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

Transcript

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 3 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers.

Speaker 5 But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.

Speaker 8 The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

Speaker 6 So why did it take so long to catch him?

Speaker 10 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer.

Speaker 9 The investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now.

Speaker 12 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place.
It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey.

Speaker 13 We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases.

Speaker 13 I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes.

Speaker 13 Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours.

Speaker 13 Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 15 A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV in the city of Mons in Belgium. Women began to go missing.

Speaker 15 It was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized a sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved.

Speaker 15 Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence. Le Monstre, Season 2, is available now.
Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 16 Malcolm Glaubel here.

Speaker 17 This season on Revisionist History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

Speaker 19 And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough.
But I didn't kill him.

Speaker 17 From Revisionist History, this is... The Alabama Murders.
Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 22 On this podcast, Incels, we unpack an emerging mindset.

Speaker 19 I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't pay me either.

Speaker 22 A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.

Speaker 20 Tomorrow is the day of retribution.

Speaker 15 The day in which I will have my revenge.

Speaker 13 This is Incels.

Speaker 25 Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 16 Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast by a man who is preparing for the entrance of the new regime, the need to go underground.
So I'm in my chud block today.

Speaker 20 You know,

Speaker 20 if you're a tall white man and you wear a hoodie with a deer head on it, you're effectively invisible.

Speaker 20 So I'm prepared for the new world. Are you?

Speaker 26 You look great.

Speaker 20 Thank you, Sophie. I love my Chud sweater.
It's actually incredibly comfortable.

Speaker 20 Every year after deer season, this exact hoodie comes on for sale at a store near me. And so I can get like three for five bucks each or some shit like that.
And they're crazy comfortable.

Speaker 26 And per usual, I spent the last hour trying to make myself look nice enough for the camera so people aren't mean to me on the internet.

Speaker 29 Yep, yep.

Speaker 20 Very different, very unequal situation, but I'm also not going to spend any more time caring about my appearance.

Speaker 21 Fair enough.

Speaker 26 Uh, what are we doing today, Robert?

Speaker 20 Uh, well, Sophie, the same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world of podcasting.
Oh, wait, we already did that. Yep.
I guess let's answer some QA's from our fans.

Speaker 26 Yeah, so we put out a post on our Instagram at BastardsPod, and many of you sent in questions, and so we're going to try to answer a lot of them.

Speaker 20 Yeah, yeah, the gist of this situation is, folks, it's the end of the year.

Speaker 20 This is when all of the companies that buy ads are really buying ads.

Speaker 20 And it's, you know, when everybody wants to get as many people listening as possible.

Speaker 20 And we decided rather than doing something that's zero effort and like, you know, rerunning more episodes, which we do when we take a break, we wanted to give you guys a chance to ask us some questions and also make sure that we're providing you with new stuff because you crave new stuff.

Speaker 20 You won't stop demanding it. Every instant of our lives, Sophie and I think of nothing but pleasing your insatiable appetites.
So Sophie went on Instagram and asked if you guys had any questions.

Speaker 21 Robert.

Speaker 30 Yes?

Speaker 26 What was your least favorite episode to do and why?

Speaker 20 Least favorite to do. I assume they're asking ever.

Speaker 20 I hate, I really, unless it's a place where I have a specific interest, I really hate the foreign leader episodes.

Speaker 20 Like, obviously, Stalin's a foreign leader, but I've been reading about Stalin my whole life. Hitler's a foreign, I've read more books about Hitler than anybody who's not a Hitler scholar.

Speaker 20 But like Jair Bolsinaro, right? Like, I don't know much about Brazilian politics coming in. Netanyahu, I don't know much about, you know, politics over there.

Speaker 20 So, like, getting up to speed, not just, because you can't, it's not just enough to like learn what was Netanyahu's childhood like.

Speaker 20 You also have to know, like, the dynamics of politics prior to him coming into power and like the part like and catching up on all of that in a way that you don't totally embarrass yourself is a is a lot of work and it's also nerve-wracking because like especially again to go back to Netanyahu this is a guy who I mean who had been involved in genocidal activity prior to

Speaker 20 where we are right now, but like certainly like it was the kind of thing where like because of how high the stakes are and how bad the things he was up to were like, oh my god, the anxiety about fucking that up.

Speaker 20 The same with Bolsonaro, right?

Speaker 20 This guy who's fucking around the Amazon with indigenous peoples, this dude who is a very important part of this authoritarian trend, but also me, a guy who doesn't know much about Brazil.

Speaker 20 I'm always very anxious about those episodes. It's they're important to do.
We'll be doing more of them next year.

Speaker 20 I just, I, I, I always like stress out over because there's no not getting some stuff wrong, right?

Speaker 26 Like, of course, it's just it's especially with history because it's so subjective.

Speaker 14 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 26 I really fucking hate when we do the like

Speaker 26 wilderness camp school things.

Speaker 20 Oh, I love that shit. Just like horrific.

Speaker 14 Shake shit up. Horrific

Speaker 20 kids suffer. Sophie, I love suffering jokes.

Speaker 26 Kids think they're in a safe place and then they get, you know, insert horrible thing here. Those, those episodes, I really, really fucking hate those.

Speaker 20 Nom nom nom. I'll eat them up all day.

Speaker 26 We did get this question quite a bit, and people want to know how you celebrated the passing of Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 20 You know, to be honest, that was a pretty normal day for me. Like, there's not a lot.

Speaker 20 I'm glad he's dead, but like, he lived an incredibly long life and got to do most of the things he wanted and never really suffered. So it's like, how much,

Speaker 20 like,

Speaker 20 let's say I had a beer, you know?

Speaker 20 Let's say I had a beer.

Speaker 26 Let's say I had a beer.

Speaker 20 So cryptic.

Speaker 14 What the fuck?

Speaker 28 You sound so unwell.

Speaker 26 Robert, is there an episode, topic, or individual that you've covered that has left you shaken up or angry long after you completed the episode?

Speaker 20 Everything we do on healthcare. Yeah.
Like every time we have done a healthcare, I know this is the week that it is. Every time we talk about the U.S.
healthcare system, I'm fucking livid.

Speaker 20 Industrial, the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, Union Carbide in Bhopal, India as well. Like both of those are Union Carbide affiliated disasters.
Those drive me fucking insane.

Speaker 20 Like to some extent, I find those guys more offensive than a guy like Hitler, which is not saying that they're worse than Hitler, because Hitler did kill more people than like Union Carbide.

Speaker 20 But Hitler was like a guy who very honestly was about murdering people, whereas these guys are all pretending to be decent men, family men, you know, just, you know, all I'm doing is trying to make jobs and provide a, you know, valuable part of the economy.

Speaker 20 And they are just killing people by fucking the city full.

Speaker 20 So yeah, those make me very angry.

Speaker 26 I'm going to ask you one that won't make you very angry. Robert, what is your opinion on Modern Star Trek? I love most of it.

Speaker 14 That's what they say.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 20 Lower Dex is my favorite Star Trek thing since DS9.

Speaker 13 Sure.

Speaker 20 I've seen some episodes of Strange New Worlds, and

Speaker 20 I can see why people like it a lot. I'm kind of exhausted with that time period in the Star Trek timeline.
Like, I want new stuff.

Speaker 20 I want fucking A, like, do one where Riker's like an old admiral and we're fucking dealing with Starfleet politics back on Earth in San Francisco.

Speaker 20 Give me anything where we're moving forward on the timeline, but we're not leaping into like weird future war shit. Like, I'm not mostly interested in that stuff.

Speaker 20 I'm mostly interested with actually, part of why I love DS, I love TNG because it's really looking at like what is,

Speaker 20 would a utopia be in a sense that's actually imaginable as something real, that like something that could exist in some ways?

Speaker 20 And then Deep Space Nine is asking, what would the dark sides of that utopia be?

Speaker 20 And not even the dark sides, because it's less that and more kind of like what the culture series, you know, dealt with.

Speaker 20 Like, what happens when this utopia and the people in it inevitably make contact or collide?

Speaker 20 with reality like or not reality because because they live in reality but but with but with places that are not utopia with places places that are different, that are worse, that have different values.

Speaker 20 Like, what are those clashes like? And that's what I love in my Star Trek.

Speaker 20 Star Trek's never had good space battles. I'll say that, right? I mean, every now and then you get like a Wolf 359 or something.
There's some pretty cool shit there.

Speaker 20 But like, fucking A, there's that one scene in Serenity is a better space battle. in terms of like an interesting, cool-looking space battle than ever got shot in Star Trek.

Speaker 20 But I don't watch Star Trek for space battles. I've got other shit for space battles.

Speaker 30 That was very thorough.

Speaker 14 Thank you.

Speaker 26 I like this question.

Speaker 26 Who is your fantasy guest?

Speaker 20 Fantasy guest?

Speaker 20 Marissa Tomei during the

Speaker 20 my cousin Vinny?

Speaker 21 What are we talking about?

Speaker 30 What do you mean by fantasy here?

Speaker 28 I think they

Speaker 30 wow, very specific.

Speaker 26 I think they mean if you could have anybody come and guest on the podcast, who would your dream be?

Speaker 28 Yeah, no, no, no,

Speaker 20 I know what they meant.

Speaker 20 I would love to have, I don't even know if I'd do an episode, I would just love to talk with either Alan Moore or Werner Herzog.

Speaker 20 Like, specifically, if I had Herzog, the thing I'd most want to do with Herzog, I guess we could record it, but I don't really care if we do is I'd like to cook a meal with Werner Herzog. Sure.

Speaker 20 But I think,

Speaker 20 yeah, in terms of funny people, I think Will Farrell would probably be a really good guest.

Speaker 20 He's far too famous for us, but he seems like he's got a good sense of humor about these kinds of things.

Speaker 26 Can you guess who mine is?

Speaker 20 Who's yours?

Speaker 26 Can you guess?

Speaker 20 Yours is Harry Styles?

Speaker 26 Nope.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 26 There's only one obvious answer. Because

Speaker 20 it would be like really funny to bring Harry Styles on and just do like unit 731, just like non-stop four hours of the most nightmarish stories of torture.

Speaker 26 And you just be like, treat people with kindness. What are you talking about?

Speaker 26 No, that's not who it is.

Speaker 26 There's only one person it could be.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 26 Who? I'm waiting to see if you know.

Speaker 20 No, I don't. I gave you my guess.

Speaker 26 The listeners are disappointed.

Speaker 20 Okay. They're listed.

Speaker 26 It's LeBron James.

Speaker 20 Oh, okay. Yeah.
I mean, we could try, we could talk about basketball. Two experts like us.

Speaker 20 I mean, I think a lot of people would enjoy hearing our different feelings on ball handling, on three-pointers, other basketball stuff. Those aren't the only two basketball-related terms I know, guys.

Speaker 26 I think a lot of people would want to hear your opinion on ball handling, Robert.

Speaker 21 Anyways, it's time for an ad break.

Speaker 14 Sophie.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 20 The subreddit's going to be very uncomfortable today.

Speaker 31 I earned my degree online at Arizona State University. I chose to get my degree at ASU because I knew that I'd get a quality education.

Speaker 31 They were recognized for excellence and that I would be prepared for the workforce upon graduating. To be associated with ASU, both as a student and alum, it makes me extremely proud.

Speaker 31 And having experienced the program, I know now that I'm set up for success. Learn more at ASUonline.asu.edu.

Speaker 9 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam.

Speaker 11 Available now.

Speaker 20 All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

Speaker 25 For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

Speaker 23 I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know.

Speaker 25 A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Speaker 2 Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

Speaker 25 My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

Speaker 20 I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said.

Speaker 13 They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

Speaker 25 From Lava for Good, this is Graves County. A show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

Speaker 16 America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happen

Speaker 16 to good people in small towns.

Speaker 25 Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 25 And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 13 I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place, it's a way of life.
I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't.

Speaker 13 We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes.

Speaker 13 Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members.

Speaker 13 Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 15 In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative names like The Path of Worry, Dump Road, and Fear Creek.

Speaker 34 believe it is the work of a serial killer.

Speaker 15 Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence and new suspects.

Speaker 35 We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to the grave with nightmarish secrets.

Speaker 15 From Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, this is Le Mansre Season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 27 We are back.

Speaker 26 Robert, this question was asked 552,000 times. When can we expect a sequel to After the Revolution?

Speaker 20 Well, the book's done. Basically, I'm almost, I finished the rough draft.

Speaker 20 I'm almost through with the first draft, which is when I read through the rough draft chapter by chapter and make the edits that occur to me to make it make sense.

Speaker 20 I think probably in January, I'll put out the first three chapters just as kind of a teaser, but I'll be, you know, working with my editor to get it in the shape.

Speaker 20 But very soon, very soon, it's taken much longer than I had hoped it would.

Speaker 20 In my defense, both my parents died since publishing the first one. So, you know,

Speaker 20 that's not really an excuse, but it's going to make you feel bad. And so you're not going to like follow up with complaining that the book's not out yet.
I'm manipulating you. You know, I'm a monster.

Speaker 20 I know it, but I'm good at it.

Speaker 26 You're allowed.

Speaker 23 Thank you.

Speaker 26 You've referenced that there are people who you start to look into, but ultimately find that there isn't really enough there for an episode.

Speaker 26 Who came the closest to being worthy of doing a whole episode about, but who was the most disappointing person that you weren't able to do an episode about?

Speaker 20 I know that's happened. It has.

Speaker 20 There's been, and usually when that happens, it's not that there's not enough, it's that there's just like not enough information about what they did.

Speaker 20 You'll hear like a reference to like some CEO who did this like really fucked up thing.

Speaker 20 He was like fucking eating poor people or whatever shit, but it's like, well, all I've got is like three sentences from an old newspaper. I can't really get an article out on that.

Speaker 20 Honestly, names aren't coming to mind.

Speaker 20 The closest I can come in terms of what I remember is like I almost didn't get to do the Bo Brummel episodes after hours of research because I did kind of come to the conclusion, you know, there's some bad side effects as a result of what he did, but that's nothing like not that morally reflects on him in a negative way.

Speaker 20 Like, he wasn't trying to make generations of men more limited in their fashion choices. He just like liked what he liked.
And likewise, I guess.

Speaker 26 There's been a handful of people where you've been like, where people are like, it's not necessarily that you've looked into them. People are like, why don't you do an episode on so-and-so?

Speaker 26 And you're like, because they're fucking

Speaker 26 boring.

Speaker 20 Like Ben Shapiro, what am I going to say? What are you going to say?

Speaker 20 What is there really to say about Ben? You know, I have looked into him.

Speaker 20 him i did think about it and like at this point he does have a negative impact he's just boring and like that's a big i will say when it comes to if your question is ever why haven't you done so-and-so the answer is usually either i think they're boring and if it's someone where that you're like well there's no way he thinks this guy's boring this guy's objectively interesting it's because That's going to be a shitload of work.

Speaker 20 And like, I'm always triaging the, like the Lawrence of Arabia episodes, which seem to have gotten a good reaction. I think I had to read like five books for

Speaker 14 a bunch of articles.

Speaker 20 I was working in the background, slowly getting through material for, yeah, starting in like January.

Speaker 20 And not everything is like, but like Kissinger was like that. Kissinger was like a year of background work.

Speaker 20 And the current big one that I'm very slowly working on is doing another Nixon, doing a Nixon, probably six-parter, because it's fucking Nixon, but at least a four-parter.

Speaker 20 And that's going to take me a while because I really don't, there's so many stores, because you could put that much effort into everybody, but it's a lot of folks, you would just be reading stuff that's largely repeating similar bits with slightly different takes.

Speaker 20 Whereas with Nixon, everyone who digs into him, there's so many stories. There's so many people who know crazy shit about Nixon.

Speaker 20 You really almost can't come to an end of collecting fucked up Dick Nixon stories.

Speaker 20 Like it's almost an, it's almost like our most renewable resource on planet Earth is stories of Richard Nixon being a freaking weirdo.

Speaker 20 So it takes some time.

Speaker 26 Which episode received the most backlash from fans?

Speaker 20 Backlash.

Speaker 29 I,

Speaker 20 you know, I had some, there was some frustration over

Speaker 20 an episode we did that was, I think it was mixed. It's always really mixed, even when there is.
like uh about that doctor who was like doing really bad surgeries for trans people.

Speaker 20 There were some folks who had some specific frustrations with that and then some folks who didn't.

Speaker 20 And, you know, ultimately, it's one of those things where when you're dealing with stuff like that, there are probably multiple right ways to do it. But, you know,

Speaker 20 it's tough. I think like the biggest thing that I, the biggest thing that frustrates me in terms of like feedback from listeners is when people will be like, obviously figure this person

Speaker 20 has autism. Why didn't you bring that up? Or that's an explanation for this behavior.
Why didn't you bring that up? And the answer in every case is that person has not been diagnosed with anything.

Speaker 20 All I have is the behavior. Multiple other things could explain the behavior.

Speaker 20 I am not going to just declare Jeffrey Bezos to have autism based on my zero experience as a diagnostician because he didn't like music, right?

Speaker 20 Like, there are other reasons people might not like music. And it's just kind of an interesting detail about how he's sort of disconnected from a lot of the people around him.

Speaker 20 That can be explained by many different things, but it's not my job to be like, this is what I believe is going on with Jeffrey Bezos.

Speaker 20 And now we all have to act like it's true because it's probably not.

Speaker 21 Hey, Robert.

Speaker 23 Uh-huh.

Speaker 26 Where can I read up on Robert's Warzone journalism or whatever older pieces may be out there?

Speaker 20 Man, there's, I mean, most of it was on cracked.com. Some of it found its way into It Could Happen Here, at least my conclusions based on it.

Speaker 20 There was a video that you could view in VR that was like a 360 video documentary of some of my time in Mosul

Speaker 20 that was published through the EW Scripts Network. I think that one was called 24 Hours in Mosul or something like that.

Speaker 20 It was broadcast also on a bunch of TV networks. I don't actually know if the link is up.

Speaker 20 A decent number of things that I wrote back then for like local news have become lost media because that's how that shit be. Yep.

Speaker 20 But you should still be able to find some of the stuff on Cracked that I did. So yeah, I would say check that out there.

Speaker 26 Let's do a fun one before the next ad break.

Speaker 21 Robert,

Speaker 26 if you were a spice girl, what would be your spice girl name?

Speaker 20 If I were a spice girl, my spice girl name would be

Speaker 20 doesn't want to say anything mean about the spice girls because I am close to several women who grew up in love with the spice girls.

Speaker 26 Yes, but what would your spice? So, your spice girl name?

Speaker 20 That was my name, yes. Your spice girl.
That's my name.

Speaker 26 Your spice girl name is Afraid of Women Spice.

Speaker 20 Specifically, Afraid of the Women That I Like Spice, yes.

Speaker 26 Afraid of Women I Like Spice. Got it.

Speaker 20 Afraid of offending them based on making having a bad take about the Spice Girls. Spice.

Speaker 26 I think I would be producer Spice.

Speaker 20 Yeah, that's probably fair too.

Speaker 26 It's time for ads again.

Speaker 26 We'll be back.

Speaker 9 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam.