What's desperately horny? My Saddam Hussein's best friend. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, the only podcast whose host owns two kittens named Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein's best friend. And due to a severe veterinarian shortage in northern Oregon, uh still can't get them spade and neutered for another nine days. And Saddam Hussein's best friend is in heat and desperately trying to funk her brother. This has been an update for all of you. Maybe disclose that information now. She has been disclosing that she wants to funck to literally every living creature that gets near her. She had a microphone, she'd be saying the same time. She will not stop presenting it is. It has been a problem. We are keeping them away because I do not want incest kittens. Um although they may have been in ses, there's no way to know um in in sittence. Yeah, like ks Robert, who has a lot of other voice on this podcast that people are here. Oh well, the only person I would ever have on to talk about kitten incest my friend Tom Rieman. Hey, Hi, what's up? No? I'm glad you got me on to talk about these cats. This is gonna be a three hour episode about my my cat's sex life. Um. Tom, you are the co founder of game Fully Unemployed, one of my favorite podcast networks host one of my most listened to shows, Fox Molder is a Maniac, Which is a beautiful breakdown of Fox Molder and what I would god damn ludaticious. Um yeah, Tom, it's it's it's really fascinating when you watch the show with that context, it changes the show. It truly does. You guys do a lot of great stuff, great movie reviews and m role playing games. People can find you Gamefully Unemployed on Patreon. Tom. You also are what an editor at Collider I'd forget what title, Senior editor of Features Collider, and you and I worked together for all of my twenties more or less at a little website called Cracked that pivoted to video and uh and went the way of the Dodo. We Got, We Got, We Got dragged to hell by Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. I didn't come across a beautiful tweet earlier today that you'll appreciate, Tom. I can't wait to hear it. Great radio great radio. Yes, look for something. A Neil dash horse broke its legs, so we had to take it out back and help it pivot to video. Oh Tom, how are you doing today? I'm doing okay, I'm I'm doing pretty good. Thanks. Uh you know, how about how about you? How about yourself? Well, Tom, I'm thinking about the fact that there is a vast, incredibly well financed right wing media operation that is seemingly dedicated to pushing a violence civil conflict that leads to a death toll that's truly astronomical in this nation. Do you think about that a lot? So good? Right? So you're doing good, doing great? Uh? Yeah, no, I've tried to think about it less. But uh and in the past few months just I just was trying to take a break, but I'm getting plugged back into it. You sure are, It's uh yeah, god damn it. It's just it's just it doesn't seem like anything's gotten any better. It sure hasn't. It's fucking relentless. And there's this is the election. We're like, oh, thank god, and then nope that that didn't go away. Yeah, no, it turns out that you can't you can't vote these kinds of problems away. And today we're going to talk about where some of these problems started. Specifically, we're going to talk about the men who made right wing media, and particularly like right wing talk media. So today you've got guys like um, Stephen Crowder, Been Shapiro obviously, Tucker Carlson being the big the big Mama Jammy, people like Rush Limball, like like all of all three of those people, all four of those people you just name got picked dead last for Kickball for very different reasons, and they made it the entire world's problem. So all of these folks, you know some of they all they all do slightly different variations of the same thing. And they're not all you know, Rush is the only one who's like really a talk radio host, but they all have you know, podcasts and YouTube. They all do the equip the modern equivalent of talk radio and and of like, yeah, we're gonna talk about basically the people who invented the media space that these guys all live in. Now, these are the very first right wing media personalities, um in a big way. So these are these are the people who um prepared the soil for all of the different you know kind of quasi fascist grifters we have today, and they are They're not all bastard in the traditional sense. Um, they're not all people who, on their own, if you didn't consider where everything went, would have qualified as best. Is there all I think unpleasant people? Um, but but I think what's interesting is how they how they start off and kind of where they end, Like the kind of people who inhabit this space at the beginning and the kind of people who inhabit it now. So this is gonna be a fun episode time. You're gonna listen to a lot of clips that you're just really gonna dislike. Um, so excited. Yeah, I'm so mad soon, Yeah you really are. So. One of the things that inspired this was coming across the fact that Tucker Carlson very recently alleged that the purpose of vaccine requirements in the military was to quote identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the freethinkers, the men with high distosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn't love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately. Um is he talking? He's getting into high tis testosterone is low if you're getting vacs, that's so boys, shit not choking on your own rotting lungs is soy. It's it's become I mean it was, it's always been the case, but like in the past year or two, it's really become obvious that they just let him go on and say whatever. He just says, you didn't think it's Yeah, And I'm starting with Tucker because he's he's just off the fucking rails completely. And this is the end route of of the journey that we're going to trace the start of today. Um. And the thing that Tucker has been saying that most concerns me is he started sharing Great Replacement style conspiracy theaters which are alleging that Democrats planned to quote change the population of this country in order to maintain power. This is functionally the same argument Brenton Tarrant, the christ Church shooter, made in the manifesto he wrote before shooting fifty Muslim worshippers to death. Um. His manifest was titled The Great Replacements. The same argument that the yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying. I'm trying to remember my behind the bastards extended universe that all comes from the Turner diaries, right, I mean, doesn't come from the Turner Diaries was like big definitely was pushing that. But this goes back a while for for I mean that you could even draw a line to like the original Nazis and kind of some of the ship Hitler was saying about arian blood getting watered down from interbreeding and one for sure, yeah, yeah, it's a big, big white nationalist talking point. And the fact that this good went from great replacement went from like fringe Nazi murderer manifesto in Night two thousand nineteen to Tucker Carlson talking to three million people on a major news network shows like how fast things go now and how how dangerous this all is. And I think it's important to start the stakes because it doesn't begin that way. The guys who start this kind of right wing media space. Um are the first guy we're gonna talk to, is in a lot always kind of pleasant. Um, at least compared to what came after. I don't think he saw that I would have gotten along with. But it don't believe you, it's it's it's weird. We'll see how you think. Um. Yeah, And where we discussed this is probably going to be these episodes with a nice companion to our two part on Rush Limbaugh with Mr Paul F. Tompkins. So you know, if you're if you're looking for a good four episodes spree to go together, listen to these two and then listen to those. Well you're sweet having a very long ship or on a road trip. So first guy we're talking about Tom is Joe Pine p Y in the Joe Pine was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on December twenty two, nineteen twenty four. His dad problem two Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Yeah, get it out of there. We don't need that state. It's like you look at that, You look at those those three pieces of information, like this is like a fifty fifty shot. This guy is gonna be Pennsylvania in the twenties and and a acember baby. Fuck that. His dad was a brickmaker and his mom was a mom, which was pretty much the only job most women could expect to work at that point in time and place. When Joe was little, his family moved to Atlantic City, which is like Las Vegas, but less fun and much sadder because it's on the East coast. Um, here's a good Bruce Springsteen's song about that. He had a difficult childhood, Joe had a pronounced stutter, and kids back then were even shitty about such things than they are today. He was bullied relentlessly. When Joe was eleven, he lost his younger brother to an auto accident, which was not uncommon in those days because cars didn't crumple and seat belts were but a fever dream in Ralph Nader's I. By the time Joe was a teenager, his family left Atlantic City, which is always a good decision, and moved back to Chester, which is a more questionable decision. That's all. It's all they knew. It's all they knew. We're gonna pile the family into our giant, unstoppable seat beltless car and drive back to Chester. He went to high school, and he joined the Marines in nineteen forty two, which was a popular decision at the time. He joined as early as he possibly Yeah. For whatever reason, a lot of guys joined the military, and Night Team forty two must have been good ads sums about to happen. Um. He joined as the early like the first day he possibly could um and obviously, the US had decided to enter World War Two at this point. He was deployed against the Empire of Japan, and he fought in some of the war's worst battles across the South Pacific. Joe survived to the Battle of Okinawa, which is one of the like, like, one of the worst fights you could possibly have been in in that war, real, real bad battle Okinawa. Um. During that battle, a Japanese plane bombed the forward base he was stationed on, seriously injuring his knee. He returned home scarred and seasoned by heavy combat. Joe had won three Bronze Stars for valor in battle and a Purple Heart. So he definitely saw some ship. This is not one of like the draft dodgy right wing guys. This Ben Shapiro writing war fan fiction, like he went to war and got bombs dropped on his leg. Yeah, he saw some of the worst ship you could have seen in that particular conflict. Um. So he returns home real fucked up, probably with a headful of PTSD, but they didn't know PTSD was they. I'm assuming he just drank washed it down with cigarettes. Real headful of horny cats. When he got home. He didn't know precisely what he wanted to do with his life, but he was certain that it involved putting himself in front of people and entertaining them. In order to do that, he felt he would need to deal with his speech impediment first. Using his What led him to that decision, I don't relentlessly bullied, went to war, got bombed, his dead brother comes back. He's like, I'm gonna be an entertainer. I'm gonna be an entertainer. I'm gonna come from Yeah. We just don't know enough about his early life to know like what the funk was going on. Maybe he just wanted to show people my speech impediment doesn't define me. I don't know. I beat the Japanese, I can beat stuttering. Um So, using his g I Bill, Joe enrolled in a drama school. He forced himself through agonizing hours of live performances in front of his classmates to overcome his stutter. He locked himself away in his room and would perform hours and hours of speech drills every day, and eventually he did overcome his speech impediment. Once he graduated, Joe became a taxi driver in Chester. He continued to work on his speech while he was driving people around. Um Eventually, he decided he'd come far enough, and he started a career as a broadcaster by this point. The way the way you phrase that made it sound like he was doing like his speeches to his passengers. None, give me some notes. I got a tight five. I'm gonna run it by you. There's no seat. You are really dependent upon me. So he uh he, he does this, um and uh yeah, he decides he's he's finished by like late nineteen forty six. Um. Now again, nineteen forties radio is king. TV's coming around, But that's still not the number one way people get entertained. You're you're really Radio is is the top of the top of the world, and they assume it will be forever. Uh. He was able to convince a station manager in Lumberton, North Carolina, to give him a job on w t SB. The pay was twenty five dollars a week, which was not good money even back then, and he failed to stand out enough that he felt he had any hope of advancement. So after a year he returned home dejected, but Joe kept pushing until he got another job at w p w A in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. He got into a vicious argument with his boss while still knew on the job and was quickly fired. Next he moved to w I L M of Wilmington, Delaware, where he was also quickly fired. Yeah, you get the feeling. He was not easy to work with at this point. Um Fully, email didn't exist, so these people couldn't tell each other about Joe. He moved back to Chester after this, and then the Kenosha next where he got a job with a new network called w I L P. His job in all of these places was very straightforward, introduced in play records with a minimum of fanfare. He was not being hired to be a personality. Was just fired from Dick. Yeah, that was a big part of it. Um. He would riff a lot. He got in trouble in Kenosha, and I think he'd gotten in trouble before. He would riff on politics and current events, which was not what we were supposed to do at the time. So his bosses are like nobody, Nobody. People are tuning in to hear I don't know what the big music that the big bopper. Nobody wants you. Nobody gives a shit about what you have to say. Put on Shantilly lace and shut your fucking mouth. Smoke a cigarette. Um yeah. The kind of riffing that he thought was the future of radio was simply not done at the time. Commenters were part of the news department and jockeys were not. Disc Jockeys were there to entertain, and he'd been hired as a disc jockey. Um so, if you were going to be a commentator, if you're talking about the news, you didn't like give your opinion. You try to just kind of like read, you know, like the ap wire basically. Um. W l i P though took callins. Listeners could dial in and request songs, but Joe started insisting on asking his listeners what they thought about the political issues of the day, which was the first time anyone had ever really done that on radio, like take call ins, and he kind of forced the issue of making them political. One w l i P employee at the time recalled he wanted to chat with him, but in those days there was no way to put a phone line on the air. Joe would say uh huh and and then tell the call the listeners what the callers said. So this is like this is the very first talk radio. He's just on the phone with them being like mmmm, alright, so here's what he said. Let me tell you what Dennis from just say, yeah, and you're like listening to almost dead air while he's listening to on the phone. But this is this is literally the birth of talk radio. This is the first time anybody does this, Joe Pine and he moves along eventually, and I'm gonna to explain that process. I'm going to read a quote from a write up in Smithsonian magazine. One caller objected to the young DJs pro union opinions. Do you know anything, sir, about the history of labor management relations, Pine asked the man. After a moment of dead air, he continued, no, you keep your voice down. Pine was an expert. Interrupted like this caller barely paused for breath listening. Pine had an idea. According to REGANI, who worked there, he held the phone receiver to his microphone. Now the caller was live on the air, and call in radio was born. Um, so that's nineteen forty nine and Kenosha Joe Pine in vinced call in radio by literally holding a phone up to the mic. In fairness, some random dude calling in to request Frankie Valley, who had very strong opinions about labor unions is who actually created it's guys such an ass all, I gotta put him on about it. That's a fair why you got to hear what a piece of ship this guy is. Let me invent a new discipline that will later ratchet the country towards violence. Was born in stupid anger, and it will kill us all with stupid and stupid anger. It will return. Yeah, perfect, What a beautiful way for that to get started. Honestly, And I love because this guy gives birth to right wing radio. But he the start of talk radio was him trying to defend like the right to unionize, which is that was I was not expecting that to be the issue, said it. I was like, really that you could be pretty conservative and pro union in those because it wasn't. It was more racist back then, obviously everything was, but politics in some ways was less dumb um it wasn't. It hadn't gotten to the point where it is with like the right wing left wing, Like conservatism is such a part of my like identity that like I I have this vested interest in like demonizing anything like you did have a lot of I mean, like like one of the union strongholds in the US for a long time was West Virginia. You know, like people like fought to the death for Union, said West Virginia with rifles. Um, and now it's Joe Mansion country. Uh so, well sorry West Virginia. UM. But like, yeah, the things were different than politically, is what I'm saying. And yeah, um so Joe was fired. H I think this kind of is part of what got him fired because his his boss at the station was like, he's supposed to be playing songs, Joe, what are you doing holding their phone to the goddamn microphone. Put on the goddamn reck, Put on the fucking twist. Yeah, do you want to get a rush limbox? Because that's how you get a limbo. This is how we get a limb. Put the phone down, put on the goddamn music. I don't want to listen to Stephen Crowder's heart surgery problems in twenty five year or forty five years, however many years, a hundred years, sixty years, whatever, too many years to arsh it's year. Nobody nobody is even alive anymore. No God, thank god. Um So, despite yeah, inventing call in radio, Joe's boss did not appreciate him he wanted someone to read ads and introduce songs. The two fought constantly. At one point, Joe demanded a raise, which led to a fight. Another w l I P host later recalled stumbling in on the melee Joe was yelling. She recalled, he had one hand on our boss's lapelle. He picked up a typewriter and threw it against the wall. Oh fuck, So that gives you a little bit of an idea of like why this guy keeps having problems with his coworkers. Yeah, he almost said that was danger. He almost scored some points of me there because you were like, he picked up a type. I'm like, here we here, we go hit him in the fake all right, Well, fair compromise, all right. So he gets fired again, and he continues to move around frequently. You know, while he's going from radio station to radio station. He marries a beauty queen. He divorces here a year later because she gets sick of him. U he's working at w y l M. He starts a show called It's Your Nickel, so named because the nickel was the standard cost for a call on a pay phone. And this was the first, yeah, proper radio talk show it's your nickel. So he does get a job doing the thing that he invented, and that's that became a phrase like it's your dime or it's yourn or it's your dollar. Yeah, And I don't know if that's the he may have just been using because it was already like what people said. Um, but yeah, I mean he may have invented it. I have not done that research. Tom Um that someone at home. Well, yeah, something something that sticks out to me about old Joe Pine is that he has trouble forming lasting relationships. Yeah. He goes from job the job. Marri's a woman, divorces her late like he seems like he might be impossible to be around. It does, and it also again, this is one of those black box of history things. I do kind of wonder how much of this is a PTSD, because that can make it real hard to get along with people and a hard to regulate your emotions. It might make you more likely to throw it to ypewriter. He did get bombed in one of the most notorious battles of World War two. Yeah, yeah, who knows. It's It's one of those things. It's like lead exposure, which I'm sure Joe Pint was also exposed to a tremendous amount of lead. Like, you wonder how much of an impact did this have on like the way people were back then. We wonder how many people were just walking around poisoned and crazy like seventy years ago, just because that's the way it was. Yeah, I mean there's there's there's a lot of like pretty strong evidence that at least the lead exposure may have been part of why there was so much more violence back you know, even just like twenty something years ago. Um, because everybody was inhaling lead and eating lead off the walls. And I do want some delicious lead tom Um. Yeah, there's nothing that goes with like a nice breathe. Like you get a lead chip and you just dip it in a breath. That's a good Yeah. Nice meat mixes sweet and savory like a lead flight. Yeah, like a lead flight, like a flight of lead. I'm gonna start a lead stairant, Tom, I think you should. Yeah, lead in every food, Yeah, little lead bar, get the lead out. We'll call it a lead chicken in every pot. Now, Tom, you know who else will expose you to tremendous amounts of lead? Uh, the X Men Colossus. That that is probably accurate. I don't know as much about x Men as you, um, but the products and services that support this podcast certainly will expose you to lead. That is the only guarantee we make about our sponsors, every one of them filled with lead. It's powerful guarantee. We're back, UM. And I wanted to start this by letting my nothing my audience know that that our guest today, Tom Ryman, has a bit of a superpower, which is and everyone who knows you know is this Tom, Which is that when you when you whenever you mentioned a movie and you will talk about, like, you know that guy who was in the background and that in that scene in American Beauty, and you'll be like, oh, yeah, it's such and such, and this is the other films they were in. I've never known anybody who can do that the way that you can. It's yeah, I thought you were going to tell everybody about my optic blasts. So I'm glad. No, I'm keeping that a secret for when Rob a Bank. No, I've been, I've been. I don't know. I just I do that like I keep it encyclopedic record of of dates and like people in movies and stuff. I don't know, it's it's uh, I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. But just the thing I do, I don't know, it's almost a souper like it is kind of a superpower like it's it's really it's really fun. And it made like when we when we were all I mean I lived together with like half of the people we worked with. It cracked and you were always over and just the movie conversations with you and Dave were always a tremendous amount of fun. Why I listened to your podcasts. Thanks Now we lived in your room, remember, Oh yeah you did. Yeah, I was up in the mountain. I was I was doing redacted things in the mountains and and mostly not home at that point in time, I'd forgotten about that. Yeah yeah, uh. The days of our lives like sand through the hourglass, tom So, like led through the hour glass, like led through the hour glass. So Joe Pine gets his first proper radio talk show, It's Your Nickel on w I l M. And again he's he's out of there, he's in there. I think this is like his second time working for them. Um and this article from the Broadcasters desktop resource makes it clear what kind of show. Joe ran the very first radio talk show quote. In his nightly introduction, he said, the mic is open. My name's Joe Pine. I guess you know yours the program. This program is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas and two differences of opinion. I don't know. I don't propose to have all the answers, but I do promise to talk about the things that interest you. So that's a nice little there's that free exchange of ideas. He did, I think kind of mean it as opposed to the people who say it today. I think they're naping him. But I'll play you some clips from his he did. He was, yeah, it's interesting. Um Now. The show did often become a shout a shout fest, with Pine definitely in control. No topic was sacred, from sex to religion to politics. But when he felt a listener had gone on for too long it was making no sense, he would make a rude remark, like you're sick and hang up on the post person, enduring Pine's abuse of rhetoric the challenge to the audience, many of whom tried to debate him before he hung up on them. His views tended to be quite conservative most of the time, and Pine seemed to dare his listeners to disagree with him. His style of arguing included using very derogatory terms. Known for being adept with words, his arsenal of insults and put downs became the stuff of legends. Among his best known were if your brains were dynamite, you couldn't blow your nose. There was also go gargle with razor blades and take your teeth out, put him in backwards and bite your throat. Jesus Christ, at least a man's creative. The third one is pretty nice. Yeah, I heard the other two. I'm like, yeah, there's are old standards and turn your teeth around. I'm like, oh yeah. So when he this is in nineteen fifty one too, while he's in the middle of changing Radio Forever, his old war injury flares up badly enough that surgeons have to amputate his left leg from the down. Um. So he's back in the studio with a prosthetic limb soon after, And while the fake leg was obvious to everyone who saw him, he never meant he or it did get mentioned on air. We'll talk about that a bit, but he refused to mention it on air. Judging by his pro union views, Joe was at least one at one point at least more of a moderate than he became. But the longer he's on doing talk radio, he pulls further and further to the right. Um. In nineteen fifty three, he celebrated on air when the US electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, saying, we finally incinerated those commies. I hope it was slow and painful. Good. Uh, that's interesting that the longer I mean, I'm sure you're gonna make this connection. But the longer he's on the air, the more conservative he pulls. And I wonder could that be because having bad faith arguments to generate we call him Ray clicks now, but stoke controversy by needling people and by playing the devil's advocate just to get people heated and arguing to fuel ratings for his own show. Yeah, I I really don't know. Um, I'm sure that was an element of it, because because clearly he's going after controversy, he's going after rage kids. But also we'll talk about it. He was not always the guy you would expect um. That's that's yeah, so we're building that. So Joe had a keen understanding of how to communicate with the lowest common denominator in US politics. He told reporters, quite without shame, that radio was geared towards the mentality of thirteen year old kids, and then most Americans were politically apathetic and easy to persuade of just about anything. He claimed that he used shocking language and would make extreme allegations in order to get people to think. He told The l A Times that while his critics called him a hate monger, all he really did was encouraged stimulating dialogue. He see, he knows what he's doing. And I think that's a big part of like he gets more right wing in his because it's easier to kind of, like again, speak to the mentality of thirteen year old kids. If you're just like making these kind of reactionary arguments. He wants to piss people off so that they react and he gets a show out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a part of it. That's not all of it, because he is When there were times when he would be challenged, and it kind of depended on how it was if he found someone interesting, even if they were coming in from a very different perspective, he would let them talk and sometimes very respectfully. So he was not well, he's he's the start, and he's doing a lot of unpleasant stuff. He's also not He's unequivocally a better person than Ben Shapiro, was what I'm saying, like right like, his goal in any given conversation wasn't just to own them. He would actually listen to people sometimes who are bringing up some pretty radical stuff. We'll get to that. Nineteen fifty seven, a little over after a little over six years on air, Joe left w y l M. This time it was his own choice. He was famous, at least locally, and his salary was forty two tho dollars a year, which is almost ten times the average salary form it's about four hundred grand a year in like modern dollars like. He was making real good money. This time, Joe left because his dreams had overgrown a very comfortable work in condition Um. He traveled to Riverside, California, and he got a job at a local radio station that quickly led to a TV job at kat l A and Los Angeles. He would later claim that his first TV show, which was essentially a filmed version of It's Your Nickel, had been a huge success. But the show lasted less than a year, and I found no clips of it anywhere. Um Joe moved back. Yeah, I'd be surprised if they're still there is a we have some clips of his the show that come next, came next, but it's because there's like a grassroots archival effort to like digitize all of the old tape master tapes. So after his first year in l A, Joe moves back across the country to Chester, where he works for a Philadelphia TV station for a first time for the for a short time, and then he goes back to w y l M for a little while. He licks his wounds. He's wounds. He seemed to know that a show like his, a political talk show where people could scream about politics to a mass audience, was the wave of the future and was going to be huge on television, but the world wasn't ready quite yet. For a few years, Joe continued to broadcast, but in the early nineteen sixties he decided the time was finally right and he moved back to l A. Where he got a job at k ABC and I'm gonna quote from the broadcasters desktop resource again. Once again, he polarized the audience, with some listeners and guests complaining he was too caustic, and others saying his candor was refreshing. But as in Wilmington's he had people talking about him and his show. From k ABC, he went over to k l a c in at nineteen sixty five doing the nine pm to midnight shift. Never want to avoid controversial guests, he put Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan on the air displeasure yeah, oh yeah, dope selearning the displeasure of the American Jewish Committee and a warning from the f c C. He also had guests, guests who believe it in eugenics, guests who were racists, guests with strange theories about past lives or UFOs, and the arguments continued. Controversy sold Joe salary balloon to two hundred thousand dollars a year, which is nearly two million a year by modern standards. NBC, Yeah he's making it bang, I mean, this is soon. He's giving people like what Tucker Carlson and stuff. Now I will be fair when he has Nazis and KKK members on so that he can scream at them, like yeah, well that it's still like it's still but like there's it's still problematic, but it's not as problematic as it is today, where you have people affiliated with similar organisms. You're talking about how yeah, get the hell out of here. He was getting outrage clicks. But at least the the understanding was people are going to hate these night. At least that was like the understanding. Yeah, at least that was the understanding. Yeah. Again, you can still argue, and I think it is pretty irresponsible to do that, but at least the understanding was, like, funk these guys. Let's let's yell at him here, let's not let's hear him out. Yeah. NBC Radio Network started syndicating his show nationally in March of nineteen sixty six, and it was soon on more than two hundred stations around the country. He called what he did fist in the mouth Radio, and now that he was on a new time slot the mid morning rather than the night as he'd usually been before, his ratings exploded. This is generally thought to be due to the fact that being on earlier in the day, opened him up to a vast new audience of board housewives. People were titilated. One of his networks advertised the show in a full page newspaper spread, listing all the Nazis and klansmen and other pieces of ship he'd had on his show, and then concluding with you may agree or disagree with Joe Pine, you may scream in rage at some of his remarks, but you won't turn him off. Yeah, I mean, what's what's the intent of that day? Is that? Is that shaming me? Is that like, yeah, yeah, you feel bad? I do, but you will turn him off? Yeah? You motherfucker you unless you turn him off. What this motherfucker off the air? But we can't. You like goom too much. Just son of a bitch. We tried to lock him the doors. He just shows up inside somehow secret doors. So Joe was on both the radio and the TV, and his television show All Learn alone earned him more money per year than Mickey Mantle played playing made playing for the Yankees. So he's making like more than Mickey Mantle money. Now, professional sports players made less money in those days, but still he's he's raking it. In he was the top rated talk show host and the second largest market in the US. Yeah, it feels wrong that that. I don't know. Yeah, like you said, professional athletes made less money back then, But like he feels wrong that, like's I know who Mickey mantelists anyone? Shouldn't he make all the money? So from Smithsonian Magazine quote. At a time when TV's leading men included Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Andy Griffith, and Captain Kangaroo, Pine was the medium's first shock jock, a firebrand who invited hippies, civil rights activists, and ku klux klansmen alike to take a hike or go gargle with razor blades. By the mid sixties, he was the most popular TV rate your Voice in America. Johnny Carson had more television viewers, but Pine, with a syndicated TV show and two hundred plus radio outlets, had an audience to rifle. Johnny's Life magazine called him sadistic, a barroom tough, but millions turned in to watch the fireworks. When a guest advocating free love set off a melee, Pines audience charged the set and knocked it flat One guest, the suave TV personality David Suskin, earned a chorus of booze for calling Pines program an orgy for morons. Host and guests both got a kick out of that. So it is like the first on air fight, Sringer. Yeah, yeah, he's also like Jerry Springer, the first Springs and um yeah Morton. We'll be talking about Morton later. Yeah. Um, like all, it's not just like Tucker Carlson the time they cracked every aspect of this really did he He's an important man to know about, Like he really Uh, he figured he was. Yeah, he figured some ship out most a bit shout. I wish no one had figured out, but he did figure it out. I can make millions if I put Nazis on the air. Yeah. Now, I think it's probably a better time to give you a better idea of how Joe sounded, because when you read it out the way I have put it together, it probably sounds like he's like a stereotypical modern shock jock. And while he was the prototype for that, his actual broadcasting style was much more subdued and witty. In this clip, Joe interviews an early vegan activist and what he called his beef box. Check it out. As you cannot hear the screams of a lamb in the slaughterhouse, you cannot hear the screams of your son on the battlefield. I I would like to ask you a meaningful question at this point. Are you a vegetarian? I am? Indeed? Do you ever eat tomatoes? I would say to you when the last three thousand years, man, imagine you a question? Do you ever eat tomatoes? Do you eat tomatoes? Of course I do you do? Do you know that there is now scientific proof that when you cut a tomato with screams, there is electrical there is a let a killer of tomatoes, and my friend tomato doesn't pay. The tomato feels no pain, and you're killing tomatoes blood does homado tomato? Guys, smild take alf Why are you gonna sing something? I would all right, this is a tomato stump. Uh as the animal dies, the slaughter of that animal, all right, that's probably enough of that. So yeah, what do you what do you think of? That was not what I was expecting. He sounds like Walter Cronkite and then he flips the funk out. Yeah, And then he flips the funk out, but he starts from this real low ed and he also does like he says, get off. But then the guy's like, well I want to sing, and he's like absolutely, please do. This is great. Yeah, that's going to be incredible content. And that clip was from six. Yeah, nineteen six feels extremely modern, especially like almost be on TV today his his extremely bad faith argument. Yeah, it's it's all he's a he's a he's a trailblazer time. Yeah, this guy can put this dude on TV right now and he would be the hottest thing. Yeah, it's amazing, and there's a level of almost um. Yeah, it's just different than the way they mock people today. Um, it's almost more. It's almost gentler um in a weird way. He's he's not he's not the same as what came after. Again, he's this weird mix of what we have today. And like Walter Cronkite, it's it's a fascinating, it's fascinating to just listen to his stuff. Um. When the civil rights movement kicked off, Joe devoted a tremendous amount of time to discussing the angry negro, which um it's more or less what you'd expect. In one episode, he brought on several militant black activists. I believe they were black panthers, and in a heated moment during the show. I've not been able to find this clip, but it's very famous. During the show, he opens his desk drawer to show them his revolver and he threatens them with it on air. UM, so he we could, he could go off. He advocated bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, obviously, UM, but he could also be a surprising man. And part became because he came from an era in which political figures could admit to learning something and changing their opinion, and in part because some of the issues that are now very aggressive are a lot less. We're a lot less settled in those days in terms of like how it was going to break down right or left. So he conducted an interview with Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown UM, and he started the interview by calling her a ding bat and then asked her to explain why girls should be considered equal to men in the workplace. But then he sat quietly while she gave her speech, like explaining her piece on women's liberation, and he applauded her at the end of it. Um, he was certainly more polite to women than towards men, and more polite to white people towards black people. But even when Uh, in interviewing people he clearly despised, Joe maintained an air that's just so much more congenial than what you see on TV today. Um. Here he is talking to Paul Krassner, a left wing magazine publisher who later went on to head High Times. So this is him talking with someone he fucking hates. Uh. Which deodorant does Lyndon Johnson use? Now? What does that mean? What is that? Paul Krassner? What is that? Which deodorant does Lyndon Johnson used? That's your front page head? Yes? Do you want to know which one by brand name? No? I want to know what is that? What is the what is the reason for that? Well? I think that the President of the United States is it such a height that people have a height height? He's put out such a pedestal that people have to realize that he is only a human being and does use a deodorant like you and me? And I'm a little worried about you. He's lighting a cigarette now, so yeah, that's like it's clearly again this is not somebody he particularly respects. But it's also like it's not a shouting debate. I guess this is what impresses, not impresses. Is the thing that that is interesting to me because like, you don't you don't have that kind of like congenial distaste. Is how it it feels watching them. Yeah, he feels more like Carson than like um A Tucker Carlson at this point. Yeah, And it's the kind I wish I could find the thing the interview he does with those those black panthers where he shows them his revolver, because I've heard different descriptions of it, some that make it sound like he's threatening them with a gun, and some that make it sound like he's just like, well, I have a gun too, and like I really don't know I and I don't I don't know what the actual tone was in that. Either one is entirely possible based on what you've shown me exactly. Either one makes complete sense, like he's he's more polite, but he's still he's still oh for sure, faith arguments and it's like yeah, and the interview with Krassner got markedly less friendly after the ad break from Smithsonian magazine quote why do you print the most obscene words? Pine demanded, do you edit your magazine because you were an unwanted child, to which Krastner responds, no, Daddy. Their talk with Downhill from there. He asked me about my acne scars, says Krassner. Now five, that was a low blow. I said, let me ask you something. Do you take a your wooden leg before you make love to your wife? And it's jo dropped. According to Krassner, the audience gasped, while Pines producers averted their eyes and Mr Ki surrealistic. That's good TV. Though, right there, that's good TV. So the listeners know this cool was his clip sixty seventh sixties seven Yet do you your fake leg in the sixties? Yeah, Andy Griffith is the biggest name in entertainment, and this ship's on TV. Holy sh it, like you could see, like, and that's part of the other thing that's interesting. Like I'm gonna guess a lot of his audience, if not most of it, weren't right wing, Like a lot of them are probably people who would like guys like Paul Krassner, but like want to see ship like this on TV. Um people have these kind of like conversations, So talk to fucking anyone, um and he could surprise you. But before we get into that, Tom, you know what else is going to surprise? You know, the quality of the products and services that support this podcast would be a surprise. Yeah, it will be a surprise. We're back, uh, and we're we're talking about what I think is one of the more surprising things I found. Um So, Joe Pine was one of the very first major media figures in the United States to platform a transgender woman discussing trans issues. Uh, and he did show in a way that is incredibly surprising for the time. This is from nineteen sixties six, um and I want to just play this. And the woman he's talking to, Christine Jorgenson, was like one of the very first super public transgender media figures, very famous, very famous. Um So, he's he's certainly not the first person to talk to her, but he's one of the first people the massive platform to sit down and have a long conversation with a transgender person in a a major outlet. And I think the tone of the conversation, given where we are now with the right wing on this issue, is going to be surprising to people. Yeah, it was our guests who first flushed the problems of transsexuals into the open. Christine Jorgensen was born a male. She was described in her high school annual as a clever lad. Later she became a private first class in the Army. Though outwardly a boy, Christine was sexually disturbed. The story of her later discovery and transformation electrified the world. It was the first chapter in a new outlook towards the transsexual phenomenon. And yet I can't believe that yours was the first operation of this type. It wasn't the first one was I think done somewhere in the area of nineteen twenty six or twenty seven there was a marvelous doctor in Germany called Magnus Hershfeldt who started the whole investigation to our in our modern age, let's put it that way. Before that, they may have been others, but I know not of them. Is this a legal operation in the United States? Yet? Oh? Yes, Oh, certainly you know they're doing it at Johns Hopkins now in bold more happens to be yes, and they're doing at the University of Minnesota Medical School, they've done five cases to the best of my knowledge, at University of California Medical School. How many people and you're a particular predicament do you think there are today? I mean, not those who have successfully assuming you have successfully bridged the gap, but how many were in that spot where they need this? Well, I could only judge by what I heard when from Johns Hopkins when I was in Baltimore several weeks ago, doctor Money and I did a television show together, and he's one of the doctors involved in Johns Hopkins and he asked me if he if I thought I knew how many? And I said, I don't have the vaguest idea And he said he according to his statistics, they should be thirty thousand transsexuals of both sides in the United States. To get it straight, at transsexual and transvestite differ in that the transvestite is addressing up type of homosexual. And you don't claim to be a homosexual, now I should say, you claim you're not a homosexual. Well, an interesting point if you say that if I was established and accepted by society for the first twenty six years of my life as a male. Then my emotional feelings during that period toward another male had to be considered a homosexual emotion in the eyes of society, although I never saw it that way in my own eyes. But again, Joe, may I correct something which has been very is very startling. I think that a transvest type they have proven statistically that of them are hetero sexual. Now this is even more interesting than ever in people who men who dress up in women's clothing are really, by the world standards normal. Wow. So yeah, that's what I expect. It surprising, Yeah, I mean, you know he does. He does say heavens to Betsy when she's she's talking about the different, but he's like the terminology. Again, this is nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, so let's say it is like, sure, okay, Joe, like he's actually like, okay, what's the proper term? What's the difference? That like explained what your experiences all about gendering her properly? Be very surprising? Yet wow, yeah, I I didn't. And I talked to a transgender friend of mine about this, and she did point out that Christine Jorgensen had some like kind of pretty anti gay attitudes. And one of the things that was going on here, and one of the things that made her acceptable is that like she was like, well, I'm not going to be like people like me won't be homosexual if we get to transition, because then it's yeah. And I didn't really catch that when I listened to the interview. Um, but I can see how that could have been an element here, although when he brings up homosexuality, I didn't note anything aggressive in it, Like he was just kind of asked for clarification about yeah, but not in this. I'm sure he I'm sure he was right, yeah, there's way yeah, But but so not the interview I would have expected. And it it I think it says less about him than it just does about how the issue had not been politicized at this point, like the existence of transgender people had not been politicized to the extent that it is now, even though was much more dangerous to consider transitioning back then. Um. It also there was not the kind of political um rancor behind It's just a fascinating piece of history. Um and evidence that like Joe Pine again, you could be a right wing firebrand on TV and encounter something you didn't understand and like learn about it on air without it being a like a thing. Yeah. Do you think that's a product of him being like a genuinely curious person, like if I want to learn new things, etcetera. Or is that more of a product of what you were saying about the issue where it wasn't clear which side of the political spectrum the issue was going to fall on, so he didn't want to go as hard as he normally would had the issue been more firmly settled on one side. I don't know. I've heard people theorize that part of why he was very polite and liked Christine Jorgensen is that she was a veteran like him, and he had just that kind of like respector like, well, whatever else about this person we fought in the same war together. I think some of it's also, I think the attitude and like the way people presented themselves like he was. He was a guy who was raised in a specific time where if people present themselves a specific way, you treat them a specific way, right, And I think people who kind of like Joe Krab or Krastner, you know, it's kind of like a left wing hippie type, and so he did not feel the need to be respectful. Christine like presented as like a very kind of like boogie, upper middle class white woman, and he treated her with respect as a result. The same was true of some other women he interviewed who he had a disagreement with. So I think some of it may just be that just like there was more of like a well, regardless of your feelings, if somebody presents in this way, if they if they match kind of our expectations of upper class white people behavior, you treat them with a certain level of respect and regard because that's just how we are. Um. No, it's it's it's a fascinating time, fascinating time capsule. Um. And that was I think maybe the longest clip we've ever played on this show. But I just I was really surprised when I came across that learning this is like, this is the guy who gave mental birth to Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Yeah, not the interview you would expect. As a last treat. I have one more thing I want to play for you, a segment from Joe Show where he talks with Anton LaVey, head of the Church by you're gonna have a good time with this one. Popcorn. Yeah, yeah, you get Anton LaVey on the TV, and you know you're gonna have a good one. And how do you make your living as a counselor sorcerer, practicing wizard, shaman, warlock, whatever you wish to call it. You're also a man which a warlock, well, a male which is considered a warlock, a male witch, but not a white witch, not like some of these people that have been on various shows that bend over backwards trying to convince everyone how good they are. They never performed black magic, only white magic. I think this is make that man disappear out of the dock. Out of the dock. Why should I want to? Because we have somebody else coming up. Of course I can't make him disappear because I am naturally cast in the mold of a human being, and I think less human and more meph to me, Thank you, sir, I called him a Devil's complimented. It's just remarkable to me. But degree the degree to which Anton LaVey looks like Joe Kuchin from Command and Conquer, the guy who played Kine, they're the same. Maybe Kane was Anton LaVey. That's my command and conquer theory. That's gonna be very funny. He doesn't. He looks. He looks like the villain in every f M V computer game. It's amazing. Where an ambulant. He's such a dummy. Every time he goes on TV. It's so funny, Like, no, I can't make that guy to speak white magic, white magic? Here you doing aunt? Yeah? I have to side with Joe on this one. But he got a magic here you up to magic? Are you gonna do? Yeah. By the late nineteen sixties, Joe was a very wealthy man. He drove drove a Rolls Royce and when he parked at the studio he was so frightened it would be vandalized that he had his network higher security guard to watch the car while he was on the air, man, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly, what are you doing? On paper? In many ways he sounded like the same kind of guy that many right wing media grifters are today. But the things he the thing he had that they all lacked is a sense of charm. There's a level of class that you get with Joe that just like is completely absent from everyone who follows. Yeah, it's it's it's more the more we hear of him. I had said he sounds like Cronkite earlier, but he really sounds more like like Carson or like a talk show most where it's like he can be warm and supportive until he's not, and then he'll turn on you and kind of ridicule you, but in a in a polite way. I can see how a lot of people who disagreed profoundly with Joe Pine could enjoy listening to his show in a way that like I cannot with Tucker Carlson or nobody's like nobody like hate watches for enjoyment Tucker Carlson. It's just too like horrifying, like nobody does that with Ben Shapiro or whatever. No, no, no no, that's an assignment. That's not something that is an assignment, that is that is a that is conflict journalism, like you are taking on pain. I'm looking at something nodding people could like enjoy like you enjoy, Like why I recommend watching him talk to Anton LaVey, it's a yeah, it's it's it's legitimately fun just to do real ship heads just tugging it up in the six daies. At one point he had at one point he had Harlane listen on as a guest. Now, Harlan Ellison's quite a fellow. At the time, he was a Los Angeles Free Press columnist, and he's now a legendary dead sci fi author, the author if I have no mouth, but I must scream and some other. The way you phrase that made it sound like he's legendarily dead, he is. He is a lot of people. I mean, Harlan Ellison was a famous missing throp. He made a lot of enemies and politically was pretty much the opposite of Joe Pine, although in terms of being unpleasant, they were both very unpleasant people. Famously, Harlan Ellison called Joe a hustler and a bully, but noted that he was very sharp. Quote. I thought I'd go on his show and beat him at his own game, but I blew it. I spent my time talking about the issue civil liberties and all that, and he talked about America. The trouble with Pine was that he was really really good at what he did now, and that that does get to like, yeah, you're ever gonna Win talking about the issues with these guys. That's not and you can only get Joe to listen when it wasn't something he saw as an issue. I think that's why his why that interview with Jorgensen went the way it did, is because it wasn't a political issue to his curiative interest. To me, she was curious, this isn't this isn't real, This is just some flighty nonsense, you know, Yeah, it's I mean, I don't think he was treating it like nonsense. He was treating it like he was just learning a new science. Fate. It wasn't political, it was not. He definitely didn't treat it the same way he was treating um the High Time orient On Levey. But I feel like he probably considered them in the same bucket of like, well, this isn't this is like a personal interest story, this isn't. Definitely in the same idea. He clearly respected her more than he did any either of them, But yes, I think it was the same kind of like, well, this is not a political thing, this is this is personal interest. This is just something that people are going to be fascinated by. That. I can also, like you can you can you can create a kind of like fantastic title for it. You know, it's something that will that will get people get eyeballs on the screen. Um. In nineteen sixty nine, Joe started having trouble breathing. He was diagnosed with with lung cancer. For years, he had jokingly called his cigarettes coffin nails, and you saw him light up at least one. He was always smoken um, your government issue cigarettes. He had repeatedly promised that he would never give up smoking, but he quit after getting his diagnosis. It didn't help when he got too sick to drive to the studio. He hosted his show from his home, making him a trailblazer in yet another way. Yeah, he was the first first to yeah yeah yeah. At the very end of his life, he lay in his bed ranting about the Peace Corps because they wanted to in the war in Vietnam. He died in nineteen seventy at age forty five. Thank you, comrades. Wow, yeah forty five. That dude was forty five. That dude was mainlining cigarettes his tire red life. From the time he was fourteen. He was probably spoken six packs a day. I want the listeners to understand that this motherfucker looks like in these clips we watch, he looks like he's at least sixty eight. Yeah, like he looks so old. I mean, in fairness, some of that's World War two. Yeah, I mean, it's it's like a joke on the Internet where it's like, man, people who were like thirty eight in in nineteen seventy five, it's like they were on door. Um, but like yeah, yeah, yeah, forty five. He's now yeah, younger than Oh, what's the guy, the funny man. All the ladies like him? He's the aunt man. What's his fucking aunt man? Paul Paul, Paul Rud's older than Joe Pine died at Now Paul Read is older than Joe Pine ever was and looks half And when Paul Rudd is seventy, he won't look as old as Joe Pine looked. At this dude looks older than yea um. The Smithsonian magazine lays out how directly his influence led to the creation of some of the most influential careers in modern right wing media. Quote. One of pines protegees, the controversial radio shouter Bob Grant, followed his mentor Pine as a talk show shatter in Los Angeles before moving to New York, where Grant paved the way for his successor at w a BC, Sean Hannity. Hannity had first gained national attention subbing for Rush Limbaugh, another Bob Grant fan. When Grant died in two thousand and thirteen, Hannity hailed him as one of the greatest pioneers of controversial, opinionated talk radio. Grant, in turn, had acknowledged his debt to the founder of in your Face talk. Even Vice President Mike Pence, who hosted a right wing talk show in Indiana in the nineteen nineties, was a successor of Pines. According to Harlan Ellison, who admired pine shrewdness while loathing his politics. I've appeared on that sort of show all over the country. They call it controversy, but they're all about vilification and hostility, and their motto is pot model is Pine. And Pine is again an odd figure for me, because when I first started reading this kind of stuff about him, calling him a bully, I expected a different kind of bully than the video's reveal. He's absolutely a bully, but he's subtler than the ones we see today. I found a column in the Saturday Evening Post from the nineteen sixties where a left wing reviewer tries to explain his appreciation for the Joe Pine show. Quote. After watching one of these shows, and it does not matter whether I loathed the guest, to the host or both, I feel somehow drained and less misanthropic. Not long ago, for example, I had a terrible day. I had a migraine, and my daughter sliced your finger with a razor blade, and I got a rejection slip, and a cop gave me a speeding ticket, my third this year, which means that I will probably lose my license. And in Los Angeles, that is like being a functional paraplegic. That night, I watched Joe Pine. His guests included a lady who complained that television sportscasters never carried drag racing results, a man who blamed the current racial unrest on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a veteran who said we ought to drop the big bomb on Vietnam. The vets said he did not fight World War Two. To throw this one away. It turned out that he had been in v mailman. I was outside the zoo looking in again. Life did not seem so bad after all. I went to bed and slept. Well that what's going on in that guy's life? Though? Yeah, that is honest. We had lost his license, his daughter cut Yeah wait, wait, you had access to razor blades. I'm not gonna blades or it was a different time, Tom, I'm sure he was giving her cigarettes to this down. This guy's life was already shaky. Uh for the show Pine show came to the picture. But yeah you can like, Yeah, the the appreciation you could have for Joe Pine if you weren't in the cult part of what makes him different from what came later, and in part to Tom, We're going to talk about what came later, but for right now, we need to talk about the ship. You've got to plose. Oh geez, all right, well um yeah, if you uh, I've got a Patreon, if you ever patreon dot com, slash game employed, you can uh find our podcast net words to me and David bell Um, but also from Cracked. We do a bunch of shows every week. We do. We just watched hype cast. We do Uh Fox Bolder is a maniac. Tom and Jeff Watch Batman, Star Trek, the next few, Durama, a bunch of great shows you can check out there. Um also do writing over at Collider um and for some more news uh and for one night Dred hot Dog. So you can look at all of those things. Check it. Oh yeah, all right, and you can you know, you can go to hell. That's right, go to hell. When you get to hell, tell Joe Pine that Roberts sent it. Tell Joe Pine Robert since you, and then kick him in the nuts and scream the name Rush Limbaugh. He won't know what you're saying. He died decades before that man was relevant. I feel like in the hell they just make you listen to clips of everything. Lives on this episode are repeat. We haven't even gotten to the back. Wait for part two. Yo,