I was also really fascinated. She started, I mean, I was also really fascinated with the, you know, the early Christians that started, you know, bringing down the Roman empire who began to be elites, who began to believe in Christianity and became undermining the power structure. I thought the Bader-Meinhof group was always really interesting. I thought Red Brigade and wealth. And the idea of also money. I really wanted to get very initially, revolutions really need money. I have a question for Mike though. I'm really curious what you just said before. Do you think, I see, I'm curious whether, it seems to me there's two authoritarian, efforts going on simultaneously. It seems to me that the, you have the one that you know about, the, you know, with the Emperor Palpatine in the White House, but it seems to me that there's a tech Reich that's simultaneously on a parallel track. Jesus Christ. That's like, that's using him as a host organism and using that clown car of all these other idiots and just like, just sort of quietly cooking along, getting everything they want. And like, I don't know whether I can think of another comp on his list of revolutions where you have, you know, a shadow authority that's really actually more frightening, probably than the idiots that are, I still adhere to the clown car, idiot, stumble bum. I don't think they're in charge of anything other than staying out of jail. So, but the other thing is really terrifying. This tech Reich, that's just, they have wide open field now. Is there a comp in history where there's been two? I don't know. Man, that's a, that's a really good question, but I completely, I mean, Peter Thiel is more frightening than anybody else that's out there. Did you see his interview with Ross Stoddard of the times where he said, he asked him, should humanity survive? And there's this really long, they're talking about how Greta Thunberg might be the antichrist and there's all these other things. And they say, should humanity survive? And there's kind of a heavy silence. And in that moment, you're just like, oh my God, this is the guy. We just gave his company all of our data. What? This is the guy who eats Bond villains, man. He is like, yeah, he is because, and that's, and that's the, so that's the social and economic world that we all live in. Right. We were all attached to our phones. We're all attached to the internet. Like everything runs through them. And yeah, Silicon Valley, there's a wing of Silicon Valley that is developing and has developed a deeply anti-democratic and deeply anti-human ideology that they just want to kind of like float above it all. And they do not care what happens to them. They don't care what happens to the rest of us. Transhumanism, let's go to Mars. Yeah, man. So maybe they want a revolution. Maybe it's in their best interest that in two years there is a revolution, you know? Maybe it is in their interest. Right. Which goes back to kind of our original talk about cynicism. Who's conducting? You know? Yeah. Okay. I'll write my next season then. Yeah. The next season is that the Kent State happens on the eve of the elections and he cancels the elections and he declares martial law and who's really happy is, you know, the guy who owns Palantir, you know? Mike, do you find in these moments of revolution, what do changes in either technology or, you know, the way that we go from agrarian societies to, you know, industrialized societies, we go from lack of communication to a printing press. What do these kinds of really transformational moments in the way that we live, does that sow a certain instability? And create more opportunity for these revolutions? More opportunity for people to weaponize these new technologies or these new industrials? What have you seen with that? Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, because it can be big stuff like, I mean, industrialization is transferring like agrarian and old feudal societies into something new and that creates different incentives. It creates different elites, right? That's one of the big ones. It creates a whole new set of elites who are making money off something that they used to not be able to make money off of. And narrows the, and narrows it. Yep. And then you have people living in completely different environments than their parents were. And usually the first run of things is going to be very exploitive towards like, you know, the peasants who are coming into the factories. Like is it better a little bit? Yeah. You make a little bit more money, but like it's awful. It's brutal. It's exploitive. And so those things, yeah, those, that churns discontentment and that churns chaos inside of the society. That's the big stuff. Like, you know, changes in communications technology. Right. The way, the way that we spread ideas, the way that we share ideas, like if you don't have a printing press and then you do have a printing press, the big thing about this is when you get that first wave of the printing press, like things are just hitting the market. Things are just being said and thrown out there and ideas that you've never been able to confront or think about before are suddenly in front of your face. The French revolution with, you know, basically invents daily journalism, right? That didn't really exist before the French revolution. The French revolution, which, you know, people are just trying to chronicle events in real time and spread, you know, pamphlets and newsletters, but because there was something new happening like every single day, there was always something to comment on and nobody had ever dealt with that kind of flood of paper before. Right. And you can't censor that. You can't control that as the regime. And so what we find in basically all states and really if you, if you start getting down to like, what are the, like the, the, the basic causes of revolution and a lot of it is a state's ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And if the state can adapt to the changing circumstances, if it can co-opt these new elites, if it can maybe ameliorate a little bit the suffering of these people, if it can make this change, if, okay, there, there's a, there's a, like in Britain, there's a huge middle class that isn't allowed the vote and they're starting to get really restless. So let's give them the vote. And those changes are the things that really head off like revolution. Or a really big mistake or a really big mistake. Yeah. I mean, that's right. There are some really big mistakes. Elaborate on that, Tony. Right. Well, I mean, Mike can give the historical comps, but like, you know, a breakout virus in February that we didn't prepare for because we have, you know, Captain Crunch is the head of the FDA. Right. Something could light the box. And everybody dies. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, good luck then. You'll have a revolution. Right. There are comps. I'm trying to think what, I mean, there's so, all these are filled with so many mistakes. All these people, I mean, I mean, the czars and I mean, they all just, I mean, but a big mistake. World War I was a mistake for Russia, right? Yeah. Oh, sure it was. I mean, if they didn't do that, if Russia stayed out, they would have been cool. Everything would have been fine. And this is like the big takeaway from revolutions that people know is my great idiot theory of revolution. Yes. Which is right. Which is not the great man theory, but like- Yes. The great idiot. It does take a certain kind of moron to like actually blow it so bad that you get, oh, overthrown, these are some of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met in my life. Well, watching when you listen to your podcast on Rome, watching in slow motion, the Romans destroying this 100 year period of more egalitarian, more democratic, more to watch them destroy it by just taking away farmland. And you're just you're watching it in slow motion going, why would you do that? Why are you doing this? And I mean, Charles, the first who was the first sort of any he wound up being the sort of prototype for all my future leaders that get overthrown. This is during like the Cromwell era in England. Like nobody wanted to chop his head off. Like nobody wanted to kill him. They just wanted some reform. All they wanted was like, we just want Parliament to control the budget and maybe like have a veto over war and peace. And he's just like, well, yeah, like I can't do that. So like they had to chop his head off in the end. Like nobody wanted that. He takes the cake. He really does. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he does. And then and then when I and then it was cool because that was the very first season. And then I see that behavior like over and over and over again, like the revolution of 1830. Which is, you know, that's another Charles like don't have King Charles's like one of the one of the one of the last one of the last one of the rest of one of the lessons of revolutions was don't have Charles. But like there was no reason for him to get overthrown. He drops these four ordinances like in the middle of the night, basically like nullifying the elections and canceling free speech. And really what gets Paris going in 1830 is like the printers have all just been put out of a job and they're the ones who are the most pissed off and the ones who are going into the streets. The British government that is running the North American colonies like after the seven years war just fumbled away those colonies. Like there is no reason for them to have been so obtuse politically that they wind up losing control of the eastern seaboard of North America. How do you not know? We don't love tea. We love tea. Like how do you know? Why would you make it more expensive? Yeah, like these are mistakes that are being made. And so you don't get revolutions. Usually against some hyper competent tyrannical government. It's not just the fact of that there are dictatorship or there's a lot of aggression that's going on. It's because that you need that structure and also somebody who's running it really badly. So much so that the elites inside of that, because as long as the elites are together, like there's not going to be a revolution. But if you get somebody who's really doing a bad job, then other elites are going to be like, we are really frustrated with you and we would like you to go now, please. And it is in some ways it is like watching. A movie, Tony, in that or even a horror movie where you're just like, don't go in the house. Like, yes, don't drop those ordinances. Don't please don't consolidate the farmland. Like you're just shouting at these dudes not to do that. But I wonder in a parallel to now, isn't there anybody within the government going? Don't militarize our cities. Don't just because you need vindication over. Those you don't think voted for you. Don't this revenge fantasy is going to that's how I feel right now. Like we're watching this in slow motion. I, uh, I, I do not know how I, as sophisticated as my, as I may appear and as, and as educated or, or not, or, um, I still, you'd be shocked at how baffled I am by, I still do not understand. People who do things that they know are wrong when the cost is not like your children's hand or something or, or, or your, I don't understand. I don't understand the lack of, and collective and not, it's not collective. Now it's like, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's just, it's stadiums full of people doing what they know is wrong and just doing it and going along and nobody's standing up. And I'm just fascinated by that. I don't know. I don't know how to package that. I don't know if that's, it's hard to see an historical comp for that. Cause I've never seen anything in any other show. That's like, that's on that scale, but there's an entire city now. All of our, I mean, so many people in America are doing things that they actually know are wrong. They know it. And yet Mike, does that, does that stem from, as you watch their history, as long as they're doing it to the right people, as long as the bad actions are being exercised. On the so-called deserving enemies of the state. Yep. Is that how this tends to propagate? I hope that's the answer. I mean, I mean, dude, it sure, it sure, it sure seems like it because, you know, like I'm, I'm not too far off because I have studied all of this history. And yet, you know, I, I've come into the last like 10, 15 years of politics and, you know, like I, you know, I cut my teeth during the Bush years and during the, the build, the like selling of the Iraq war and like watching people just like. And debathifying a country. Oh, that turns into an insurgency. Let's just haul off, let's just haul off, invade and occupy an entire country and let's just do it. And like, this is getting like 90% approval. Like I, yeah, people will buy into those things and they will go along with them. And I think that like, you know, to be like, not, not to be a downer, but like if he had never, if Trump had never gotten into the tariff business and really started poking at like the economic parts of the empire, if he had stuck strictly, which I think he's doing now, if he'd stuck strictly to just like. Let's just like terrorize, terrorize and drive out all of the, all of people who are Hispanic or people who are Muslim and just target them. America was going along with that. American elites were going along with that. The American public was going along with that and it would have worked pretty seamlessly. And then if they had, if they were not doing, if they, if they slow rolled this a little bit more, if they had waited before they started going after the ice cream vendor, who's been there for 30 years and all these other like beloved parts of the community. I think the United States of America goes along with it. And like. In total. Yeah. And it has broad approval. I've always said they didn't, they didn't vote for foreign wars. They voted for civil war. I mean, in many respects, that's what they're after. And to, to, and, or, you know, we can, we can kind of tie these things together. Like Palpatine is being a great idiot. Like when he gets going on the death star, the death star is stupid. Like the death star does not need to be there. I think that the empire. As such could have insidiously moved from system to system a little bit here, a little bit there, built it up. The next thing, you know, like you're paying taxes to the empire, you're paying taxes to the empire, but he gets going on this like huge dramatic fantasy of like having a big orbit space that like blows up planets. Right. And that's what leads to like the Gorman massacre. And one of those little bits of point, like at the cannon along the way is that the Gorman massacre, like, like triggers these systems to go into revolt and it creates a dramatic moment that did not. That did not need to happen. And I was skeptical, I think, early on of how quickly the empire was supposed to take place between like the prequel movies and, and the original trilogy, because I was like, that's such a short amount of time. Like it's only like 19 years, like it felt in the first movie, like they'd been around forever and now having watched and, or at the same time that I'm watching what's going on in the United States, I'm like, oh, 19 years now that tracks. That's, yeah, that's, it's actually two decades is a wildly long time. Yeah, that's actually kind of a long time. Yeah, that's a, that's a bit of a long time. And that's. That's the weird thing about history. When you deconstruct it, if you look at it on the overall, you think, oh, it's the, but if you take core samples, there's really only the only core samples that you'll get is like seven to eight years of peace and stability in a moment. Like if the, the moment you widen out the time horizon, you see that these things happen really quickly and really violently. And I want to end it with, you know, we talked about kind of deconstructing revolution. Reconstructing them for art. You've done that now, Mike, with the Martian revolution. And I thought what was so brilliant about that is it's fiction, but it's almost more predictive now that your, your fiction predicts the time we're living in now in a really prescient way. And I wanted you to talk about that a little bit, just. And you too, Tony of, are you surprised at the works that you've both created out of examining behavior and out of examining the way that people might be turned into something that's different from who they were, the journey that their characters might be taking is actually more predictive of the moment we're living in than the news. Well, yeah. And when I was writing, so I wrote the Martian revolution, it's 29 episodes long. And I started it back in October and then was coming out with early episodes of stuff that I'd plotted out kind of for years, like things that I wanted to happen, mostly because I wanted to like critique, as you said, like the tech oligarch part of society that I'm really scared of. And so there's like, there's a monopoly corporation and there's an idiot that's running it that's doing all these things, but there, there was meant to be inside of this. Like one of the things those guys do is they just come in like, you know, like a private equity style and they just buy something and then they just fire a bunch of people. Right. And so that's a part. Part of what's going on on Mars is like mass indiscriminate firings that they don't know, like who does what, how, why, how or why they do it. And that, and then it's like a doge. Yeah. And then, and then, I mean, literally like three weeks later, they're starting up doge and I'm like, I do not like this at all. And then there was also meant to be like, and again, I started this project, like I did not look, I did not think Trump was going to win that election. I had, I guess, one last shred of naive hope that we wouldn't do this. And so once all those people get fired on Mars, there's, a mass deportation. business to all of this where they are coming around and they are rounding up these people because if you don't have a job on mars you got to get off of mars and so like mass deportations are a part of it and then several weeks after i dropped those episodes suddenly we're doing you know mass deportations in america so i did not enjoy controlling the lathe of heaven i don't know like how tony felt about it like i certainly i certainly started writing tony i was i'm literally watching uh andor's mining resources underneath gorman the the materials that they need to fuel uh the death star as they're signing the mineral agreement in uh ukraine it's happening as i'm watching it i mean you're asking how it i mean mostly it makes me my overwhelming feeling over the past three months and going out and sell the show is you're asking how it i mean mostly it makes me my overwhelming feeling over the past three months and going out and sell the show is really it's it's it's sadness i mean it's sad there's a really there's a tolkien um had a whole thing about uh he didn't like allegory he didn't like people making comps to his work to world but he but he was really into applicability he wanted it to be applicable to your life so i i'm not exactly sure how wide that that he takes that term but to me it's been shocking to go around the world we went around the world selling the show and every place we went um because i really didn't want to particularly in the beginning i didn't want to have the show get ghettoized by being left or right or political or whatever i was really we're really surfing through but every journalist every interview that we did everywhere we went people were finding ways to take things the same incident and make it applicable for them oh this is gaza this is ukraine this is northern ireland this is this this is me man this is me this is us and i'm not um that's i i it's very sad i do worry as i said before i do worry that um that we're into a different we're into a different uh situation with tech i wonder i wonder if like if if the if our fallacy is that we've been going along going oh here's all these revolutions and we know everything about a revolution and mike's done all these shows about it and tony's written all this stuff and it's all it's all codified and you just pick one from column a from column b i wonder if if if there isn't another page in the book that we haven't seen and that's the book that's the page that we're on now and that that's the one that worries me the most of all then the tech side of it the ai side of it and the the lack of um any kind of accountability to that is that's what that that's what would keep me up at night more than anything i think you're absolutely right and i think you know like we talked about earlier these new communications and these new technologies are wildly disruptive and i think if i were going to take a look at the technology and i think if i were going to take a look at the technology uh maybe a hopeful sign of it it's that to me and and maybe to you guys i don't know how you interact with it it is novel and it is alien and i don't and i find it discomforting in a way that surprises me but my hope is that for my kids and maybe even for their kids their adaptation to it that it will be native and it will be less destructive that they're going to be able to their brains that the human uh instinct will be you know when we talk about the printing press comes in and everybody thinks and that ushered in the enlightenment but what they forget is it actually ushered in 100 years of like fucking killing witches like it it just it it ramped up people into all kinds of prejudices but the hope is is that people's brains yeah dude dude mike and tony just he he huge size like is that how we're gonna end this just the other two of us being like come on man okay you know mike and i are gonna start we have to go we have some prepping to do we have to go back to our prep yeah yeah i gotta yeah i gotta i gotta work on my bunker i gotta go to the bunker i'm talking about our ability to evolve come on yeah look i will i will say one thing though because one of the things i mean we didn't touch on this but like and or dropped into this moment that is talking about resistance to the creeping authoritarian regime yes that text is the one thing that is the one thing that is the one thing that is the question that we need to be asking ourselves right now is is is this a political moment is this a political moment right the fact that that was given to people right now in this moment like however few or many actually read it and hear people are processing what is happening right now right it's through and or like i go to protests and i see signs that say i have friends everywhere like that stuff is out there in it's out there and you do see it and i got friends everywhere yeah well i mean i'll i'll i'll go with you and mike your podcast become part of my kids brains ability to evolve to this moment in a more resilient way i truly mean that i'm not trying to like i hope so fucking kiss your ass here but like yeah sure i truly believe that the work that you're doing tony and the work that you're doing mike goes into their brains and it does change the way that they interact with tech in this moment well and it's and it's and it's a positive i'm glad i was young when i was young that's that's a good point yeah the 90s the 90s the 90s were good it was it was a good time the 90s were good uh but remember too and and this is the thing we forget we thought the world was spinning out of control no i know that man i i grew up every good person this country produced got fucking shot in the head no i know you know look we we have to remain that that's strong and i so appreciate you guys uh doing the work that you do it's so engrossing and such a pleasure to to watch and fee and it's so just thorough and all-encompassing and real and not contrived and i just appreciate you both uh really truly tremendously and and thank you both for adding good things into this sickly soup um but uh we're we're honored to have tony gilroy uh who obviously created and or and so many other wonderful things mike duck and best selling author creator history of rome revolutions podcast uh guys thank you so much uh for for spending the time i really appreciate it a pleasure thanks very much yeah damn i i love those guys oh good it's what it's wild to to to see how intentional they are about uh everything that they layer into their work how carefully tablespoon by tablespoon as they said yeah i am i think it might even be teaspoon by teaspoon i think it might even be small i think a tablespoon is is almost a cudgel a little heavy-handed yeah it's a little heavy it's a little heavy-handed but how about it i don't even know if this was on the air but like at the end they were both like exchanging numbers you set them up john i set them you're a matchmaker give yourself a little credit me next yeah but but so good and and so interesting and so interesting you know i think for tony like i think he's so used to like selling and or as yes the character to like so to get an opportunity to like hang with with mike talk about it as an allegory yes and to talk about it through history it seemed to like he seemed pleased yeah he did yeah i mean that was so the show obviously resonated so much with you know everyone wants to kind of apply it to the moment that you're in but just hearing them zoom out too and like like what a student of history they both are it was so satisfying i guess just to hear them sort of like build that narrative layer it on top of all of these like very real things that have happened that's right and to hear from them exactly why their work seems predictive to us is because it's not new because there are these patterns but i also love how how precise they are like when you say to him like when you think about their motivations and he's like eh not motivations behavior like they're really i think whenever i talk to people whose work i really admire i'm always struck by the precision in which they operate yeah and that comes through in both of their works so clearly right yeah no fantastic i was so glad to to get a chance to do that i don't know who put them to get probably katie gray her and her putting people together she's a matchmaker britney what do we what do we got for our questions today um john you once compared dick cheney to darth vader yeah what star wars character would stephen miller be oh jesus i don't even know if there's a i i don't know that that universe has conjured up i think it would probably be you know kind of one of those characters that they mentioned but you know like darth sidious like one of those it's like and my teacher taught me taught me the power of a life and death his name was sidious you know it's one of and it would be a sibilant there'd always be that like uh in one of those characters would be yeah i feel like yeah when tony said like uh the characters that are interesting to write you know the nazis that are like the the clock punchers and stuff like stephen miller you're not interesting enough to write i don't think you're too despicable yeah and also too almost too much two-dimensional yeah you can't even see him in inglorious bastards where he's like wait wait we have to wait for the cream for the strudel you know what i mean like you can't even do that like it All right. What else we got? All right. The Democrats launched plans for Project 2029. Do you think they finally figured out how to win copycatting and going on podcasts? Because their 2029 is so fucking idiotic and it's the same idiots that put together all the plans that haven't worked out in the first place. They're not understanding where the energy and the desire rests in this country. They have no idea. They are looking in the wrong place. And their Project 2029 is going to be a rehash of all the consultant driven, careful nonsense that has put them in this. This place of that, that, you know, in a moment when the Republican Congress is passing one of the most devastating bills that we have seen in this country in forever to just put out pictures of Hakeem Jeffries from an angle that makes him look six years old holding a baseball bat. And you're like, it doesn't look like you're going to fight. It looks like you're going to tee ball. And that's where they're all going. So, you know, hopefully this Project 2020. 2029 that they've done is is just a draft on a Google Doc that they can put into edit mode and have people go in there and and make some real changes and hopefully understand the desperation of the moment that people are feeling because right now. Do you think anyone's getting it right? Yeah, I think I think there are a lot of young people who's much more populist campaigns. I mean, obviously, Donnie. Is getting all the attention in New York and for very good reasons, but there's a lot of young candidates that are it's not even about the savvy in which they use social media or the way that they've gotten attention. It's the burning, I think, authenticity of how they feel about the inequities and upside down nature of the society that we're building. Like we talked about. In the podcast, you know, when you start consolidating and taking people's farmland and just creating more and more leads with larger and larger farmland, that's a recipe for stupidity. And so seeing the bottom up energy of some of these candidates, I think they're getting it right there, not being, I think, in any way nurtured or helped by the party elites. In fact, I think they're being resisted. And I think it's stupidity. Yeah. And suicidal on the part of the party elites. I think they're making a huge mistake. It's yeah, it's both shocking and unsurprising to watch the Democrats respond to this. Right. I mean, they're they're trying to discredit it. Yeah. But there's such a shocking disparity between the authenticity, like you're juxtaposing, let's say, Mom, Donnie speaking to camera, talking with, you know, so much, like, expertise and feeling about things that affect the society. Yeah. Yeah. And then you're juxtaposing that with the fact that you're talking about a city like a plate of food. How much does this cost? And juxtapose that with a single picture that was, you know, canned and I don't know. It's not produced. There's just a stark difference between even the message and how it's being said, not just the capturing on social media even. Totally. Well, it's like anything else. The Project 29 they're doing and the party elites smack of what is so inauthentic about like taglines on movies. Like, you know, and people feel it. It's not of a reality. It's of a process that is put into place by people who don't experience reality to try and describe what they think will be a winning message as opposed to taking in the reality of the emotions and channeling those into positive, you know, change for people. And I think you're exactly right, Lauren, about the space. You're absolutely right, Lauren, about the specificity of Mamdani. It's not just platitudes about affordability. It's really deconstructing how that inaffordability has been created and how we might battle back. Yeah, it just shows people how their city works more. I think there's a point to that. Yeah, policies he understands and believes in. Who would have thought that would be a winning recipe? As they say. So you're saying the strategy is authenticity. I like it. I like the cut of your jib. Very, very nice program. Thank you guys, as always, for putting together just a banger. I really love talking to those guys. Lead producer, Lauren Walker. Producer, Brittany Mamedovic. Video editor and engineer, Rob Vitolo. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer, Jillian Speer. Executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. And we will see you guys next week. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central Podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. Paramount Podcasts is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. The Center for Autism and Related Disorders is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. Paramount Podcasts