Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resistance with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 5 We've all been there.

Speaker 6 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 2 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 7 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 3 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in? So your kids are always protected online.

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 3 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 4 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 10 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 13 So, that means a half day.

Speaker 10 Yeah? Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Speaker 1 Upfront payment of $45 for three months plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under 35 gigabytes at networks busy. Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 1 See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 17 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 4 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 21 Season 0 of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 20 Head over to globalgamingleague.com.

Speaker 23 Com, com.

Speaker 24 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 24 Anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Speaker 24 Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 24 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabay has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Speaker 24 Sofas started just $699 and right now, get early access to Black Friday savings, up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Speaker 12 Add a little

Speaker 24 to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 11 Season three of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions is here.

Speaker 11 Hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are going deeper than ever with bold new conversations, fresh guests, and unfiltered takes on queer sex and cruising.

Speaker 11 This season, they're also looking out for the community, covering smart cruising in a chaotic world, including information on prep.

Speaker 11 And yes, their call-in segment is getting even hotter, and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air. No pressure.

Speaker 11 Tune into Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences, with new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 Coolzone Media.

Speaker 25 Hey, Robert!

Speaker 25 Hey, Sophistophiles!

Speaker 25 Softer Damerung, the ring of the softer.

Speaker 25 I was trying to do like the ring of the nibbleen, but Sophie, I don't actually know how to make that work. Also, not really a joke.
Just me putting your name into things. How are you doing?

Speaker 12 Are you good? I was doing well.

Speaker 25 Okay, that's good.

Speaker 12 I was doing well. Anyways, we're back with another Q ⁇ A episode.
Thank you to those who asked questions on the Instagram. Robert, can you start the folks out with a nice Kratom lemonade recipe?

Speaker 12 People want to know.

Speaker 25 I don't have a nice Kratom lemonade recipe. I have been doing Kratom so long that I don't give a shit.
I just pour it in water. I pour it in soda.
I mix it. I don't give a fuck.
Don't do that.

Speaker 25 It's gross.

Speaker 12 Literally any liquid substance at the airport.

Speaker 25 I'll say this. Here's what I'll say.
I'm going to give you first the responsible advice, and then I'm going to give you the person who uses Kratom advice, right?

Speaker 25 The responsible advice is that kratom is something that can, and that in the vast majority of cases will be used responsibly. It is not easy to become problematically addicted to for most people.

Speaker 25 If you are someone who is inclined to abuse painkillers, it is very easy to develop a dependency on kratom.

Speaker 25 Now, a dependency on kratom is not nearly the monster that a dependency on opiates, especially heroin, is.

Speaker 25 And if you are dependent on opiates or heroin, kratom can allow you to get off of that because if you stop taking heroin, you get horribly dope sick. Kratom stops you from being dope sick.

Speaker 25 And it is, I think, critical to remain widely available, largely as a result of that.

Speaker 25 However, if you start taking kratom and you take it every day, you will need to take more and you will notice potentially, this has never really been my case because I take breaks regularly.

Speaker 25 I've never had any issue going overseas for a couple of weeks and not taking it, you know, taking three three or four days off every week or two. Some people do.

Speaker 25 You should be aware that that's a thing and that it is a capital D drug.

Speaker 25 I would say it's not as safe as marijuana, although if you have a family history of like schizophrenia, it certainly does not seem to have any of the kind of like ability to incite psychotic breaks that that does.

Speaker 25 But it's harder on your body, you know, than particularly like consuming marijuana in a way that doesn't involve smoking.

Speaker 25 But it's not as hard on your body based on all of the evidence that exists is, for example, drinking, particularly like if you're talking about someone who's using kratom daily versus drinking daily, you're almost certainly better off using kratom daily.

Speaker 25 I think that's a generally responsible way to categorize it. The ways that you can do it is you take a powder that is just the ground up flour.
It is very hard to hurt yourself with just the powder.

Speaker 25 You would have to take such a massive quantity of it. However, just like with marijuana, people now make extracts, and those extracts are extremely concentrated.

Speaker 25 It is much easier to harm yourself if you are using an extract or to take much more than you want.

Speaker 25 Now, kratom, an overdose, does not tend to, like if you take far too much kratom, it doesn't do what like heroin does and cause central nervous system depression that'll stop you from breathing, at least not in any of the quantities that you know I've seen documentation on, but it can be really bad and unpleasant.

Speaker 25 So I would say if you're going to do it, do something like get a T. Stay away from the extracts.
Once you start going down that road, it's very easy to develop much more of a dependency on it.

Speaker 25 That's my kratom speech, okay?

Speaker 12 Robert.

Speaker 12 What's one episode you really want to do, but would require a fuckload of research and 4 million episodes to cover?

Speaker 25 The Bush administration and the war on Iraq. And part of why I haven't is just like it's been covered.

Speaker 25 And I do think maybe now, because there's a lot of like Gen Z people who listen who maybe weren't around for that, I'm probably overestimating how familiar people are with the shit around that.

Speaker 25 So maybe. That is the kind of thing to get onto now.
There's just so much to talk about and so many bastards. But it's one of those things I've gone back and forth.

Speaker 25 Should I just do a John Ashcroft episode? Should I just do a Dick Cheney episode? Well, how do you do that episode? And then like

Speaker 25 not cover the rest of it.

Speaker 25 I just have it yet.

Speaker 25 I just haven't yet. Like Nixon is the same way.

Speaker 25 And this was, that's not really an excuse what I just said, because the same is true when talking about like Kissinger's crimes, because those Kissinger episodes were also like partly Nixon episodes because you can't talk about what Kissinger did that was evil without talking about a number of other evil guys.

Speaker 25 So I will and should do that. It's just all episodes like that are always so much work.

Speaker 25 And I've picked by battles usually, every now and then I will, based on like, oh, I think this is really important for a specific reason to get it at this time, right?

Speaker 25 Like a lot of the fascism-focused ones we've done. But usually it's more like, what do I want to read about right now? What am I interested in?

Speaker 25 Because if I don't do it that way, if I don't let the primary thing that drives me week to week be what do I want to read about and write about, then I will burn out.

Speaker 12 Sure.

Speaker 12 What episode are you most proud of from this year?

Speaker 25 Probably the Lawrence of Arabia episodes.

Speaker 12 Really good. I'm deeply proud of James Stout's series, and it could happen here from what we're doing.

Speaker 25 Oh, I thought you were talking about my episodes.

Speaker 12 No, we are, but I'm just saying. Okay.
I'm deeply proud of James's series that he did reporting from the Darien Gap.

Speaker 25 From the Darien Gap. Excellent stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Some of the best work anyone's done for us. I love those apps.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I also, they were the hardest for me, but your episodes on troubled teen wilderness camps were.

Speaker 25 Yeah. Love me some troubled teen wilderness camps.

Speaker 12 How did you get from being a Texas ROTC kid to an active warzone journalist to a gas station drug reviewer or an avid podcaster? Wow.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 7 People say, I love that.

Speaker 25 I guess there's a few ways to talk about that. So like the first thing I'll just note on the warzone stuff, people make a much bigger deal of that.

Speaker 25 Like it comes up because war comes up and particularly some of the wars that I've covered come up. So, I bring it up when I think it's relevant.

Speaker 25 But, like, becoming a war zone journalist, no one paid me. I just bought plane tickets to places and reached out to people who lived in the area on the internet before I landed.
Like, that's all.

Speaker 25 It was not like a, I think people talk about it as if there's some like special forces training you've got to do. And no, I was just like a guy who landed with his girlfriend and a camera.

Speaker 25 And that's how we did most of it until like, you know, outside of like Syria and Myanmar, that's how I did most of my war zone reporting.

Speaker 25 In terms of like how I stopped being a conservative kid from North Texas who wanted to be in the military, I mean, a lot of it was encountering drugs at age 19 and then also starting to make friends with young women my age and slightly older than me, who I realized were much more fun to spend time around than the army.

Speaker 12 Sure.

Speaker 25 And yeah, all of that, you know, kind of

Speaker 25 collaborated in a radicalization process. You know, not even much of a red, just like stopped me from being like a proto-fascist little kid.

Speaker 25 I was mostly just sort of like, in terms of temperament, a libertarian, but I would always vote Democrat because the Republicans were obviously maniacs.

Speaker 25 And I was just like, I don't agree with the Democrats about everything, but I guess I'll vote for them because these other people are crazy.

Speaker 25 And I didn't really think a lot about politics until, I mean, it was Ukraine and following the Syrian refugee trail in 2015 and then Iraq in 2016 and Standing Rock in 2016.

Speaker 25 You know, I'd been at Occupy and New York in 2011 for a little while, but it was really, I mean, Standing Rock was kind of one of the most radicalizing single things I experienced where I started being like, yeah, I'm generally a progressive, I guess, with some libertarian-y tendencies to, you know, and I wouldn't say I was an anarchist at that, but I started like reading more and thinking more and recognizing that like, well, I agree with a lot of this analysis, you know, more.

Speaker 25 Sure. It was still years before I really like identified strongly in that direction.

Speaker 12 Yeah. A couple of people kind of asked me with my upbringing how somebody said, like, basically, how did I become in charge of cool zone media and like leftist podcasts?

Speaker 12 And, you know, the short of it is, I grew up with a Republican dad, a

Speaker 12 moderate Democrat mom, and I grew up in an area where most of the people were your standard libs with

Speaker 12 a lot of Zionism, honestly. And

Speaker 12 I think what radicalized me was my

Speaker 12 insane empathy. I'm like a very, very empathetic person.

Speaker 12 And so

Speaker 12 consuming content and reading history and meeting people, it just, the more that I consumed and the more people I got to meet, the more left I became.

Speaker 12 And I feel like we approach a lot of our content from a place of empathy. And

Speaker 12 that's the kind of things I want to put out in the world. I got deep.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 12 I'm sorry. I got deep.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I just, obviously, the people with the most money in the world are the kind of folks who volunteer at Food Not Bombs and, you know, for their local libraries.

Speaker 25 So I decided I wanted to really cash in on that demo, you know?

Speaker 12 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 25 Those idiots like Ben Shapiro trying to get money from broke oil billionaires. You know, it's the librarians who really have walking around money.
That's how you get rich.

Speaker 12 And speaking of getting rich, it's time for ad prayer. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturis with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturis with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can.

Speaker 2 Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online, we've all been there.

Speaker 6 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 2 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 7 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 3 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in so your kids are always protected online?

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 3 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 17 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 4 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 21 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 22 Head over to GlobalGamingLeague.com.

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Speaker 11 Okay, if you thought season two of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions was spicy, buckle up. Season three is here, and Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are taking things deeper.

Speaker 11 They're tackling trending topics, offering practical advice, and having hilarious and heartfelt conversations with a range of queer celebs and sexperts who know their stuff.

Speaker 11 This season, they're covering it all, from circuit culture to hookup horror stories to locker room shenanigans. No stone is left unturned.
And let's be real, 2025 hasn't exactly been a breeze.

Speaker 11 So, Gabe and Chris are doing the work, keeping the community informed with chats on prep, harm reduction, and how to cruise smart in a wild political climate.

Speaker 25 Oh, and this season, they want to hear your stories.

Speaker 11 Their call-in segment is getting even hotter, and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air. No pressure.
So, if you're ready for round three, just push play.

Speaker 11 Sniffy's Cruising Confession, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

Speaker 26 Want Black Friday prices without the crowds?

Speaker 29 Lowe's gets it.

Speaker 30 Shop their early Black Friday deals and beat the rush.

Speaker 32 $99 is all you need to grab a select seven-foot pre-lit artificial Christmas tree for the holidays.

Speaker 28 And don't sweat what gifts to get, Dad.

Speaker 34 They have up to 40% off select tools and accessories going on now.

Speaker 26 That's how Lowe's celebrates Black Friday early.

Speaker 29 Selection varies by location while supplies last.

Speaker 12 And And we're back. Robert.

Speaker 12 Sylvia. How you doing?

Speaker 12 Oh, you know,

Speaker 25 pretty good. It's cool.

Speaker 12 Do you think that most of the USA's divisive issues and over-manipulated economy would be solved by breaking up into smaller individual countries by region, example, north-south?

Speaker 25 No. Yeah.
No, that sounds like a fucking disaster. Look up the partitioning of India.

Speaker 25 Just look up the partitioning of India and then think about the fact that India was not a massive part of the global economy as opposed to something going the way the partition of India went in terms of the violence, the death, the political upheaval, and also it being the entire center of the world's economy and a significant amount of its like food and medicine.

Speaker 25 And yeah, seems like it would be bad.

Speaker 12 Robert.

Speaker 12 Favorite Warhammer Legion Legions characters?

Speaker 25 Okay, so if we're talking about like, they use the term legion, so I assume they're talking about like a Great Crusade through Horus Heresy era.

Speaker 25 Let's see. I really like the paint scheme and the look of like the Legion era Iron Warriors a lot.

Speaker 25 So I would have to say from aesthetics, them, but I don't really find any of like the fiction that focuses on them particularly interesting.

Speaker 25 And I guess then I'd have to go with like Dark Angels or the Space Wolves. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Someone asked, the same person asked, my current favorite hobby that is just for fun. Well, it happens to be the NBA season, and I play fantasy basketball, and I take it very seriously.

Speaker 25 Warhammer for nerds, as I call it.

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 12 And I take it very seriously, and I love it. I fucking love it.
It's amazing. She does.

Speaker 25 She's unhinged about it. It frightens me.

Speaker 12 It does frighten him. And I got LeBron on my team this year as he gets older.
It's just, I needed him on my team one more time.

Speaker 12 Robert. What's a journalism story that if you didn't have to do your day job that you would love to cover?

Speaker 25 If tomorrow aliens came down and said, we're getting rid of all of the fascism and authoritarianism and giving y'all free energy, fixing the climate, making sure every refugee has food and water, there are no more problems.

Speaker 25 I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to kill Bigfoot.

Speaker 12 This is not a question, but I've seen this a couple times. People want to know if you're going to do any Australian bastards.

Speaker 25 I don't think anyone in Australia has ever done anything bad. Yeah.
Seems like an island that never made a bad person. So not worth looking into, probably.

Speaker 25 Yeah, yeah, I assume we will. It's just like there's a lot of countries we haven't done bastards on, but definitely we'll get an Aussie.
Don't worry, folks.

Speaker 25 Part of why I haven't is the dollop guys do such a good job of hitting Australian weird pieces of shit. So I do think like there's a good place for people who like the kind of thing I do to find that.

Speaker 25 The dollop has a lot of great fucked up Australia stories.

Speaker 12 Any plans to do an Oprah series or episodes?

Speaker 25 Yeah, working on them now.

Speaker 12 Yep, that was asked a couple times. Robert, what's your favorite firearm?

Speaker 25 I don't know, like, they all do such different things.

Speaker 25 Like, in terms of the one I own, I guess the one that I shoot deer with, in terms of like from a, I guess, emotional standpoint, the very first gun I ever bought was a 1917 Lee Enfield Mark III, beautiful old World War I-era bolt-action rifle, just like an actually attractive piece of history.

Speaker 25 I have a Mauser C96 that is enjoyable for the same reason, although not a gun that can safely be used unless you are directly on a range, because sometimes when you attempt to take it off safety, it fires.

Speaker 25 So it is not allowed to be in the same room as bullets unless we are at a gun range, but is a very fun piece of history as well. I really like the gun that I carry.
It's He 365 XL Sig Sauer.

Speaker 25 Great handgun. Super comfortable, super easy to conceal.
I shoot it almost every week and feel very comfortable with it.

Speaker 25 You know, I think I could handle most of its basic functions in the dark with my eyes closed, aside from aiming. I feel good about that.

Speaker 25 In terms of what I enjoy shooting most recreationally, nothing beats an AK-74. I've got an AK-74 with a wooden foregrip and a wire folding stock.
That thing is a hoot.

Speaker 12 The people want to know: how did we start CoolZone Media?

Speaker 12 What's the CoolZone Media story?

Speaker 25 Just kind of us constantly being behind on everything, and then it happened by accident.

Speaker 12 That's not true. I resent that.

Speaker 25 Part of the genesis of it would be that when 2020 was going on, you and I had not really envisioned much beyond, you know, we've got worst year ever, that's doing well.

Speaker 25 We've got bastards, that's doing well.

Speaker 12 We had finished the women's war.

Speaker 25 Yeah, we're going to keep doing probably every year. We'll do one or two, Robert will go travel somewhere or two places and do one or two limited 10 episode series and we'll keep doing bastards.

Speaker 25 And, you know, that'll be it. That'll be good.
Then the riots happened. And

Speaker 25 one of the things that occurred with that is, you know, I covered that very heavily.

Speaker 25 both in terms of articles that I wrote for a variety of publications, in terms of stuff for, you know, what was at the time our regular news show and in Bastards.

Speaker 25 And by the end of the year, I was absolutely burnt out. And to the extent that I became aware of, like, I won't be able to do this the next time something big happens.

Speaker 25 Like, enough of me has been spent.

Speaker 25 And also, it shouldn't be me. Like, I'll go crazy.
I'll develop even worse takes. Like, it's just bad.

Speaker 25 Like, one of the things I have an issue with, and I'm not going to like bring up names or critique people, but I think it's always a mistake when you build a news network centered or like a news platform centered around a guy.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 25 So

Speaker 25 what we were started talking, you know, late in 2020, early 2021, and like, we need to bring in other people and develop them and give them platforms so that whatever the next big things are, we have people who are able to cover them with the dedication they deserve without just burning me or another individual person out by putting, you know, too much on their shoulders at once.

Speaker 25 So that was kind of the thinking that led us there.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And iHeartRadio asked us if we wanted to

Speaker 12 have our own imprint, remember? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 25 Oh, yeah. I mean, and then the company was like, hey, we'll offer you more money if you do this thing that sounds like a nightmare and have a daily news show.

Speaker 12 Hey, you want to make a daily show?

Speaker 25 And we said, I would rather kill myself. And then they said, but you can hire your friends.

Speaker 12 And then we said, well, actually, that sounds a lot better like they were like hey you've been pumping out content multiple times a day for the last year this is like end of 2020 early 2021 they're like hey you've been doing this thing want to do it times a million yeah

Speaker 12 that seems healthy we did but we got to hire a bunch of our friends and that's nice and uh you know a lot of the people we love have salaries and health insurance. So a win is a fucking win.

Speaker 12 It's time for fucking ads. Okay.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturesis with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturesis with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 2 We've all been there.

Speaker 6 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 2 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 7 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 3 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in? So your kids are always protected online.

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 3 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 17 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 15 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 21 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 20 Head over to globalgamingleague.com.

Speaker 23 Com.

Speaker 24 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 24 Anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Speaker 24 Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 24 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Speaker 24 Sofas start at just $699 and right now, get early access to Black Friday savings up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Speaker 12 Add a little

Speaker 24 to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 11 Okay, if you thought season two of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions was spicy, buckle up. Season three is here, and Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are taking things deeper.

Speaker 11 They're tackling trending topics, offering practical advice, and having hilarious and heartfelt conversations with a range of queer celebs and sexperts who know their stuff.

Speaker 11 This season, they're covering it all, from circuit culture to hookup horror stories to locker room shenanigans. No stone is left unturned.
And let's be real, 2025 hasn't exactly been a breeze.

Speaker 11 So Gabe and Chris are doing the work, keeping the community informed with chats on prep, harm reduction, and how to cruise smart in a wild political climate.

Speaker 25 Oh, and this season, they want to hear your stories.

Speaker 11 Their call-in segment is getting even hotter, and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air. No pressure.
So if you're ready for round three, just push play.

Speaker 11 Sniffy's Cruising Confession, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

Speaker 27 Want Black Friday prices without the crowds?

Speaker 29 Loece gets it.

Speaker 30 Shop their early Black Friday deals and beat the rush.

Speaker 32 $99 is all you need to grab a select seven-foot pre-lit artificial Christmas tree for the holidays.

Speaker 28 And don't sweat what gifts to get, dad.

Speaker 34 They have up to 40% off select tools and accessories going on now.

Speaker 26 That's how Lowe's celebrates Black Friday early.

Speaker 29 Selection varies by location while supplies last.

Speaker 35 We're back.

Speaker 12 Got a lot of people asking how you approach research and how you format your episodes. If you have a template, if you put something into, I know the answer to this, which is why you're half smiling.

Speaker 12 If you make some kind of a guide for your episodes, or what's your process?

Speaker 25 The gist of it is I have a doc. I read through.
So, first, if there's a book, and there usually is, or more than one book, I read through the book or relevant portions of the book.

Speaker 25 Sometimes you don't have to read the whole book because, you know, it just deals with your guy for a couple of chapters. And I highlight shit.

Speaker 25 I copy and paste the highlighted shit and I organize it by generally, if I read my shit together, and I will have like a childhood, you know, young adulthood, early career, career, major crimes, yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 25 And I'll paste in the different parts, you know, with a list of like which source it's from. And I do the same thing with like highlighted and cut and pasted portions of articles.

Speaker 25 And I organize that by timeframe. And then I have that doc in one window and I have a Word doc in the other.

Speaker 25 And I go through it and I like write it. I look through like, okay, it's early life.
Here's all the different sources on his early life.

Speaker 25 Here are all, and I look through them and I'm like, these are the different things things that I find most interesting from every source. And I just kind of write them out in a way that makes sense.

Speaker 25 I try to make sure I quote every source that gives me a significant amount of info one or more times so that I'm making it very clear.

Speaker 25 This is where the original info came from, because I'm very rarely doing all of the original research on these guys.

Speaker 25 So I want to make it clear that like, you know, if I'm, you know, this portion where I'm talking about this part of his life, it, you know, generally came mostly from this source or for this source and this source, right?

Speaker 25 You know, that's how I try to do it.

Speaker 12 Robert,

Speaker 12 what's your favorite animal and/or dinosaur?

Speaker 25 My favorite dinosaur was always an iguanodon. Big iguanodon guy, huge iguanodon fan.
Love them. Love them.

Speaker 25 Because, like, it's the dinosaur equivalent of like a fucking Guido pulling a switchblade in a New York alley.

Speaker 25 Like, that's just cool that there were dinosaurs who had that vibe where they're just like, hey, motherfucker, I'm just going to cut your ass. You know, I love a fucking iguanodon.
Look them up.

Speaker 25 Big sharp knife thumbs. Cool dinosaur.

Speaker 12 Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie?

Speaker 25 Is it okay for me to say Guido? I'm a Guido. I think I'm allowed to say Guido.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 I have no idea.

Speaker 25 I'm allowed to say Guido. Robert.
Look at how Italian I am. Look at how much of a unibrow I grow if I don't shave for a day and a half.
Look, I get to say Guido, okay?

Speaker 25 I have to deal with all this grease in my hair. I get to say Guido.
I'm allowed. You don't know me.

Speaker 12 I have no say in this. Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie? That is an actual question.

Speaker 25 Oh, my favorite part? I guess that you know what you're doing and handle all of the things that I would never be able to handle.

Speaker 12 That?

Speaker 25 Yeah. Is that a sensible thing to say, Sophie?

Speaker 12 I have no idea. I don't know the answer to that question.

Speaker 25 I only know how to do the one thing.

Speaker 12 So I get asked all the time by people what it's like working with you.

Speaker 12 And I say, you are the best business partner that anybody could ever ask for oh that's nice that's what you were supposed to say by the way that i'm a perfect angel baby oh i was just trying to be specific about the nature of our working relationship which is that i do one thing and you do many things

Speaker 25 so true so true robert would you consider doing more south africa episodes yes i mean definitely sure yeah we'll do more i need to actually do probably before the next south africa episode i need to do like a maybe ian banks like a more dedicated rhodesia episode like rhodesia comes up a lot but i haven't just done uh i mean we did cecil rhodes but i haven't just done like uh i think ian banks was his name the the last president dude of uh or ian smith sorry ian smith i want to say ian banks yeah ian smith the

Speaker 25 yeah leader of rhodesia we'll do him soon yeah we'll do another south african guy too but i think we're going to do rhodesia next first we got asked if there was a guest we've had on that we'd love to have on again paulof topkins paulov topkins we'd love to to have Paul back on.

Speaker 25 Would be happy to have Ed Helms back on for one that's I'd love to have Lisey Mosley back on too.

Speaker 12 She's so funny.

Speaker 25 I want to say something about Ed because we get offers from like famous people a lot and without like naming any names, sometimes we make attempts that don't wind up as episodes because when they realize what the show is and how different this is, that they need to sit here for two hours, three hours, that we're going to be really going into detail, that often we're talking about things from like a more radical political lens, they get uncomfortable because it's, you know, maybe something they view as dangerous for their career or whatever.

Speaker 25 And Ed Helms, who I don't think really knew much about us coming into the show,

Speaker 25 he said he listened to a couple episodes, he'd listened to an episode, maybe, but he sat down and I come in with fucking a harder episode to be a fun guest on, Curtis Yarvin.

Speaker 25 And it is immediately down to clown. So I was, you know, I have respect for that.

Speaker 12 Absolutely.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Robert,

Speaker 12 what are your thoughts on the developments in Rojava?

Speaker 25 It's too early to tell where things are going to end, but obviously, I mean, it looks like the Turks are going to be allowed to continue to bomb as Israel has been bombing Rojava, and the United States isn't going to do anything.

Speaker 25 It's unclear if the U.S. is going to even stand up for Kobani in any meaningful way.
But it's also, I don't really want to say too much because all of this is happening right now. I'm very concerned.

Speaker 25 You know, obviously, there's no chance of things getting better in Syria, period, without Assad gone. So I'm glad that he's gone.

Speaker 25 But what that means for Rojava is still very much unclear to this point. You know,

Speaker 25 it's a scary time. I would say the one thing that I can say that is comforting to those of you who are likewise scared is that it's really always been a very scary time.

Speaker 25 There hasn't been an easy or very safe period of the revolution, and they've continued holding on. So

Speaker 12 what are some of the most impactful books that you've read that you think listeners should read?

Speaker 25 The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
If you also haven't read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omalos, which is a short story, read that. Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by...
Oh, God.

Speaker 25 And I'm spacing on a name right now.

Speaker 25 This is nothing against Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler.
Sorry, I'm just bad with names, folks. I love Octavia Butler.

Speaker 12 I want to recommend Mia from Where It Could Happen Here show. She recommended reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano.
And oh my God, it's an incredible book. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Also, oh, we both read this book. Who's the,

Speaker 12 I'm forgetting the author's name, Coltish by

Speaker 12 Amanda Montel.

Speaker 25 Coltish was quite good.

Speaker 12 Coltish was quite good. Anything written by Margaret Killjoy ever heard of her? Oh my god.
Yeah. God.
Oh, and you know what? Why are there so many feet questions people?

Speaker 25 Here's one I haven't brought up in terms of books. Read The Water Knife

Speaker 25 by Paolo Baccialupi. I'm saying his name wrong, I know, but The Water Knife is just excellent.
Excellent book.

Speaker 12 I just want to say, there is an absurd amount of feet questions in here. Why do you want to know my foot size, you fucking weirdo?

Speaker 25 Don't answer those. Nobody who asks you questions about feet on the internet has a good reason to ask.

Speaker 12 What is wrong with you? Don't do it. Does it better? Jesus Christ.

Speaker 25 Just go to WikiFeet, like the rest of the freaks.

Speaker 25 I will say, I do think WikiFeet is one of the last bastions of intellectual honesty left on the internet.

Speaker 12 Robert, how did you get into Ska? People want, and like, what's your favorite ska band? That was asked a couple of times.

Speaker 25 You don't get into ska, ska finds you, baby. And ska found me one beautiful day when I was 19 years old, well, 17 years old, something like that.

Speaker 25 When somebody posted, I had become a fan of the band Real Big Fish because of the movie Basketball, which I enjoyed as a kid. And I posted about it online.

Speaker 25 And someone said, kid, let me show you something better. And they sent me a link to where there was a torrent for Somewhere in the Between.
I think it was Somewhere in the Between.

Speaker 25 Might have been Keesby Knights that was my first Streetlight Manifesto album. I don't know.
It was one of the two. But Streetlight Manifesto is my favorite band, probably.

Speaker 25 Thomas Kalnaki is probably my favorite songwriter. It goes back and forth between him and Warren Zivon.
And in terms of bands, it goes back and forth between Streetlight and the Cat Empire.

Speaker 25 I don't know.

Speaker 25 It kind of depends on my mood sometimes.

Speaker 12 What are the best non-mainstream news sources free or otherwise?

Speaker 25 Non-mainstream news sources free or otherwise. I mean it depends on kind of like what you're looking for.

Speaker 12 I always recommend J.K. and Rahan's Popular Front.

Speaker 25 Yeah, of course. Of course.
Jan Rahan's Popular Front. If you want to keep up with like the conspiracy right, you can't do better than knowledge fight.

Speaker 12 The QAnon Anonymous people are good.

Speaker 25 outside of obviously ed zittron's great tech journalism the guys at 404 media do do really good stuff the defector i like as a i'm interested in a lot of these new you know newer outlets yeah

Speaker 25 that's some of what i'd suggest obviously you know there's certain things that like the bbc there's certain things they do very well war crimes in africa you can often find some really good coverage first and like bbc's africa eye there's certain things al jazeera does very well and obviously like certain things that they don't So there's no like, this is the best one place to go for all of the news in the world because that really doesn't exist.

Speaker 25 It's more a matter of like coming to an understanding of like the shortcomings of and also coming to an appreciation of like which specific journalists are worth following from place to place, you know?

Speaker 12 Yeah. And finally, Robert, what's cracking my peppers?

Speaker 25 I don't have an answer to that. It's just a thing I said once on a podcast for reasons that elude me.

Speaker 12 It was one of your best, I have to say. Thank you.
I really enjoyed that one. Last question.
Chapel Rowan or Sabrina Carpenter?

Speaker 12 Do you know who either of those people are?

Speaker 25 I've heard of Chapel Rowan.

Speaker 12 Rowan.

Speaker 25 People are angry at her for some reason.

Speaker 12 She didn't endorse Kamala Harris.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 12 Because

Speaker 12 she didn't endorse her.

Speaker 25 Are we reliant upon Chapel Rowan to fix American politics?

Speaker 25 Because I don't know her, but that seems like an unfair burden to place upon someone who I'm going to assume is mostly known for singing and dancing.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 25 And my is that more or less what she does? I'm not saying that to be mean.

Speaker 12 My answer to that question is, Robert, do you remember the concert I said I went to by myself like two days after the election results? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Sabrina Carpenter.
And that.

Speaker 25 Where you got sick?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I got sick after going because, you know, too many people crowd, even with masks. That was Sabrina Carpenter, and she was great.
And it restored my faith in girlhood. So.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 We'll take that.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 25 I guess I'll say Sabrina Carpenter too, then.

Speaker 12 Sure.

Speaker 12 Any final thoughts? Or should we get the fuck out of here?

Speaker 25 Yeah, let's fucking bounce, motherfuckers.

Speaker 12 Okay, bye, friends.

Speaker 12 Peace. Robert loves 40% of you.
I love 32% of you.

Speaker 25 Can't prove either of those things. Nope.

Speaker 12 Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.

Speaker 12 For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

Speaker 24 New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

Speaker 12 Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/slash at behind the bastards.

Speaker 17 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.