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[Assistant] He was present at the massacre of the Shom Demars, and after that his paper became a windmill of attacks against the King, and the Queen, and Lafayette, and most especially the Catholic Church. Hebert was an avowed atheist, and one of the leading proponents of total de-Christianization.


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[Assistant] From that seat he supported the September massacres and used his paper to publicly defend the necessity of the slaughter.


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[Assistant] But though Hebert was obviously a far-left radical, he was also personally at odds with most of the Enragé leaders, and vied with them for influence over the sans-Q lot.


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[Assistant] And it was much to his chagrin that the Commission of Twelve lumped him in with the street maniacs when they went out looking for people to arrest.


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[Assistant] Hebert's other great rival for the hearts of the sans-culottes was of course Jean-Paul Marat, though it wasn't really much of a rivalry. Hebert published in Marat's shadow. Everyone did.


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[Assistant] But when Marat was assassinated in July, Hebert was determined to corner the market on revolutionary populism. And he was mostly successful.


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[Assistant] The circulation of his paper skyrocketed, and in no time Heber became what Marat had so recently been, the most influential left-wing journalist in Paris.


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[Assistant] But as he was donning the mantle of the voice of the people,


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[Assistant] Hebert turned his virulent pen as much against the enrager as against squishy moderates in the national convention.


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[Assistant] And he was about to help orchestrate a plot to push the enragé off the stage, or more precisely, up onto the scaffold.


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[Assistant] In September 1793, Jacques Hebert was wearing a number of different hats. He was of course editor and publisher of a hugely popular newspaper.


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[Assistant] But he also sat on the central council of the Paris Commune, and was a member in good standing of the Jacobin Club.


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[Assistant] This meant that he had followers in the street, power in city government, and plenty of allies in the national convention.


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[Assistant] So when the streets once again began to get restless after news that Toulon had surrendered.


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[Assistant] Hebert and his allies in the Commune, the Jacobin Club, and the Convention helped organize a popular uprising that would help them all co-opt the Enragé platform, win the loyalty of the Sans-Q lot, and eliminate the Enragé as an independent political force.


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[Assistant] On September the 4th, a mostly spontaneous demonstration outside the Hotel de Ville by workers demanding economic relief provided the perfect opportunity to initiate the plan.


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[Assistant] As a member of the commune, Hebert went out and told the workers to come back tomorrow, and we'll have ourselves a real organized insurrection.


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[Assistant] Then he declared September the 5th a work holiday to ensure a large turnout for the coming show.


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[Assistant] This time of course, the leading delegates of the national convention were not surprised when this mob showed up, and were instead prepared to receive them.


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[Assistant] And when the mob showed up on September the 5th, the co-opting began in earnest.


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[Assistant] As we've seen, the enragé more than anything else were driven by economic concerns.


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[Assistant] They had no money. They had no food. And their demands on September the 5th reflected this. They said, above all, we demand subsistence and demand that the government provide that subsistence by any means necessary.


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[Assistant] They wanted that promised revolutionary army to be raised, so we could go charge around seizing the food that they just knew was being hoarded by the wealthy.


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[Assistant] Appeals to patriotism and compassion and national unity were clearly not working.


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[Assistant] That is that the government use unflinching violence to ensure compliance with its decrees.


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[Assistant] On the surface, the Song Q lot certainly appeared to get most of what they demanded.


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[Assistant] But the concessions offered by the convention were designed mostly to complete the process of power centralization that had been ongoing since the insurrection of June the second.


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[Assistant] For example, though that revolutionary army that we've been talking about was finally given the green light to organize, it was initially limited to just 6,500 men.


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[Assistant] And when the 6500 most militant sans-culottes in Paris joined up and went out into the countryside looking for grain, guess where they weren't anymore.


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[Assistant] That's right, in Paris, causing trouble for the convention.


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[Assistant] Then there was the quote unquote concession, proposed by Donton by the by, that men be paid for attending the sectional assemblies, and that those assemblies would be held twice a week. Now that sounds great, right?


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[Assistant] So the twice a week mandate was really about severely limiting their ability to organize rather than enhancing it.


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[Assistant] And the payments for attendance? Well that's just straight buying people off. Because it would be the convention doing the paying, not the sections themselves.


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[Assistant] And wherefore comes the money, so too goes the loyalty.


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[Assistant] Then the convention agreed on September the 6th to appoint two new members to the Committee of Public Safety. And these two appointments would bring the total up to the infamous 12.


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[Assistant] These were two men who were adored by the song Q-Lot. Jean-Marie Callot-Desbois and Jacques-Nicolas Biovarennes.


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[Assistant] These two men would in time become the most infamous architects of the terror.


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[Assistant] But for the moment, their inclusion on the committee was all about legitimizing the Committee of Public Safety in the eyes of the Sankyu Lot, and ensure that their especially uncompromising brand of patriotic commitment would be directed on behalf of the committee, rather than against the committee.


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[Assistant] In the weeks that followed, further popular initiatives were handed down that again gave the appearance of radical populism, but which were mostly deployed to further consolidate central power. On September the 11th, another grain maximum was decreed that promised to keep the price of bread down. Once it was decreed,


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[Assistant] The harvest, collection, and transportation of grain was put under the direct supervision of the Committee of Public Safety.


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[Assistant] Then on September the 17th, the law of suspects massively broadened both the definition of suspect and the surveillance powers of the authorities to the point that basically anyone could now be dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal for any reason at any time.


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[Assistant] Now these enhanced police powers were technically put under the control of the Convention's Committee of General Security, the committee that had been mostly superseded by the Committee of Public Safety, but which still had jurisdiction over local police and reports of domestic treason.


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[Assistant] Now the Sans Q lot wanted the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Tribunal expanded, and suspects easier to arrest, because they were envisioning an all-out war on rich hoarders who live fat on the food that they were intentionally withholding from Paris.


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[Assistant] But the Committee of General Security had no plans to use their enhanced police powers to simply wage class war.


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[Assistant] Dominated by allies of Jacques Hebert, the Committee of General Security instead used it first to crush their enemies on the left.


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[Assistant] One of the first men arrested after the new law of suspects was decreed was none other than Jean-Francois Varley.


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[Assistant] Barlet being the other guy arrested by the Commission of Twelve along with Hebert back in May.


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[Assistant] Three days later, another of the major enrages, Theophil Leclerc, was intimidated into silence


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[Assistant] Threatened with arrest, he ceased publication of his radical newspaper.


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[Assistant] But what about the ultra-radical priest Jacques Roux, the most famous of the enrages?


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[Assistant] Oh that's right, he's already in jail. He was arrested on the night of September 5th for his role in inciting the insurrection.


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[Assistant] All of this is going to mark the end of the Enragé as a political force.


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[Assistant] A few weeks later, the convention then completed its co-option of the Song Q lot by rolling out an even more ambitious economic program.


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[Assistant] On September the 29th, they decreed the general maximum.


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[Assistant] The General Maximum was loved by the end consumer song queue lot in Paris, but was of course pretty much a disaster for everyone else.


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[Assistant] It legitimized the notion that high prices were caused by hoarders and price gougers and profiteers.


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[Assistant] Rather than the basic mechanism of too little supply meeting too much demand.


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[Assistant] Enforcement of the general maximum was then folded into the law of suspects, and pretty soon shopkeepers either had to sell their goods for less than they cost to acquire, or be denounced as traitors and executed.


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[Assistant] It pretty much diffused any possibility that the convention had to fear another Song-Q lot uprising, which is really what it was designed to do.


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[Assistant] As I've said now repeatedly, the insurrection of September the 5th was not about putting into place a more radical political and economic program for its own sake.


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[Assistant] This was all about giving the state, as personified by the Committee of Public Safety, essentially unlimited power to do whatever it wanted, and the means to enforce their will.


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[Assistant] So, we are now a long, long ways from the tennis court oath and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.


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[Assistant] The French Revolution is now fundamentally no longer about liberty and rights. It is about obedience and sacrifice.


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[Assistant] What had begun as a project to free the individual from the capricious tyranny of the state had now become the opposite.


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[Assistant] The individual now existed to serve the needs of the state.


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[Assistant] What's up everybody? This is Forehead Fables, Episode 6, featuring a guest that I have had lined up since this podcast was just a twinkle in my eye. Alright?


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[Assistant] And I had them lined up in DMs, but I didn't know when I was gonna do it. So then I went to Patreon and I pulled the patrons. I said, guys, who do you want on the podcast?


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[Assistant] And, uh, and of course, I put down the list. I said, uh, Charboard, Wilbur Soot, uh, Lieutenant Corbis, and somebody else, I forget who. And, and I went ahead and booked Wilbur Soot because he has a million subs. I figured he'd be the one. Everybody loves him. And, uh, and then I had him on the podcast. But, uh, it turns out you guys actually didn't want Wilbur Soot. You guys wanted today's guest.


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[Assistant] Anyways, I hope you guys appreciate this episode. It's a long boy.


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[Assistant] It's a long boy, man. Two hours and twelve minutes or something like that. I don't know how long. Well, I haven't edited yet, so it might be shorter than that, but it doesn't matter. Uh, uh, so, and I just started recording. I didn't introduce him or anything, so, uh,


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[Assistant] You're just gonna segue right into the middle of a conversation. Do you ever do like Uber Eats? Or anything like that?


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[Assistant] Well, they tack on so many fees and stuff. Like, there's like the delivery fee, the convenience fee, and if you're not a scumbag, you gotta tip the driver. And, uh, which, that's a huge point of contention between me and my brother because, uhm, I don't know what your belief on tipping is.


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[Assistant] Because, I don't, like, when I'm at a restaurant, my, cause I'm kind of a scumbag, right?


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[Assistant] But I feel like, I feel like it's just for laughs. Like when it comes to actually dealing with people.


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[Assistant] You know, I don't like it when people are serving me. And my biggest like gauge on whether or not someone's nice is how they treat waitstaff.


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[Assistant] Now, I've never been a waiter before, and I've never, that's like, everybody says that, they're like, oh, you'll treat them better if you were a waiter or a waitress. Like, if you've had that job, you understand. I don't even have to be a waiter or a waitress to look at it and go, that job kinda fuckin' sucks, they should probably, you know.


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[Assistant] And, and like there's that huge thing, especially like our generation, they're like, uh,


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[Assistant] Well, I, you know what I do? Is I, I tip the same amount every time. And, and I just-


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[Assistant] Or, not only that, but like, uh, half the time when people are pissed off about their service, it's cause they cooked their food wrong or something like that. I'm like, do you think your waiter's cooking? No, he's just bringing shit from the kitchen to you. He doesn't.


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[Assistant] Well like, my, my brother with uh, Uber Eats, it's not Uber Eats around here, this is like the one time in the past 20 years where like a startup industry hasn't just been taken over by one company, you know? Like Facebook dominates, right? And then when, when like,


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[Assistant] It's, they have some in Tallahassee, and then they have some in like Michigan, and then they have some in like Arkansas, like they're all over.


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[Assistant] And when my brother orders it, he's like, he doesn't tip.


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[Assistant] That affected his score considerably.


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[Assistant] It's, uh, it's in the same room as my office, like my re- where I do my regular... video gaming.


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[Assistant] Well, you know, I was actually going to put out one for you, but then I realized I don't think you have your face leaked yet. No, I don't. So I could just put the picture frame up and have a random picture of somebody.


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[Assistant] Oh yea, that worked, dude. Or, uh. This is what, uh, Charborg looks like. I'm gonna put a picture of Steve Harvey in there.


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[Assistant] Oh, okay. I was thinking about going to this one. You know, I usually try to avoid those things because they, uh, the idea of a convention kinda weirds me out. Yeaah. Yeaah, I think it's just...


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[Assistant] You know, it's just a bunch of dudes circled in each other. But then I thought, you know, I could pack up all of my mic equipment into a suitcase and then just bring like an extra pair of undies and go up there and set up, uh, the podcast in the hotel room.


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[Assistant] But uh, I've, I've just heard tell of it, you know?


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[Assistant] Is it that you don't know porn stars because you look at exclusively amateur pornography? Because I know that's a niche. Some people are just into amateurs. Or do you just not look at it at all? No, I just don't really look at it.


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[Assistant] When it's more than one tit, you know, I don't wanna, that's too much.


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[Assistant] Wait, so, you know, I realized I had a problem when like someone, uh, they, they showed me like a, they were like, dude, look at this fucked up nipple. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, that's Faye Reagan's nipple. I recognized the nipple. I was like, that's Faye Reagan's nipple. She's got puffy nipples.


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[Assistant] Let me tell you something, talking about nipples, I could recognize her nipples because I don't know how she got so big as a porn star because she has like the most ratchet boob job of all time.


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[Assistant] It looks like, oh my god, it looks like someone took a can opener and like, cut off her nipple.


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[Assistant] Dude, I'll flag it. I'll pull up an image right now. I'll show it to you. Hold on. Mia Khalifa nipple.


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[Assistant] No, I don't think they make them. I think male porn stars make even less.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think, eh, females make, well, cause they're in demand, nobody really cares about the guy.


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[Assistant] And then, uh, uh, but the females, and it's weird. You can tell, I bet you they don't make a whole lot because they, uh, it's a depressing line of work, I feel like. And most of the people that are in it are either, uh, they either have like some sort of super high sex drive to the point where it's, it's some sort of like issue.


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[Assistant] It's either like a mental issue or they're, uh, on drugs, you know? And so they use it to like pay for the drugs.


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[Assistant] Oh damn, I didn't even think about that. Dude. But there's a lot dude, you know, when you've been, when you've looked at it as much as I've looked at it, you look at some scenes and you're like,


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[Assistant] You need to watch a porno documentary. Because there, it's, I've never seen a happy one. I've never seen-


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[Assistant] Well, because after you watch it, you can't in good conscience watch porn anymore.


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[Assistant] You were so fucking lucky you uploaded that Kentucky video. Why? Because I was like, well, first I contacted you, I was like, okay, I gotta get this guy on here. And then, and then I was, and then I started doing research and I started looking and I was like, I was like this piece of shit.


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[Assistant] That's why I was saying the Kentucky thing. Save your ass. Cause I went to go watch it. And uh, and I've never seen anything. Like I've...


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[Assistant] I've done things where like I'll have a record, right, and then I'll get like a cohesive narrative from whatever I have, footage wise, and then I'll go in and I'll film in some like extra junket stuff that I can kind of throw in there in like the replay editor, but you did an entire


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[Assistant] Okay, part of me says, congratulations, that is the most work I've ever seen anybody do on a GTA video.


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[Assistant] Great job. And the other part of me says, you took this like Asperger's Kubrick work mentality to a fucking GTA video. Like what are you doing?


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[Assistant] We've done this a couple of times. You had that, uh, that ghost man, or, uh, what's his name? Ghostmane? Yeah, Ghostmane. He, he, he like, made like this.


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[Assistant] You ever have, well I, you do have those moments, but I have those too where you'll have.


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[Assistant] Like a video idea, and it's like funny in your mind, and then uhm, and, but you know it's too short to ever make into a video.


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[Assistant] The only way I'll watch stuff of mine is if it, if it's like an old video where I'm having fun with friends, you know? Cause it's like you're reliving that experience.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you look back on the good days. Yeah, I look back on the good days. Now, uh, I played cards against humanity with a bunch of my friends on New Years. Yeah, I saw that.


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[Assistant] Like, editing-wise. And then, uh, but I'll never watch it.


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[Assistant] Ever. Because it's just me solo. I don't want to rewatch. You know, I think every YouTuber is an egomaniac, but I'm not that much of an egomaniac. I'm gonna rewatch my own.


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[Assistant] I think that's why, uh, people hated Frankie on PC so much.


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[Assistant] He was like the biggest daisy slash battlefield guy.


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[Assistant] Uh, battle, uh, yeaah, yeaah, he played a lot of battlefield. You've never seen a Frankie on PC in 1080p video?


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[Assistant] The guy for cinematic, serious roleplay gameplay shit. And he would, and you would see, this was back when, uh, YouTube was different. Like if, if you were a creator and you commented on somebody else's video, like it would sometimes like send you a notification or something like that if you were subbed to him. And you would see all the time,


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[Assistant] If I went to like another battlefield video or a daisy video, he would just be in the comments and be like, wow, why didn't you spend as much time editing like I spend on my videos? You're such an asshole.


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[Assistant] The, uh, well did you hear about like his whole past, like the reason why they think he didn't kill himself?


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[Assistant] No, I don't even know what he did. Honestly, I haven't kept up with that.


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[Assistant] He was like a financier, but he would also, he, I think he had like a private jet is what it was, and he would kinda socialize with, uh, uh, the, the 1%. I guess I'll just- Shut that dog up, please. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out there and beat that motherfucker.


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[Assistant] Yeah, he, uh, he would have like a jet, I think is what it was. And then he would have-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? Jesus Christ. And he, and he would get like the 1% on there, including like, uh, Prince Andrew, I think, from England. And uh. And Mia Khalifa, she was there. Mia Khalifa was there. And uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, Trump, maybe. Uh, oh, the Clintons, they were on there. And, uh, and he would just kinda, uh, socialize with people. But the, the thing is that he also got busted for...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He, he got arrested for, uh, being a pedophile. Apparently a lot of the people that he would have like escorts and stuff on his plane that were underage.


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[Assistant] As young as 13 years old. So then he goes to prison. They have him on suicide watch. And then, uh, for five days they take him off a suicide watch. He kills himself. The mystery, the conspiracy theory is that he got killed by people like the Clintons.


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[Assistant] It's international waters. Or international airs. I don't know what the rules are up there. Only God can judge you there, you know? If he can see you. But you're on a plane, he can't see you.


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[Assistant] They talk about like there being this giant pedophile ring of the powerful and everything. Now let me do a major hypothetical here. Let's say...


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[Assistant] You're a rich and powerful person. Top of your business, right? You're like Forbes 500 type rich person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The worst possible thing you could possibly do in society besides being like a serial killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is being a child molester. A fascination for children. Yeah. What do you think are the odds that of, of like us meeting at, at like a, uh, uh, you know, like a cocktail party or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we're shaking hands, and you're like, oh, you're in charge of, uh, uh, the oil pipelines. Heard that's a profitable business. And then, uh, and then...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, if you had that as a fetish, that would be the last thing you would ever tell anybody. Especially some asshole cutthroat business man that's worth billions of dollars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? Yeah, you would think it would be like a, uh, you ever seen Eyes Wide Shut? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they all have like the masks on. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. It's just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This might be one of those things where we're gonna have to, uh, do some, uh, what's that, the kind of method acting, you know, we're gonna have to get into the part to really understand. And then like, in like one week when we're arrested,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was frail. Yeah, he was frail, and like, he, he, I went to, uh, set up for a baby shower over the weekend, and I had to, uh, carry, uh, like 60 folding chairs, and the next day I, like, couldn't get out of bed, like, I was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what's funny? Is I was, uh, when I was really fat, right? At my peak when I was, you know, laughing at cards against humanity and getting hernias.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was sitting there, every fat person has this, uh, this thought. You look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, you know, deep down under there, there's some muscle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, cause fat makes you look, somewhere, fat makes you look a little bit muscular. You know, like there might be some muscle under there. It's a mystery. Is that what fat people tell each other? Yeah, that's what they tell each other. You know, hey, I'm heavy. I take a lot of muscle to move around. You know, my legs might be strong. Something. But, uh, I lost


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, no, that was, it's the fucking highest rated audience rated TV show in history. Oh really? Yeah. It's 97, no, 9.7 out of 10 is what I got rated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's out of 10, so it's not like 9.7 out of 100. But the, uh, uh, doesn't that show make you fucking scared of radiation?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's funny though is that that show gives you like great insight as to how the Soviet Union worked. Like it was like a bureaucracy, like a big company. Cause everybody was scared to go to their superior to be the bearer of bad news, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, have you seen the, uh, the missile explosion that happened in like Siberia this week?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what's funny about Chernobyl is they, uh, everybody was like, Hey, there's, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah. Something small happened. Yeah, something small happened. Well, just like last week, or a couple days ago, there was a massive nuclear explosion in Russia on the northern coast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're like, well there was a major radiation spike, and they're like, something small happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A giant nuclear bomb goes off in Russia, and they're like, yeah, it happens to be, uh, something small happened at the, they have like a missile testing site, a super secret missile testing, which nothing's super secret anymore, we got Google Maps, dude. If you type in Russia's super secret missile site, they'll tell you how to get there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so for like, are you like a Christian or anything?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, alright, so I didn't want to like piss you off, but you know when you're in like humanities courses in college and stuff they tell you that there's


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because history, it's so many years ago, there's no definitive like, here's the point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The inception of Christianity as a religion, right? But they can sit there and go like, oh, but there's aspects of like the Epic of Gilgamesh that carry over to Jesus. There's Zoroastrianism that has a lot of ties to Christianity. And so you can see where like Christianity took things from other religions in order to make theirs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's not enough definitive proof for, like, Christians to just call it off. They're like, nah, I'm sticking to it, I believe it. But!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fast forward 2000 years, and where, uh, now we're at a point where, like, the flat earth society, there's people that dead ass believe the earth is flat, and you can find the guy that started it, and he was like, he was like, yeah, that's a joke, that was, that was starting


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you serious? Like what are you talking about? There's legit people that believe it. And, and then the same thing with like area 51. Like it was started as a joke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The guy that started it was like, obviously a joke, and then it got so big that there's people that are legitimately taking it seriously now, like rating area 51. Yeaah, yeaah, yeaah. It hit my local news, and like my local newscaster was so dead ass serious about it, he was like, uh, and the official page says, and I quote, we want to see them aliens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like they had shit there that I'm sure cost billions of dollars and they just want to see aliens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, experimental planes. That's what it is. And missiles and stuff, and drones, that's where they like test all that crap. At least that's what it was in the 50s, and that's what it, I think, still is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the people, I think like the biggest concern would be people showing up to Area 51 with like guns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a possibility, you know, uh, cause people are going wild now, going on like crazy shooting sprees, but uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know that deep down in Area 51 they have to have, have you ever seen those like array things that they'll put on top of a van and it just shoots like microwaves in a direction and it just like melts your skin? Have you ever seen this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, like get something from the middle of a field and like, and they were like, you have to get it. And so like, and he knew he was gonna get hit with it, right? And he was trying everything to get to it and then they hit him with it and he


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But apparently it doesn't do any, like, long term harm. I mean, as they, as they know of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have you ever seen the ones from Vietnam where they would plant bamboo?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I talked to a guy that worked as a, uh, and, and like he was the quote unquote interrogator for the, uhm, I think he was in the army. And he was over in, I think he was in Iraq. And he,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like, so what kind of shit do you do? And he's like, well there's the Geneva Convention, so we can't do...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like this is an official military thing. Yeah, we can't do any mustard gas stuff or anything. So, uh, or take pliers to them. So what they do is they do just like shitty psychological things where they'll keep them in a room with a concrete bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like the room's just cold and, and, and he'll walk in and he'll be like, oh dude, how you doin' man?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You doing good? What'd you have for breakfast? And the guy's like, oh, I had shit. I had shitty food. And he's like, dude, hey, you know what? I'll get you something better to eat right now. We got hot stuff in the, in the canteen. I just saw it, uh, a second ago when I was over there. And, uh, wait, you don't have a mattress? Dude, I'll get you a mattress and a blanket. Dude, it's fucking cold in here. What the hell are you doing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You want like a deck of cards and stuff? Jesus Christ, the way they're keeping you. Anyways, I know you had some friends that were in the Taliban. Can you write their names down?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then it'd be like, and the guy would be like, oh, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't write that down. And he's like, ah, well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Technically, he wasn't mistreated by any one person, he was just neglected, which I, that's a gray area, you know? Yeaah. It's a, you're gonna look like shit going in a tribunal against the American government and going,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, this guy kept promising me, promising me a blanket and never, he never came back with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is it the one where it's like water creatures? Where they're like humanoid water people?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, that witch movie was great though. That was like, it had such a dense, like, forested area. Just, it was creepy. I loved it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It sucked! Abby's the same way, dude. I have movies that I watch with Abby and then I have movies that I watch by myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Becky Brown almost. Like, uh, have you ever seen that one?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I thought it was great. The, uh, that ending, man, was fantastic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's funny, I think it's a hilarious scene, but a lot of people don't think it's funny at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, not pissed about it, I have one where I'm like really embarrassed by something. Like, I just, I always look back on it. What it was is I used to work at this apartment complex, right? And I was, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was thankful that I had gotten the job, is what it was. And it was the first time where I had had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some money to go, like, bring. Cause Abby had worked for a long time before me. Right? So I was like, that boyfriend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or I'm just kinda like a bum. Yea, you're just a loser. Yea. And uh, and so I had this job and I was able to take her out for like a nice dinner date and stuff and pay for some shit. And uh, and it felt good. And I was trying to tell my boss that I appreciated it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that she had hired me and everything and I did it like in front of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I, I know what you mean with like, uh, you ever seen like, Louie? That Louie CK TV show? I didn't, I never watched that show, but I know about it. That's it, the entire existence of that show is just, I can't watch it. I can't watch it. It is, that's what it is. It's just awkward. And like, I know people,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get that feeling every once in a while from the office whenever, like, Michael opens his fucking mouth and I'm like, yeah, it just depends on what it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember I was starting to get it from, there's like a scene where he thanks the concierge as like an escort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a hotel. I was like start, that was last night, it was like starting to build up in me. But then the scene didn't capitalize on that awkwardness. Like he, then it cuts and some other stuff happens and he meets her at a bar later and he does end up hooking up with her. But I was thinking he was just gonna call her out as being like a, a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, quote unquote, like, cringe compilations had first started to come out. Do you remember the Harlem Shuffle?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a, there's, when people were doing Harlem Shuffle videos,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Harlem Shake. Sorry, I was saying, they're... Harlem Shuffle? That's an actual dance in the Harlem Shuffle. Yeah, I think that's an actual dance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Harlem Shake. So people are doing the Harlem Shake videos. There's this kid that's in like high school and he has his friend filming him and he's like, he's like, come on man, we're gonna, we're gonna do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the, the cameraman like follows this kid who you can tell is a dork. He's just a sniveling little melvin. And he busts his way into like a full cafeteria. And it's over like his shoulder perspective. Full cafeteria. Of people. And nobody joins him? And he goes, EVERYBODY DO THE HARLEM SHAKE!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You turn inside out from pressing so hard. But if you keep watching, he just, it's quiet and then he goes, COME ON EVERYBODY!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, you go fuck and watch one of those right now and tell me it's as funny as a recent video. Yeaah. You tell me you've got a straight face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I realize that comedy is such a like weird, uhm, subjective thing because I'll watch stuff that's supposedly quote unquote hilarious, you know? Like have you ever watched like a Kevin Hart special or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or Ali Wong, I think her name is, and I'm like, ugh. Abby made me watch that, and I'm like, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, cats. Yeah, cats. Did you see the trailer for that? I did, I did. Oh my god. You know what? Everybody's bitching about the wrong shit on that. Everybody's bitching about how the cats look.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They, uh, yeaah, those editors, man. You know what's funny though is one of the best trailers I've seen recently is the, uh, Joker trailer. Did you see that trailer? The new Joker movie? No, I haven't yet. With Joaquin Phoenix? Oh my god, it looks good, man. It looks so fucking good. That's what I liked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's exactly what this Joker trailer is, is it's, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, you are getting the vibe of what it is. Yea, and I love that shit so much. It's like, if you thought the Dark Knight trilogy from Christopher Nolan was like, that's quote unquote the most real, grounded in reality superhero franchise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I straight up walked out of the theater. It's the only movie I've ever walked out of the theater on. Really? Yeah. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was young at the time, so my judge of movies might have been a lot worse. But I think looking back on it, it was probably pretty bad. Also the, uh, there was another movie called, uh, The Good Shepherd, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, have you ever watched a movie and then, and then, uh, and then thought it was bad and then rewatched it later and you were like, oh, I was just in the wrong frame of mind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, that's like a, I think, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I hated the first time I watched it. Cause it just seemed like, substanceless. And then I, cause it's a slow moving movie. And then I watched it the second time and I was like, that was a damn good movie. I thought it was really good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was a kid and just- Yo, this old western kinda hit a little bit different though. Yeah, dude. Yeah, the, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's some old movies though that are like, regarded as these classics and I go to watch them and I think they're just dumb as shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's the most overrated shit of all time. I think what made it important was it was like the first movie of that kind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what I mean? But there's better movies than that now. I've done that exact same thing. Or uh...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what movie is, is, that I always thought was interesting was uhm, you ever seen Once Upon a Time in America? No. No? That's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a movie where you watch gangsters grow up as kids. Like, from the time that they're kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During, uh, uhm, like turn of the century in New York, all the way through like prohibition, and they become gangsters. And, uh, and so naturally as a viewer you're like, oh it's a kid, I'm on his side, you know, a kid's a kid, you can't think of them negatively, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just do vile things or something? Yeah, like the main character, uh, Robert De Niro is like the main gangster and he ends up like raping this bitch in the back of a car and like at that point you're like, this guy's kind of a fucking scumbag. Yeah dude. And, and you realize you're not really supposed to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess, sympathize with them. Like, they're just assholes, but you like, watch them. It's like, almost like as a parent, you know, you get that kind of perspective. Like, oh, it's my little kid, and then they turn out to be like Jeffrey Dahmer, and you're like, Jesus Christ, where'd I go wrong?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I never got why he wanted to assassinate that candidate. Like, was it just to lash out? I never got the, the-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think it was like he just was crazy as fuck. You ever seen, uh, um, Finding Nemo?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, Finding Nemo is funny because it's two different movies depending on how old you are. Cause like when you're watching as a kid, you know, the kid, the kid like, uh, if you remember the plot of Finding Nemo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well then here, you'll relate to this perfectly, or it'll be a good story. So the, uh, the beginning,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fuckin' mom and dad clownfish, uh, they have their eggs and their little sea anemone, right? And then some fuckin' fish attacks or somethin' kills the mom and then eats most of the eggs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's just the dead clownfish left with the, with the fucked up little egg, which turns out to be Nemo who has like a fucked up fin, right? Yeaah, I remember that. He's got that little fin. Yeaah. Yeah, funny Nemo. And so, and the dad's like super protective, right? And like, as a kid you watched that movie and you're like, dude,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That motherfucker dragged me across the entire ocean, getting chased after by sharks and shit, had to hang out with Dora, that dumbass bitch, with the Ellen Degeneres voice, can't remember anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what I never understood about Twilight? Is when they, uh, when they fuck, isn't, uh, uh, Edward's cock ice cold?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's Fifty Shades of Grey is a fanfic of Twilight. Now Twilight was, uh, reading those books makes you feel like a fucking genius cause you just fly through them. They, they're written for, they're like a teen novel series. You can just almost just sit there and browse it like you're reading an instruction manual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Interesting. No, no, they have sex. They, they talk about it. Yeaah, they have sex.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, like, uh, yeaah, that's why I watch Taxi Driver, cause, uh, what's her face? Uhm, how old was she? Jodie Foster, she was like 13 in that movie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I gotta call some people. I think she was like 13. You know, I think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was something to do with, it was like, their infatuation with her in that movie was the reason someone got shot or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I forgot about that, dude. Yeah, he's a fucking- What sexuality is that where you just sort of end the plan? Have you seen those videos where they're like earth fuckers or whatever? They're like- Yeah, they drill a hole in the ground and just fucking- fucking mount up. Mother nature.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the, uh, have you ever seen those videos of the Russian guy that like, he like takes his semen and injects it with a needle into an egg yolk? Yeah, and it makes a homunculi. Yeah, homunculi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I think the Granado is someone else. I don't think those are Russians in that game, are they? Yeaah, they are. Yeaah, I don't know. They are. Granado! Might be like Ukrainian or something. One of them satellite countries.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You ever have like a clip of, uh, of something that you want to use for like a video, but you just don't have that instance where you're ever gonna use it? Oh yea. That's non-stop. I have a clip from an anime where it's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll get you the name. You keep talking. It's uh, the guy goes, hey man, it's so poorly dubbed. He's like, hey man, watch out for vampires. And the guy just like snaps his neck around and goes, you wouldn't know what a vampire is if it jumped up and bit you on the end of your fucking dick. So just leave me alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's funny as hell dude. It's so- You know what's funny is at the beginning of this, I think we- like I wanted to segway into something and it was uh- Oh wait, has the podcast started? I was actually gonna ask, when do you wanna start this thing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I don't, don't worry about it. Well, I was gonna say though, at the beginning, I was talking about like, it was when we were talking about the, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nirvana like little clips you do and stuff. I have a couple of those where I've thought of them and then I realized that, uh, you know, it's just, it's not worth putting the effort into. One, because either they use copyrighted music or it's like the concept's too weird to even do it as a full-fledged video.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I got one that I think is pretty funny and it's uhm, have you ever used like Google Keep or like Notes or something like that? Apple Notes?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and I have like all these ideas written down on Google Keep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go, free of charge. Uh, I have this idea that I don't know if I could ever make it into anything, but it's uhm, have you ever seen like those documentaries where uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If this guy, like a hermit, he goes out, makes this badass documentary, comes back, and he's totally cut off from society for a while, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, and so he doesn't know of all the things that have happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, and so he gets invited to the Academy Awards to win, and when he wins his Oscar, he goes up there as an acceptance speech, and he's like, guys, I haven't, uh, I've been cut off from society for a while, so, and I'm not a Hollywood celebrity, so I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you're supposed to say when accepting a reward. Or no, an award. So I looked back on previous broadcasts to kinda get an idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. You know, I feel that same way about, uh, I think part of what it is though, is that guy is using YouTube, you can tell, you can smell it. He's using it as a stepping stone to get on TV or in the movies. He's gonna be somebody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what my favorite is though? You kind of do this. You're a little bit, uh, you know, you put all this work into your video, but then you're like thumbnails and titles. You just like shit them as like most carefully as possible. You ever seen like critical?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dumping ground. It is a garbage pile of everything he's ever made. And at first I looked at it and I was so pissed off. I was like, dude, you have such disregard for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess like, I came at it with such a snobby, douchey attitude. He's just total disregard. He's just throwing it up there. And he uses that shitty camera. It's like this webcam. And it's shitty everything. Everything's shitty about it. And then I realized that he garners so many views because it is 100% about him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, none of it matters, the quality doesn't matter, it is just him. And that's where the quality is. And it cracks me, he doesn't use thumbnails, doesn't use tags, doesn't use, his titles are just like, fuck it, whatever. Like, catch trailer, review.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This ruins me every time, but whenever I pick up like a glass or a plate or something out of the cupboard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm doing shit. No, the house is not gonna be fucking clean. She's like, I would like like, you know, the house picked up. I'm like, dude, when you get, when you walk through that fucking door is when I clock out, I'll clean the kitchen then. I'm not cleaning it while you're working.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause you got shit to do. Yeah, I got shit to do. I make more than she does. Fuck off. She should come home and clean the fucking kitchen. You know what's funny? Is she tried, one time we got into a fight, and she was like, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, uh, I came to bed, right? And she was already in bed. And she tried rolling over and looking at me and going, go sleep on the couch. Which has never happened in our, like, cause we don't get in fights that often. You know, I'm a fucking angel. I'm easy to get along with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's what it is. Well, she, she cocked her head over at me and was like, go sleep on the couch, I don't wanna sleep with you. And I, I looked at her, I was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I know that feel. Yeaah, it's like, as soon as, like, the argument starts, yeaah, your mind kinda goes into like a, like a, it fades on the edges and then you just start swingin'. You know, I know that feel. Like, I have an argue with somebody and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, especially when you're with someone that long, uh, what's that, that saying, familiarity breeds contempt, you know? Cause, you know, at first when you first start dating, you're like, oh, it's cute the way she eats food. And then after like 10 years, you're like, well, you just fucking chew it normally. You fucking weirdo. And I get that. I get that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I think what it is is like there's tension between me and Abby because of our parenting differences, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want it, I want it to be as relaxing as possible, which it can't be with a kid. So what I do is like, I have this baby gate that closes off the kitchen, but it's low enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's like the living room, like I close all the bedroom doors, and then I close, I have the baby gate, and then the living room is like the safe area. I can sit there, you can watch TV, you can look at your phone, you can...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pick up the house, whatever. She's in that area. It's a pretty big area, but she can walk around, pick up her toys, do whatever she wants, and she can't die in there. There's not like bleach she can drink, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's a very hands-off parenting technique. She can do her own thing, learn how to balance all that crap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just, if you just fucking make sure you close shit, you don't have to worry about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was cool about mine was my parents divorced and then they were fighting for my affection so I had like really bomb Christmas presents for like years. I think I heard you talk about that before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you know, I, I, uh, I didn't have a problem with it really. I think it messed up my brother though. My brother started like acting out, cause he was like, I'm the man of the house now, I ain't gonna listen to you mom. But I was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what the most fucked up thing was? I was introverted as hell. And it took my mom a couple years to realize that when she was, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do everything the fucking hard way kind of person. And he, I, I used to get home, this would piss me off, I would get home,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Off the bus from like middle school or elementary school and I would walk home and I would hate to see his car in the driveway because I knew he had some fuckery that he wanted me to do. And he was the kind of person that was like, oh shit, it's Friday, which means we have this afternoon, Saturday and Sunday to get whatever we're doing done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like, I remember we had, uh, our house had, uh, it was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A ranch style home. On the left side it had a carport.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he had this great idea one time, he was like, let's close in that carport and turn it into an extra living room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I would sit there and fill up that fucking carport and we'd made the foundation and everything, filled it up and then, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I turned that place into a fucking living room and it sucked. It sucked. Like he, this motherfucker, he was the only person I've ever seen that he saw this house that was about to get demolished and he was like, that's a pretty good looking house. And the people were like, hey, well, uh, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plantation, like imagine the house from like, uh, you know the one Don Johnson had from, uh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jango Unchained, the guy that wears the whole white suit, like it was a house like that, like a plantation style home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's so bizarre. I don't know man, he was a weird guy, but he did it, and it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, uh, uh, my uncle used to always call me and my brother rentakids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I've always wanted to own a franchise, like a restaurant franchise. Not like all of them. I'm saying like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jesus Christ, it's still like another 10 minutes till I get to the window and I already ordered. I can't leave now, I've already paid, so then you're stuck in the line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I don't like the nuggies. They're, they're like, yeaah, they're like sweet or something. The chicken's different on the sandwich than it is on the nuggies. I swear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honestly, I could get any of the sandwiches that they have. They're pretty good. Even the grilled one's pretty good. I never had that. Dude, I'm a man over all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like going to Italian places. Like if you, uh, chicken parm or, uh, uh, alfredo. You can't go wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanna see a restaurant fuck up alfredo or chicken palm. I-I-I challenge a restaurant to fuck it up. There is no way you can mess up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what I did? I think I did mine and it like pissed off a lot of people because mine was, uh, it was basically the places I ate at.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what my grandma does? Is she'll go in, like, I'll, I'll, like, drive by McDonald's on my way to, uh, see her. And she doesn't get out much, so I was like, hey, uh, you know, can I get you anything from McDonald's? I know you like McDonald's. And she's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had to buy her a fish filet. Who the fuck orders that? A filet of fish, that's what it's called, a filet of fish. And that thing just stunk up my fucking car. I was like, dude, there's no, I almost felt like buying her something else, just saying, oh, they were out of it. They were out of your gross sandwich.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's great. My grandpa was in the hospital and he was eating, uh, they brought him, I think he thought it was like a turkey platter, like with a bunch of turkey, but what it was is it was like a platter of food and then it had a piece of bread. He's just eating his fingers or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a piece of bread with like turkey and then another piece of bread and he was cutting it with a fork and knife. He's like, wow, do you guys want some of this? This is a lot of turkey. A lot of food. And he thought he was just eating bread. He was like eating bread. A pile of turkey? Yea, he thought he was eating a pile of turkey. It was like a turkey sandwich. Like how did you not know that you were eating bread?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is every time I've gone there, it's been a different experience because they repeatedly fire the head chef people or company or whatever and then hire a different one. And so like you'll go in there and sometimes it'll be like you're eating at Ikea where it's like, you can tell it's mass produced food, but it's good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well sometimes, yeaah, like, uh, I think it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The time a- I- my mom was in there for like septic shock or something. She had like some insane abscess thing going on where she had like bacteria in her blood. And uh, and it was like the most traumatic thing because, uh, you- you were a medical guy, right? Can I say that? Is that like a-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we prefer the term medical person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I was, I didn't know if it was like a leak of your personal information. I don't know how much you want people to know on YouTube. Nah, it's fine. As a medical person, you know that that's dangerous shit, right? Like a flip of a coin, you could die from septic shock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that time I was blown away. They had like some bomb ass chicken sandwiches that were better in Chick-fil-A's. Like they had some shit. I was like, mom, like, I know you're about to die, but I'm about to hit up that cafeteria again, dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had desserts and shit going on, and it was bomb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause I remember when my grandfather was in the, uhm, the heart, uh, ward or whatever for like bad heart people. I forget what that's called. And uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, people always talk about like, um, socialized healthcare, right? And, and how, whether or not we should have socialized healthcare.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of me thinks, you know, for the greater good, that's not a bad idea. But then the other part of me thinks, like, in a world, in a country with socialized healthcare, my grandfather would have died decades ago. That dude, in 1991, I was born.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in 1992, he had a massive heart attack and stroke. And only because he had money was he able to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One time he was talking to my, uh, my father-in-law and he was just, he got hit like three or four times and he was on, he was on a swing on the front porch and so the swing was jostling all over the place while he was getting lit up while he was talking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they say that, they say that it, it doesn't, uhm, like in the movies how their like body jolts around, like that shouldn't happen. And, uh, uh, from the electrical current. And I don't think it was the electrical current, I think it just hurt like the dickens, him getting shocked. So like even just, his whole body would like spasm like he was getting shot by a gun. He was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have you ever had the opposite where like you, someone's forgotten to give someone pills and you feel really bad? Uh, I don't, I haven't had that happen, no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mom had a back surgery where she had a two of her vertebrae fused and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apparently like back surgery is the most painful thing you can go through. Like it is just agonizing. And uh, and she, she got it fused and she was in her room and they like didn't give her...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like she had the, the anesthetic from the surgery, but then they didn't time it right so that she had painkillers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's like, okay. And she like left and like never came back and like after like 10 minutes I like went back out there and I was like, look, I don't know what the fuck's going on. Like I, I try not to be aggressive with people, try to be nice and cordial. I was like, look, I don't know where the fuck that lady went, but my mom needs some goddamn painkillers now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanna go get my blood drawn in town. And uh, and uh, it was my first time getting blood work. I'm kinda feral. You know, I never went to the doctor growing up. And uh, and so it was like my first time getting blood work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I sat down and I was at the table in this, uh, or at the chair where they have like the desk thing lay over your lap and I had my arm out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she was like, Oh really? That's nice, honey. And she's over there like at her counter, like five feet away and she fucking wheels around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just does like this walking, like speed walking towards me and without stopping just goes GUNK into my arm and fills up a vial in like less than five seconds. She does it for a living. She's been doing it for 30 years. She smelled that vein the second I walked in the hallway. She's like a dark souls boss. She's like crawling towards you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, yeaah, you can kinda see my vein now, but I was like fat then, so like my vein was hard to see, and she's just fucking right in that thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, uh, and then it turns out I had, uh, uh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bad. No, I didn't have bad cholesterol. I was really high blood pressure, but they couldn't figure out why. That's what it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, some of it did, but I still have, I think it's just genetically high blood pressure. The doctor's convinced I have rage problems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now it's like the full thing. I might cut out that part where you kept talking about how, uh, black people were inferior to white people in every way. I would appreciate that. Personally, I was just aghast. It's not a good look for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I got something to talk about. Yeah, what's that? So I just went, sorry, I'm eating again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's right, you gotta look the part. There you go, Stalt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, oh yeaah. So, I went to this like, coffee place, right? Uh huh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got a latte this morning. They made it all cute looking too. It's like kinda like a knot chain place. Yea. You gotta make it, gotta make it nice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was like an old guy in there and he had a fucking like handkerchief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was just going to town into this thing, he was like, he blew his nose into it, he was wiping his mouth, and, and like, just like, his forehead, everything. Like, honestly, that made his whole face more disgusting than before he started.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was it ever cool? I feel like they just didn't understand like germs and how not to be gross.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like when you leave the house, you have to be like, oh, can't forget my handkerchief so I can just gush all of my fluids into it all day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First of all, first of all, I wanna give you credit for being able to describe that to me so well. Like with, put your finger to your nose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Except for like people like trying to be disgusting on TV or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bottom rib, like Marilyn Manson, continue up your chest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I figured. You know who, you know, Jude Law is in those a lot. He's pretty good looking. And, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bongo playing guy, he's in it too. What's his name? Matthew McConaughey. Dude, that guy did a fucking turnaround on his career.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there's no, this smells like this, or you can expect this kind of smell. It's just like, here's a, here's someone with water droplets all over them rolling around outside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. Yeah. Reminds me of the awful condom brand. Exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, good move, good move. That's a serious whim by though. I bought a kalimba the other night on a whim, hold on. What is that, like a- Little, little less, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know one of those instruments that you pluck with your thumbs? It's great. Oh yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're getting Andrew Yang, I bet you could get her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause he's got a big judo brain in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Listen, crocs got in touch with me. You might be right, I might be. Cause crocs, they're sending me crocs. How cool is that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do they have flames on them? I don't know. They're just like, hey, you want, hey. It's like someone rolled up in a, like, behind me in like a car, like out the window, like, hey, you want some shoes?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I've seen dances with wolves though, which is pretty long, but. What a world is like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know those movies you've had just that you wanna see? Yeah. They're just on your list like forever? That might be my longest time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like Lars and the real girl with, uh, what's his name? Handsome guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't even think of any movies he's in. The guy from Drive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really just gathering. Wasting away everyday. Yeaah, yeaah. That's a shame. Alright, what were you saying about Ryan Gosling?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, they made this movie called Lars and the Real Girl. I don't know if you've seen it, but he just like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just think Bi is one of those like really, uhm, realistic looking like sex dolls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just like, takes it everywhere, like brings it to his family's house for like, holidays and stuff and like, it's just all about that. And uh, it's probably inspired by uhm, whatever movie, River's Edge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're one step closer to your standing goal for the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just got a new one, uh, I got the one with the two lenses, cause three I think is a bit much, personally. I'll, I'll take two though, so I just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apple phones, in my opinion, have been going down the shitter since the 7.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of their products, except their laptops are going in the right direction, except for that stupid touch bar shit. That is fucking dog shit. Nobody likes that. Nobody. Nobody uses it. Get rid of it. Apple, I'm telling you, you're fucking up. Alright, anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just, just the design of the product, like these phones without the button and the swiping and the face thing, they're, I don't know about this and they're so heavy, you can't, they're big so you can't like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, I didn't mind, I didn't mind that. It really felt like a button. But now they have, they don't even have anything. It just like scans your face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, I don't know if you think you're, you know, a god, but... Not a god, not a god. I'll just say when we met, actually, I was very disappointed. Oh really?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, I had these like cookies that I don't know, I don't remember where I got them, but it was like a bag of like, you know, delicious looking cookies. Yeah. And then she was standing on the street asking for money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, huh, maybe I should just like offer her these cookies. And she gave me like a no. Like, I don't want that. That should've waited for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe she was trying, she was on a diet or something, or maybe she was diabetic, I don't know, but you know, she was, it was a very rude declining of the cookies. You know why?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're gonna fly up here just so I can film you dance around in front of the camera?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only because I think she's like really jealous that I get to stay home every day. Like she just like leaves to go to work and, uh, I can just feel the resentment or frustration. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, she's very supportive, actually. I mean, as supportive as you can be without actually watching anything I do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I feel like a writer, like an author, like their wives do read their books though, you know. The difference is they put out like one book every two years. We put out a video every like, every like five days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes I'll like ask like, you know, someone like, Hey, could I get your opinion on like this intro or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm always just like, you're an idiot, but fine. You told me recently, you were like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You like took something out of context a little bit and you like made it seem like I was calling


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something happened, I don't really remember that well, but like, something happened and everybody like took it the wrong way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, do you realize how many people like don't understand when like you make a joke like this? Like everyone thinks you're serious. I think it's cause of when you in that rap video.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you said that you had to redo it because I said the N word when it was actually you. So for fucking years, people actually thought that I said that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well also, I think- Do you think all that is true? They just, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I was saying, and then you like, twisted it to make it seem like I was calling like, everyone, I don't know, I don't remember, but I don't know, it was like, I didn't appreciate it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gotcha. But damn, let me tell you something, those views in Tarkov, man, those are...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you know, that's another big part of it. Like, it's the game I play right now, so, whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I found another weapons case last night in the market room and sold it for a cool million and a quarter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because you're not the guy with the thing, you know? Not at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. It is, it is a weird phenomenon. It is. Like when I'm buying those BS rounds, it just stings, man. It stings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just looked at the clock and this has been a long hour.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. Honestly, like, like you're, this is the second most interesting thing I've heard in weeks. The first is your blockage situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's great, yeah. Glad to hear you got that sorted out. Actually one time I did weigh myself before and after taking a shit. I like went in there and I looked at the scale and I was like, hmm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. Yeah, it, it, I, I, it took me a while to figure that stuff out. Let me tell you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fuck, you always give me these questions that like, I'd wanna like, think about for a minute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you wanna not have to have any human interaction for the rest of your life? Publicly use a handkerchief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In fact, in Breaking Bad, I think that's exactly what they, I think Waltz had a handkerchief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I used to like, hide under my desk and shit and play it up, but now I just, just been too many times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This week's episode is brought to you by Harry's Razors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you go to the drug store to pick up some razors. First, you have to find the guy who can open the case. Then you have to wait around while he finds the keys to the case. And then when the case finally gets open, your reward is paying 25 bucks for four blades and some shaving cream.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You leave muttering obscenities about the waste of time and money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Such was the last straw for Andy, one of the co-founders of Harry's Razors, who was convinced that there had to be a better way, and there was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Focused on providing guys a great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of the competition, Harry's Razors offers high quality blades engineered in their very own German factory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Order online, it gets shipped to your home. It's simple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've got my own kit working for me as we speak, the blades are sharp, the razor design is clean, which I like, and the cream is exactly what I need it to be. No cuts, no irritation, it's great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And plus, I don't have to wait around for the guy with the keys just to pay way too much for it all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we left off last time with a circuit of all of France's new allies, all those sister republics who were thrilled, just thrilled, to be joining the French revolutionary project of liberating mankind, and by that I of course mean getting rung dry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today, we'll take a look at France's posture towards its remaining enemies. The British, of course, who were supposed to be the only ones left, but then also the Americans, who Talleyrand is about to accidentally provoke into an undeclared naval war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now once we're done listening to the stream of bald-faced lies coming out of Talleyrand denying he had anything to do with driving the Americans to take up arms, we'll return to the domestic front for the elections of year six, suppress the left, and then wrap up today by getting Bonaparte launched on his ultimately ill-fated Egyptian expedition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of this taken together was going to set the stage for the formation of a second anti-French coalition by the end of 1798 and the resumption of full-blown war in 1799.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So to back up a little bit, the Treaty of Campo Formio that had been signed by Bonaparte and the Austrian ambassadors in October 1797 had settled things between France and Austria.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the Austrian Habsburgs were just one component of the insanely complicated political coalition called the Holy Roman Empire. They were the most powerful part, to be sure. But still, just a part.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So shortly after Campo Formio, a huge summit of all the little sovereign components of the Holy Roman Empire met at the city of Rushtat along the Rhine to discuss and ratify the terms that had been worked out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most controversial of all those were of course the seeding of all the German principalities on the west side of the Rhine. And the French delegation, soon led by a guy named Jean-Baptiste Traillard, were not making it easy for the Germans to accept these losses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bonaparte had agreed in principle at Campo Formio that new territorial acquisitions made by the French at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire would be matched by compensatory lands elsewhere, hence the handover of Venice that we talked about last week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at Rostadt, the Austrian delegation now asserted that ceding the left bank of the Rhine counted as a new territorial acquisition for France that required compensation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Treyar said that chance. The left bank has been under French occupation for so long that it's hardly a new acquisition.


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[Assistant] This was just the first of many squabbles that led the Congress nowhere fast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the end, the Congress of Rustadt would wind up never actually coming to any formal agreement, as a series of diplomatic and military incidents eventually led to the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition in 1799, before the peace terms ending the War of the First Coalition were actually ratified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But for the directory, the situation in Italy and along the Rhine was certainly settled enough that they were able to order Bonaparte to return to Paris to help them deliver the death blow to the one enemy left actively in the field, the British.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This death blow was to be nothing less than a full blown invasion of Great Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now talk of a multiple front invasion of the British Isles had not been killed by the failure of the Irish Expedition in 1796. And indeed, when the Directory really started to discuss plans, Lazar Hosh was the most likely candidate to lead the invasion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Almost all the troops massing along the English Channel had served under him before.


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[Assistant] And Hosh himself was eager to redeem himself for the failed Irish expedition, which he not unjustly blamed on the weather.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in September 1797, Hoche suddenly up and died in his base along the Rhine River. He was just 29 years old. And that left Bonaparte as the only logical choice to lead the invasion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A Bonaparte's return to Paris was a nerve-wracking experience for the men running the Directory. On the one hand, here he was, the conquering hero, the man whose victories had helped legitimize their rule and whose pledge of support, before and after the coup of Fructador, were key to the coup's success.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the other hand, here he was, the conquering hero, who is way more popular both inside the army and amongst the French citizenry than we could ever hope to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Bonaparte was a careful planner, and he had no desire to seize power. Yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, while in the capital, he was conspicuously deferential to civilian authority, and made no outward displays of his military might. He dressed as a regular citizen, rather than marching around in a full-dressed uniform, making everyone nervous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when the directory ordered him to go take over the planned invasion of Britain, he said, sure thing, you're the boss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he also spent a lot of time making political contacts, finally meeting in person, for example, Talleyrand, and also the Abbé Cies, the man who had scorned a directorship because he had his own constitutional plans for France. So, the seeds of Brumaire were being sown over the winter of 1797-1798.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was not being sown over that winter was an invasion of Great Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now Bonaparte does not seem to have arrived in the army camped along the channel coast intending to abort the invasion. But it did not take him long to decide that it really needed to be aborted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was no small thing the directory was asking him to do. And with the Dutch Navy having just been ravaged at Camperdown, the invasion fleet assembled was simply insufficient for the job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To say nothing of the men themselves, who were not the cracked troops forged in the battles of Italy, but rather men from the Vendee and the Pyrenees who had not seen major action and no major battles for years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bonaparte came back to Paris and said, look, I'll do this, but the earliest, and I mean the earliest that I will be ready to go, is the end of 1798. And even then, the success of this is not guaranteed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that is actually one of Bonaparte's biggest concerns. At that moment, he was invincible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had won the war against Austria without losing a single battle, at least according to his official dispatches. Why risk his well won reputation on a dubious mission to England that might wreck his career with a colossal failure? But he had an alternative suggestion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the period between the preliminaries at Leoben and the Treaty of Campo Formio, Bonaparte had been twiddling his thumbs in Italy and started thinking globally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Specifically, that the best way to take out the British was not to try to go and occupy London, but rather to try to go and occupy Egypt and limit British access to their wealthy colonial holdings in India.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After Venice was forced to cede their Mediterranean islands to the French at Campo Formio, these dreams of an Egyptian campaign became a very real possibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So after Bonaparte returned from his dismal survey of the army on the Channel Coast, he told Talleyrand that what they should really do is invade Egypt. Not only would conquest be easier, but it would promise a lot of plunder and permanent colonial wealth and this sharp check on British power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talleyrand thought all of this an absolutely capital idea, since he too had major reservations about the invasion of England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Bonaparte and Talleyrand took the plan to the directory in March 1798, and the directory said, okay, go do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For them, the calculation was pretty simple. If Bonaparte pulls it off, all the good things he just said would happen would happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if he fails, well, that's one less Napoleon Bonaparte we have to worry about coming back and overthrowing our little regime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While Taliran was helping Bonaparte arrange the Egyptian campaign, he was also in the process of introducing a new belligerent into the war. A belligerent that had basically gone to superhuman lengths to stay out of the fighting, but who could resist no longer. The United States of America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By insisting on American neutrality, Washington irritated everyone, and both the British and French navies harassed neutral American shipping to prevent them from assisting the other side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1797, though, Washington finally accepted the efficacy of the somewhat humiliating Jay Treaty, which agreed to nearly every concession, condition, and constraint the British demanded of the Americans in exchange for their Navy leaving American shipping alone. The French were livid at this perceived betrayal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But despite rising tensions out on the high seas, when Washington retired in March 1797, the United States was still neutral.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But with Washington out of the picture, a hyper-polarized partisan battle erupted between the pro-British Federalists and the pro-French Jeffersonians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But no one did more to blow up the dream of American neutrality than French Foreign Minister Talleyrand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talleyrand had of course just spent two years living in the United States. He knew the lay of the political land, and he knew that Adams was not particularly well disposed towards the French.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was confirmed in Talleyrand's eyes when Adams dispatched Charles Coatsworth Pickney as the new ambassador to France.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pickney was a staunch federalist and avowedly anti-French.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So at Talleyrand's recommendation, the directory refused Pickney's credentials.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not wanting to capitulate, but also not wanting to start a war. Adams then dispatched future Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall and New England merchant and well-resimmed patriot leader Elbridge Gerry to join Pickney in a three-man diplomatic commission to work through the impasse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when this commission presented themselves to Talleyrand in October 1797, he refused to recognize their credentials, unless they agreed to a, loan the French a bunch of money, and b, pay Talleyrand a huge bribe equivalent to 50,000 pounds.


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[Assistant] Now, bribes in exchange for consideration was a routine part of European diplomacy, but Talleyrand took it to a high art. There was simply nothing to be done, unless you pay me a great deal of money.


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[Assistant] The Americans, however, were offended by this old world corruption, and Pickney famously said, no, no, no, not a sixpence.


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[Assistant] So, Talleyrand rejected their credentials, and negotiations had to proceed through unofficial channels.


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[Assistant] Those unofficial channels turned out to be a trio of Talleyrand's agents who would come around and say, look, just pay the money and you're in. What is so hard about this?


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[Assistant] Which is why this whole thing is about to be called the XYZ Affair.


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[Assistant] The incensed Americans refused all further informal talks and demanded to either be credentialed or diplomatic ties would be severed.


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[Assistant] Talleyrand managed to convince Elbridge Gary, the least anti-French of the three commissioners, to maintain super-secret back channels to stave off war. But he said he could no longer deal with Pickney, which was fine by Pickney. In April 1798, Pickney and Marshall sailed home.


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[Assistant] In the meantime, their dispatches back to Washington DC had been creating a full-blown scandal.


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[Assistant] Members of Congress knew that the talks were going nowhere, and that this was likely due to French perfidy. Federalist congressmen started calling for war.


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[Assistant] Now the Jeffersonian congressman, of course, wanted to avoid this at all costs, which led them to make a huge tactical blunder.


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[Assistant] You see, President Adams had been keeping most of the details from the dispatch's secret.


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[Assistant] The Jeffersonians believed that Adams was doing this because he wanted war, and was trying to make the French look as bad as possible.


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[Assistant] But they had it backwards. Adams knew full well that if Congress knew the truth about Talleyrand's insulting refusal to credential the ambassadors and his demands for a naked bribe, that war would be unavoidable.


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[Assistant] So after relentless Jeffersonian pressure to unseal the dispatches, Adams finally relented in March 1798.


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[Assistant] Instead of exposing the president as an anti-French warmonger, it turned out the French had been behaving even worse than the wildest rumors had it, and that President Adams had been trying to keep it under wraps.


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[Assistant] With the XYZ affair now out in the open, Congress pushed for an aggressive stance towards France. They ordered the Navy to expand, and then in July 1798, they voted to annul the Treaty of Alliance that had been in place since 1778.


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[Assistant] They then authorized the American Navy to attack French vessels.


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[Assistant] But President Adams, still fighting for neutrality, however technical the distinction might be, refused to sign an actual declaration of war.


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[Assistant] So what followed was a two year long conflict known in the United States as the Quasi War. A war exclusively fought at sea and almost entirely in the Caribbean.


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[Assistant] In the grand scheme of things, the quasi-war between France and the United States was a low-level fight in a secondary theater of the larger war, and the British and American navies never coordinated or joined forces. But still, provoking the Americans into attacking French ships on the high seas did not serve French interests at all.


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[Assistant] Of course, when Talleyrand was brought in by the directory to account for himself, he then lied his head off. Said he had nothing to do with it. Said that he didn't know who X, Y, and Z were. And he even went so far as to start up a fake investigation to uncover these rogue agents who were mucking with the directory's foreign policy.


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[Assistant] The XYZ affair is not exactly Talleyrand's finest hour.


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[Assistant] While the Americans were getting ready to jump into the Quasi-War in the spring of 1798, the Directory was mostly concerned not with foreign affairs, but with domestic affairs.


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[Assistant] Specifically, the looming possibility that Jacobin leftists were about to get themselves voted into a majority of the legislative councils and try to drag France back to the dark days of year two and the terror.


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[Assistant] Not the directorial terror, but the terror terror.


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[Assistant] So while the triumvirate running the directory had hoped Fructidor would be a one-off emergency coup, they decided they could not risk it.


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[Assistant] And so the anti-right coup of 18 fructidor gets a historical twin.


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[Assistant] The few true radicals remaining had been taken down with Bebuff in the Conspiracy of Equals. And in case you're wondering, yes, I did totally forget to follow up on Bebuff after the failed Grinnell Uprising of September 1796. But that was because there's not much else to tell.


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[Assistant] Babov sat around in prison until May 1797, when he and one of his closest associates were finally sentenced to death and guillotined on May the 27th. That was the end of everyone's favorite proto-communist.


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[Assistant] The former Jackamans now putting themselves forward for election were of a perfectly moderate variety.


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[Assistant] They were dangerous to the directory not because they wanted to overthrow the government, but because they might turn out to be self-confident enough to believe that they could act as an opposition party.


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[Assistant] They supported a platform that included enlarging the franchise to make the Constitution more democratic, and maybe doing something about all those greedy speculators who seem to have flourished in the year since Termidor.