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[Assistant] Most of the other guys in the room agreed to this proposal. Because they were there to ensure post-revolutionary peace. And unless the Zapatistas were satisfied, there would never be peace.


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[Assistant] So the convention blessed Angelus personally going to Morelos to invite them.


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[Assistant] So, Angelus got on a train, he headed down to Mexico City, and then up to Cuernavaca to personally call on Zapata.


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[Assistant] Now this is kinda crazy and a little dangerous, because remember, last time Angelus was in Morelos, he was the commander of federal army forces trying to defeat the Zapatistas.


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[Assistant] But Angelus was convinced that his relatively compassionate tour of duty and Zapata's desire for an alliance with Via would see him through this without getting shot. And he was right.


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[Assistant] The two men met on October the 20th and Zapata started by praising Angelus as the only man who had ever fought him honorably. This was quite an endorsement.


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[Assistant] But Zapata was wary of doing anything that might compromise the plan of Ayala, and recognizing the sovereign authority of some convention of northern generals was a surefire way of doing just that.


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[Assistant] Angelus believed that he could pull this off, and so the delegates were appointed.


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[Assistant] But Zapata himself would not go, nor would any of the other principal chiefs of the army. None of them seemed to have much in the way of national ambitions,


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[Assistant] Those who did want to go were the civilian-type intellectuals who had come to Morelos after the fighting started. They had come to provide ideological support and give rhetorical ammunition.


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[Assistant] So almost every single one of the 26 delegates had to be hastily commissioned as colonels in the Southern Army so they could participate.


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[Assistant] So then this group of newly minted Zapatista kernels piled back onto the train and headed north.


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[Assistant] Only very conspicuously, they did not first get off in Aguascalientes. First, they continued further north another hundred miles or so to where Villa had set up his headquarters. And it was only after receiving Villa's personal assurances that he supported them and the plan of Ayala that they went back to Aguascalientes.


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[Assistant] On the morning of October the 27th, the Zapatista delegation was welcomed into the hall to thunderous applause. And for the first time, all revolutionary factions were in one place at one time, and they did something kind of surprising. They endorsed the plan of Ayala.


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[Assistant] Now of course not everyone at the convention was some radical aggregista. I mean, most of them weren't. But as Angelus had promised, he managed to engineer the overwhelming approval of the principles of the plan of Ayala by the convention.


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[Assistant] And this committed the sovereign authority of Mexico and the future national government of Mexico to pretty radical land redistribution and like social justice.


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[Assistant] Even Obergon and his guys went along with this. Even though it was far more radical than anything they wanted.


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[Assistant] And this was because they genuinely wanted peace. And besides, plans and promises were made to be broken.


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[Assistant] But though the embrace of agrarian justice was a pretty big deal in terms of the long constitutional history of Mexico, for the moment it took a backseat to the real battle that was now at hand.


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[Assistant] How to settle things between Via and Carranza to avoid civil war. And this is when Obregón stepped forward.


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[Assistant] On October the 31st, he introduced a resolution that called on both Villa and Carranza to resign simultaneously. This was the best and probably only way to ensure future peace.


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[Assistant] To replace Carranza as executive, Obergone suggested the little-known and little-supported leader from San Luis Potosi, Eulalio Gutierrez.


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[Assistant] The resolution calling for this double resignation was of course, Obregón continuing his attempts to stop a revolutionary civil war. But, let's face it, removing Carranza and Villa at the same time would mean that Obregón was bound to emerge from the convention as the preeminent leader in Mexico. Probably only Felipe Ángeles would be able to rival him.


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[Assistant] And Angelus actually helped Obregon secure passage of this revolution, though probably not, as Obregon hoped, in the interest of actually getting Via to resign.


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[Assistant] It was well known that while the convention met, Villa was continuing to beef up his arms and talking quite openly about how the shooting would start again soon.


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[Assistant] By being the first to publicly agree to resign, though, Villa got to portray himself as selfless and patriotic, and Carranza as a grasping, dictatorial megalomaniac. And Carranza played his part perfectly.


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[Assistant] After attempting a few formulas to remain in power, ultimately Carranza said the convention is not sovereign, it is not binding on me, and I am not going to retire.


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[Assistant] The convention then delivered an ultimatum. They gave Karanta until November the 10th to resign.


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[Assistant] The convention was the sovereign authority of Mexico. They had in hand a flag signed by all the other generals agreeing to abide by the decrees of the convention. And the convention had just declared Carranza illegitimate and in rebellion.


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[Assistant] To complete this deaf political maneuver, VIA was then declared commander in chief of the convention's armed forces.


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[Assistant] But as it turns out, solemn oaths and signatures on the flag do not count for as much as they should.


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[Assistant] Not only did the hardcore Carrancistas walk out, but so too did most of the moderates, including Obregón, who now decided to reconcile with the first chief.


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[Assistant] Now one might think that Obregón would have sided with Villa over Carranza, whose unwillingness to step aside was now the thing plunging Mexico back into the war that he had been trying to avoid.


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[Assistant] And it's still a matter of speculation and argument why he went back.


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[Assistant] Probably it was a mix of being more socially and politically aligned with the conservative Carranza rather than the radical Vistas and Zapatistas. Also probably mixed in was personal hatred of Villa for, you know, ordering his execution.


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[Assistant] Plus, on top of that, there was the recognition that even if he personally sided with Via, that many of his comrades and fellow officers would not. If he crossed the lines, he'd do it alone. Obregón's goal had been to avoid a civil war. He had failed. And so all that was left to do now was pick a side. And he picked Carranza.


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[Assistant] Carranza faithfully welcomed Obregón back rather than excommunicating him for the months Obregón had spent trying to get rid of Carranza.


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[Assistant] So after the declaration that Carranza was in rebellion, the Constitutionalist forces pulled out of Mexico City and reconsolidated near Veracruz, knowing that they would very likely lose any direct encounter with the División del Norte.


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[Assistant] Via immediately prepared to march on the capital, but in the meantime, someone had to occupy the city, and that someone, by default, was the Zapatistas.


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[Assistant] Now, Zapata never had any desire or ambition to capture Mexico City, and his men were all peasant gorillas, so it was with some awkwardness and a hint of hesitant embarrassment that the Morelos gorillas walked into Mexico City on November the 24th.


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[Assistant] The culture clash was sharp. Most of these guys had spent their lives in villages or working on haciendas, and the biggest city they had ever encountered was Cuernavaca.


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[Assistant] And here they were now technically in control of one of the great world capitals. They were unsure of exactly what was expected of them.


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[Assistant] And there's a story that one night a fire company went blaring off down the road and a company of Zapatistas, having never seen such a thing, assumed it was some kind of enemy attack and they opened fire. It'd be funny, except they killed all twelve firemen.


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[Assistant] Zapata himself was not thrilled about having to leave home, and rather than take up residence in some posh house, as all the constitutionalists had done after Obregón took the city back in August,


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[Assistant] Zapata pointedly occupied a small hotel room near the train station so he could get back to Morelos as soon as possible.


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[Assistant] And it was with great relief that the first advanced divisions of Villa's division del Norte arrived at the outskirts of Mexico City on November the 26th.


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[Assistant] Two days after that, Zapata was on a train to Cuernavaca, and most of his men soon followed.


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[Assistant] So that brings us to the great meeting that will conclude today's episode. The meeting of Vya and Sapata.


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[Assistant] Zapata agreed to host Villa at a small house in the small city of Xochimilco, which lays between Cuernavaca and Mexico City.


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[Assistant] And on December the 4th, 1914, Villa and his entourage arrived.


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[Assistant] About sixty men crammed into a large upstairs room, and we have a first-hand English account of the moment they met, and every book I read just quotes that in full, so I will do the same.


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[Assistant] And this comes from an American representative that VIA had invited along to witness.


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[Assistant] Next to him was General Via, tall, robust, weighing about 180 pounds, with a complexion almost as florid as a German, wearing an English helmet, a heavy brown sweater, khaki trousers, leggings, and heavy riding shoes.


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[Assistant] Sapata, to his left, with his immense sombrero, sometimes shading his eyes so that they could not be seen. Dark complexion, thin face, a man very much shorter in stature than Via, and weighing probably around 130 pounds.


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[Assistant] He wore a short black coat, a large light blue silk neckerchief, pronounced lavender shirt, and used alternatively a white handkerchief with a green border and another one with all the colors of the flowers.


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[Assistant] He had on a pair of black, tight fitting Mexican trousers with silver buttons down the outside seam of each leg.


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[Assistant] They sat awkwardly together, and Sapata decided to loosen things up a bit by ordering some cognac.


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[Assistant] But there is a little quirk to Via that I have somehow managed to not tell you about yet. And that is that he did not drink, and he did not smoke.


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[Assistant] Now, if you walk into the Mexican Revolution with some minimal amount of information, you probably assume that Pancho Villa must have been some cigar-chomping, tequila-swigging wild man, and it certainly fits with his cultivated public persona.


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[Assistant] But he never drank. And he never smoked. He was stone sober. And he didn't go around dressed to the nines. He was going around in like frumpy tacky clothes.


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[Assistant] It would be easier to imagine Zapata this way, as a peasant warrior, you know, bread, water, sackcloth and ashes, that kind of thing. But he was the one who liked fancy clothes and enjoyed drinking.


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[Assistant] So, Bea did not drink, but when the cognac arrived, he didn't want to insult his host, and so he gamely took a shot and nearly choked on it, calling for water to help him not die.


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[Assistant] Now this no doubt shocked Zapata, because I mean, how is the legendary Pancho Villa, the northern bandito, choking on a little swig of cognac? It's ridiculous.


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[Assistant] But he played it cool and diplomatic and tried not to make Bea feel too bad or embarrassed.


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[Assistant] So, the cognac didn't really loosen things up, and ultimately, after about a half an hour or so, the halting conversation turned to Carranza. And it was here that things finally lubricated, as Villa and Zapata bonded over complaining about Carranza.


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[Assistant] Via said that Karanza was high and mighty and Zapata replied, I always said so. I always told them that Karanza is a son of a bitch.


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[Assistant] Thus, their alliance was cemented by a mutual loathing of a shared enemy.


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[Assistant] And probably like a third of all friendships in human history have been cemented the same way.


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[Assistant] Now what helped them also cement their alliance was the fact that they shared a common federalist vision.


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[Assistant] In this, Gutierrez was a great choice for president because he had no national following of his own. And as Villa put it, would make no trouble.


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[Assistant] After they concluded their initial talk in the big group meeting, the two leaders retired, with just a few others, to plan a joint military campaign against Carranza and the constitutionalists. Zapata would attack and capture Puebla City, while Villa and the División del Norte would move against Obregon's army in the vicinity of Veracruz,


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[Assistant] After this meeting, the one time the two legendary revolutionaries met face to face, they traveled together down the road to Mexico City and called on Gutierrez in the presidential palace after parading their joint conventionist army through the streets of the capital.


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[Assistant] In a famous photograph, staged after the repeated pleadings of journalists and photographers, Villa sat in the presidential chair, looking jovial and laughing, while Zapata leaned next to him, in his signature dour slump,


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[Assistant] This was only for a minute, but Villa in the president's chair was a signal to Mexico and the world that Pancho Villa was now the preeminent warlord of Mexico. And at that moment, he was.


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[Assistant] But to offer some foreshadowing, without spoilers.


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[Assistant] This is the peak of Via's career. This is the peak of Via's life. Sitting there for that one minute in the presidential chair with a big grin on his face and victory against his enemies, surely just a battle or two away. He was, after all, undefeated in the field.


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[Assistant] And despite so much that was working in VIA's favor at that moment,


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[Assistant] His long-term prospects were not nearly as bright as everyone seemed to believe.


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[Assistant] And this was thanks in part to the Americans deciding to throw their weight decisively to Carranza.


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[Assistant] And next week, the civil war between the conventionists and the constitutionalists will fully erupt, and VIA will have to face an enemy armed to the teeth with the guns of Vera Cruz.


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[Assistant] This week's episode is brought to you by Away. Away was founded by two friends from New York who found themselves at JFK with dead phones, delayed flights, and a bright idea. Luggage with


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[Assistant] The approach is simple. Create special objects that are designed to be resilient, resourceful, and essential to the way that you travel today.


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[Assistant] There's also a hundred day trial period. You can live with it, you can travel with it, and if at any point you decide it's not for you, you can return it for a full refund.


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[Assistant] On the morning of March the 10th, 1916, Pancho Villa was riding south as fast as he could, trying to put as much distance between himself and the United States as possible.


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[Assistant] His raid on Columbus, New Mexico the day before had already provoked the U.S. Cavalry into crossing the border once, and a larger pursuit was likely being prepared.


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[Assistant] That's what Via was gambling on anyway. But even in his wildest dreams, Pancho Via could not have imagined that that larger pursuit would come as fast as it did, nor that it would do so perfectly all that he hoped that it would do. But for the plan to work, he was gonna have to avoid getting captured, and so he and his men rode south hard and fast.


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[Assistant] On that same morning, President Woodrow Wilson met with his cabinet in Washington DC to discuss this brazen attack on US soil and what ought to be done about it.


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[Assistant] Now even though Wilson himself was resistant to re-invading Mexico because he didn't want to get sucked into a war, his cabinet was unanimous that something had to be done. For reasons of prestige and national honor, they had to respond. Villa needed to be punished, and the United States needed to be the ones to punish him.


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[Assistant] So, Wilson ordered the army to prepare for an invasion of Mexico. Their mission would be simple.


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[Assistant] Hunt down the bandit king Pancho Villa and capture him. Or kill him. Whichever.


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[Assistant] The Wilson administration alerted Carranza's representatives in Washington that they were going to cross the border and nothing was going to stop them.


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[Assistant] To smooth over diplomatic difficulties, the Americans publicly premised the looming invasion on a bilateral agreement that granted the armies of both the United States and Mexico the right to cross the border in hot pursuit of hostile forces.


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[Assistant] So, in theory at least, if the Mexican army was so inclined, they would be able to cross the border and fight their enemies on US soil. Though I wouldn't recommend the Mexican army ever try to avail themselves of those reciprocal rights, if they knew what was good for them.


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[Assistant] Down in Mexico City, Alvaro Obregón, now Minister of War, ordered the generals in the North to cooperate with the Americans. But for the moment, all that really meant was don't actively hinder them.


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[Assistant] Obregón and the other officers of the constitutionalist army were proud, patriotic, and they were furious that a foreign army was being allowed to operate in sovereign Mexican territory.


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[Assistant] But at least initially, they followed orders. But that didn't mean they had to like it, or that they were gonna tolerate it for very long.


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[Assistant] What became known to history as the punitive expedition took shape over the next few days.


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[Assistant] The expedition would be led by Brigadier General John Black Jack Pershing, who was, at that moment, commanding Fort Bliss in El Paso, but, who I'm sure you know, was on his way to becoming the commander of the American Expeditionary Force to Europe when the United States finally entered World War I in 1917.


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[Assistant] Pershing gathered up three brigades of mostly cavalry with some infantry support, and initially they totaled about 6,600 men.


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[Assistant] He formed these three brigades into two main columns that would travel south into Mexico by rail, flanked by a number of detached flying columns who would pick their way through the rugged territory of Northern Chihuahua.


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[Assistant] The plan was to penetrate deep into Mexico as quickly as possible to envelop the whole area where Villa might potentially be hiding. Then they would close that circle and squeeze him out of whatever hole he might be hiding in.


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[Assistant] Pershing himself established a mobile headquarters and would spend the next few weeks and months riding around in a Dodge touring car to survey, inspect, and coordinate the manhunt.


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[Assistant] And I should mention here too that accompanying Pershing as an aide was a lieutenant who begged to be included on the mission, and that was 30-year-old Lieutenant George S. Patton, who was positively dying to get in on the action.


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[Assistant] On March the 15th, 1915, six days after Villa's raid on Columbus, the U.S. Army crossed the border into Mexico.


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[Assistant] As they began to fan out south through the Mexican northern periphery, more units were called in from their various peacetime bases in the United States, and eventually 10,000 men were involved in the expedition, either as active combat patrols or as support units, linking those forward patrols back to Texas.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, the National Guard was also mobilized in full force, and within a month, a hundred thousand National Guardsmen had massed along the border to act as, well, a National Guard, patrolling the border to prevent other attacks.


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[Assistant] Initially, the punitive expedition looked like it was going to be a quick and clean success.


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[Assistant] Via had kept most of his forces together, and after riding like a bat out of hell south from Columbus, he was now 250 miles south of the border.


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[Assistant] But to keep the hornet's nest stirred up, he decided to go poking at the constitutionalist garrisons in the area. Those constitutionalist garrisons were now transforming from partisan revolutionary armed forces into just the official Mexican army.


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[Assistant] On the night of March the 27th, Via and his men launched a series of raids against some garrison towns west of Chihuahua City. In one of those skirmishes, Via himself was wounded in the leg, specifically he was hit in the kneecap, and he and his men had to fall back to the town of Guerrero.


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[Assistant] These probably ill-advised attacks gave Pershing his first solid lead about Via's whereabouts, and he ordered a troop of close to 400 American cavalry to ride with all haste for Guerrero.


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[Assistant] 17 hours and 55 miles later, these guys arrived at the outskirts of the city on the morning of March 29.


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[Assistant] This near miss felt like the first step of the endgame. They were hot on Villa's trail. But instead, the Battle of Guerrero wound up being the only time the Americans came anywhere close to capturing Pancho Villa.


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[Assistant] Though Pershing and his officers expected that Via would soon be in hand,


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[Assistant] After Guerrero, he just up and vanished, and the Americans got no help from the local population in trying to track him down.


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[Assistant] At a minimum, the civilian inhabitants of Chihuahua were wary of this gringo army now running around in their backyards, and at maximum they were actively trying to hinder the expedition.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't just hostility towards the Americans that led to a near total lack of cooperation.


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[Assistant] As much as Pancho Villa's national ambitions had collapsed, this was still his home turf. His name still meant something and many people still loved him.


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[Assistant] So the idea that the Americans were gonna get help from the local population to hunt via down did not survive contact with the actual local population.


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[Assistant] Not even a $50,000 bounty was enough to induce anyone to turn via in.


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[Assistant] And I mean, $50,000 is a boatload of money. And this is good money too. U.S. dollars backed by U.S. gold, which we'll talk about in a second, is a big deal in 1916.


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[Assistant] But all Pershing and his officers found was sullen malice and a pack of lies. The Americans dashed this way and that, chasing down the latest news or rumor that seemed to put VIA here and then there and then no over there and then when you get over there, nope, they haven't seen Pancho VIA.


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[Assistant] The encirclement plan was failing because there was no center to collapse on.


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[Assistant] The Americans even used newfangled aeroplanes to go out on reconnaissance flights to try to spot Villa and his vanished army. But they found nothing. Villa could be anywhere. And so, he was nowhere.


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[Assistant] The punchline, of course, is that Via was not leading perching around on a merry wild goose chase, always one step ahead of his pursuers, laughing like Bugs Bunny and waggling a carrot like it was a Groucho Marx cigar.


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[Assistant] After retreating from the Battle of Guerrero, Villa had broken up his army into dozens of small bands and ordered them to disperse into the mountains or any safe spot they knew about and just sort of lay low for a couple months until the heat was off.


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[Assistant] Via himself, now injured, couldn't even ride a horse, and he confined himself to mountain caves, where he just sort of hung out while the Americans scoured northern Mexico looking for him.


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[Assistant] There is at least one story, probably apocryphal but totally plausible, that on at least one occasion, Via watched an American cavalry patrol go by from his cave, and they had no idea how close they were.


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[Assistant] So instead of capturing Villa quickly and withdrawing from Mexico, the American punitive expedition stayed and stayed and stayed.


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[Assistant] By mid-April, they were not just hovering around the border. American units went wherever they wanted, and they wound up as far south as the border between Chihuahua and Durango, some 500 miles south of El Paso.


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[Assistant] And every day they stayed, and every new place they went, resentment at their presence grew, and pressure on Carranza to do something grew. It was having exactly the effect that Via hoped that it would.


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[Assistant] Carranza was getting frustrated with the Americans for not departing quickly, and to hasten their departure, he actually forbid further use of the Mexican railways. The Americans, meanwhile, getting frustrated with Carranza for not supporting them more.


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[Assistant] The Mexican army was getting frustrated with both the Americans and Carranza, the former for humiliating Mexico, the latter for letting Mexico be humiliated.


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[Assistant] The Mexican people were generally frustrated with everyone.


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[Assistant] And Via just sat in his cave and laughed and waited.


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[Assistant] With VIA nowhere to be found, conflict finally erupted between the Mexicans and the Americans. On April the 12th, so just about a month after they first crossed the border, an American cavalry unit passed near the town of Parral, deep in southern Chihuahua.


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[Assistant] Now the American officer was under strict orders not to be fighting with the regular Mexican army, and so he retreated quickly.


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[Assistant] But it was still a bloody wake-up call to the Americans that their presence was not going to be tolerated indefinitely.


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[Assistant] Pershing was furious that his men had been attacked, though, and he recommended that he be allowed to occupy the whole state and put it under martial law.


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[Assistant] But the politicians back in Washington wanted no part of that. Remember, as a rule, the Wilson administration thought that a second Mexican-American war was a bad idea. So instead they ordered Pershing to briefly halt offensive operations. Offensive in both senses of the word.


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[Assistant] A few weeks later, on May the 9th, Obregón traveled up to El Paso for direct talks, during which he told the Americans, pull out of my country or I will attack your supply lines. Now this was partly a bluff. Carranza and Obregón did not want a war with the Americans, any more than the Americans wanted a war with the Mexicans.


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[Assistant] So the Mexican army did not attack, but Pershing was ordered to pull all of his men back into the far north of Chihuahua. But they did not order him to pull out of Mexico, at least not until American honor was satisfied.


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[Assistant] Through May and June, there was light skirmishing between the Americans and various vista guerrillas and bandits that they happened to come across.


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[Assistant] But though the fighting was supposed to be confined to Americans against Vistas, tensions with the official constitutionalist garrisons remained very high.


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[Assistant] In fact, tensions rose so high that the second Mexican-American war very nearly broke out on June the 21st, 1916.


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[Assistant] Seriously, all the pieces are in place for me to be delivering my oft-repeated line about how all the gunpowder was in place and all it took was a spark. The Mexican resentment. American frustration. The concentration of stressed out troops on both sides. The scheming politicians. Officers eager for action.


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[Assistant] On June the 21st, a contingent of about 200 Americans approached the city of Carizal.


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[Assistant] They wanted to pass through the town moving south, but the constitutionalist garrison commander refused them permission, so the American commander said screw it, I'm going through anyway. When he did, the Mexicans opened fire.


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[Assistant] The resulting battle of Carisal was the single hottest engagement of the whole punitive expedition, and it wasn't even fought against Via.


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[Assistant] In the fighting, 50 Americans were killed, another 39 wounded, and 24 captured, so that was like half the force. The Mexican list was 27 dead and 11 wounded.


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[Assistant] But this was not the opening shot of the second Mexican-American war, because neither Carranza nor Wilson wanted it to be.


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[Assistant] Instead, mark the end of active American campaigning.


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[Assistant] Instead, they would sit tight, they would not move, but they also would not leave.


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[Assistant] At this point, General Pershing was very frustrated because of the constraints Wilson had now put him under.


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[Assistant] And for the rest of his life, Pershing would always be annoyed that the punitive expedition was portrayed as a failure and his officers and men as hapless bunglers.


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[Assistant] He believed that they could have accomplished their mission if their hands had not been tied. At least that's what he said later.


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[Assistant] It is worth pointing out, though, that at the time, he was privately admitting that the Americans had been, quote,


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[Assistant] Pershing also kept his frustrations with Wilson mostly to himself, though, because he was angling for a promotion to major general and possibly command of the American army in Europe, should the Americans enter World War I.


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[Assistant] But in the ensuing tense and recrimination-filled talks that followed, the Americans were aware that things might still devolve into war. So for about the 47th different time during the Mexican Revolution, the Americans embargoed all arms sales to Mexico.


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[Assistant] And Pancho Villa sat in his cave and laughed.


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[Assistant] While Carranza dealt with the punitive expedition in the north and cursed the name Pancho Villa, he also had to deal with the thorn that had stuck in the side of every national administration for the past five years. And Carranza was learning too to properly curse the name Emiliano Zapata,


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[Assistant] Here, Carranza was trying to project an image of a leader of a stable regime providing over now peaceful and stable Mexico, and Villa, the Americans, and Zapata were making his pretensions and proclamations into a joke.


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[Assistant] So to turn back to Zapata and Morelos, we've been neglecting a bit, partly because they're up to the same thing they've been up to since they first signed on to the plan of San Luis back in March of 1911.


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[Assistant] By the fall of 1915, Zapata and his guerilla army were back out on campaign.


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[Assistant] And even with the victories against Via having freed up an additional 10,000 troops that Carranza then placed under the command of General Pablo González, the Zapatistas were able to hold them all at bay.


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[Assistant] Then in December of 1915, the old reliable Zapatista chief, De La O, launched a campaign southwest that successfully carried them all the way to Acapulco.


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[Assistant] Carranza announced a revision to his land redistribution plan that would allow villages, and most especially the old villages of southern Mexico, the right to keep their communal lands and hold them as a community without them being broken up into individual private plots.


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[Assistant] For most Zapatista rebels, this was the thing they had been fighting for. It was their single issue.


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[Assistant] And when Carranza made the announcement, it undercut Zapatista's estimation that Carranza could not be trusted and that they all must fight on.


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[Assistant] So that was the bread that was meant to lure them out of the fields.


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[Assistant] The stick that was meant to hurry them along was the announcement that joining the 10,000 troops already maneuvering around Morelos would be another 20,000.


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[Assistant] And they would be executing a full encirclement of the tiny state.


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[Assistant] So January and February 1916 were troubling times for the Zapatistas. Many leaders openly wondered if they shouldn't be making a deal with Carranza to sign on to his land redistribution plan to recognize his national authority in exchange for some local autonomy.


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[Assistant] The nervous tension and long years of fighting also started to crack their unity and old grudges and hostilities between Zapatista's lieutenants started to break out into the open.


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[Assistant] Sapata himself was gloomy and moody, and he refused to consider a deal with Karanza.


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[Assistant] Zapata managed to remain in control of Conevaca until the end of April, when General Gonzales renewed his advance. And troublingly, one of Zapatista's chiefs, who was holding a strategic line between that advancing army and the capital, suddenly backed away from his position and the road was opened up. Zapata had to abandon the city for Hohutla,


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[Assistant] This time the previous year they had been occupying Mexico City. They held the future of Mexico, the whole country, in their hands. And now they were back down to only controlling a few cities and their mostly rural hideouts. Morale among the Zapatistas was waning.


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[Assistant] All that was left now was a grim resolve to fight on. There was no exuberant expectation of victory any day now.


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[Assistant] De La O was convinced that Cuernavaca had been lost as a result of secret treachery, and though Zapata tried to stop him, De La O tracked the guy down who had abandoned his position and had him shot.


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[Assistant] On May the 6th, things look bad enough for the Zapatistas that General Gonzalez reported back to Carranza and Obregón that the war is over. I am installing a new governor and all that's left is some mop-up operations.


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[Assistant] But if there's one thing that all of you know by now, is that if you're fighting a war against Zapatista gorillas in Morelos, that the war is never over, and you're probably never going to win it.


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[Assistant] So in the summer of 1916, the Mexican Revolution was rolling along on a sort of unstoppable inertia.


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[Assistant] Civil war was now the default state of being. And the country was paying a price for it.


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[Assistant] Civil war is the greatest social and economic cataclysm that can befall a country.


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[Assistant] There is no natural or man-made disaster that quite rivals it for the scope and reach of its destructive power, made all the worse by the fact that civil war rarely brings people together as other shared disasters do, hurricane, foreign invasion, flood, epidemic, whatever.


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[Assistant] Instead, civil war forces everyone to retreat inward into isolated bitterness, or crash them outwards, angrily seeking revenge against all their enemies.


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[Assistant] Civil war is atrocious. It wrecks the physical, social, and economic connections that make a society possible.


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[Assistant] Now in the early days of the revolution, the fighting had often been a mass popular surge against the federal army and a small group of elite oligarchs in Mexico City. So there was a lot of optimism and unity of purpose.


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[Assistant] Well, leading up to the expulsion of Huerta, the split among the revolutionary factions had created a real, bitter and destructive civil war.


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[Assistant] By 1916, the Mexican economy was in the process of tanking, and everyone was now as miserable as they had been during the recession years that immediately preceded the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz in the first place.


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[Assistant] So what we're gonna do is run through some of the miserable things that the Mexicans were enduring to get a sense of just how bad things had gotten.


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[Assistant] To start off with, Mexico is an agrarian economy that needs to grow things, both to feed itself and have a stable economic base.


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[Assistant] Well, unfortunately the recent wars had done huge damage to the breadbasket of the country.


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[Assistant] Those campaigns in the Bahio, where Obregon was picking battle sites in the irrigated fields because they made for good trench building, yeaah, you can just take all that out. Nothing's growing there. But that was just the beginning.


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[Assistant] The chaos and mutual destruction had led to huge swaths of cultivatable Mexico simply going unplanted in 1914 and 1915 and 1916.


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[Assistant] And then on top of that, what was harvested would for sure just be confiscated or seized if an army happened to be in the area. It would be consumed by requisition and without profit.


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[Assistant] Then, on top of that, the 1916 harvest and coming 1917 harvest would be subjected to severe weather. Droughts in the summer, cold snaps in the fall, and at least one random massive hailstorm.


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[Assistant] Adding to this agricultural crisis is what I might with some understatement call the currency issue.


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[Assistant] The currency issue is that Mexico no longer had a currency.


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[Assistant] I haven't talked much about this, but throughout the revolution, there stopped being one single Mexican peso.


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[Assistant] There was of course the one that would be issued by whatever government happened to be in Mexico City, whether it was Díaz or Madero or Huerta.


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[Assistant] But their revolutionary enemies always had competing currencies that they would issue to pay their own bills. So there were via pesos and constitutionals pesos, backed by the land and resources that their armies had gotten control of. But mostly, like all revolutionary currencies, these pesos were backed by the promise of victory.


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[Assistant] And it's one way that you can actually kind of put a quantitative measure on via's fortunes.


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[Assistant] In 1914 and 1915 he was printing out via pesos that were accepted not just in Mexico but also the United States and traded solidly at about 30 cents to the U.S. dollar.


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[Assistant] Well, after Overgone kicked the hell out of VIA in the summer 1915, the value of the VIA peso crashed.


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[Assistant] If it was even now accepted at all, it was trading at slightly more than zero cents on the dollar. Though I did read that you could get a tortilla for 20,000 via pesos in the summer of 1915.


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[Assistant] The new worthlessness of these via pesos joined other worthless paper money that was floating around out there. Huerta had printed millions upon millions in paper money. None of it was now any good. Old Porphyrian notes? No good. They're not backed by anything anymore.


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[Assistant] Carranza and the Constitutionalists had their own currency, but to pay their bills, they had printed out just unlimited reams of paper.


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[Assistant] And you add to all the counterfeit bills that were of course also now circulating, and there's just no good paper money in Mexico anymore. Gold and silver were being hoarded and driven out of circulation, so there's practically no means of exchange.


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[Assistant] Barter and in kind payments became the order of the day.


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[Assistant] Carranza tried to fix this by saying, okay, all the paper money out there right now is worthless. You can just burn it. But we're gonna print out 800 million pesos worth of new money that we're gonna call unfalsifiables because they were supposed to be able to beat the counterfeiters.


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[Assistant] This was supposed to be the stable currency for the new regime, and it was pegged at 10 US cents.


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[Assistant] But after being rolled out in May of 1916, these unfalsifiables also became basically worthless, and they had to be abandoned by the end of the year. No one took them or believed in them.


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[Assistant] The social impact of all this involved actually some of the most revolutionary leveling of the whole Mexican Revolution.


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[Assistant] As we'll see more next week, Carranza's promises about land redistribution were never actually going to be followed through in practice.


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[Assistant] But the uncontrollable hyperinflation and destruction of the national currency wiped out the savings and material wealth of most of the old porphyrian oligarchy.


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[Assistant] Some of these families would come back thanks to their landed wealth and real estate holdings, but cash was worthless, and you often had to hawk valuables just to pay for basic necessities.


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[Assistant] It was neither planned nor premeditated, but there was a sort of rapid destruction of wealth that did have a measurable and revolutionary impact on the old elite.


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[Assistant] The duration of the revolution and the civil war and the now brewing economic crisis fed directly into a further social and public health crisis as these things so often do.


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[Assistant] There are now food shortages, grain riots, and a proliferation of beggars, especially in the cities.


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[Assistant] There was some attempt to set up some charity drives and soup kitchens, but it was all improvised and frankly just not enough.


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[Assistant] Into these malnourished populations, diseases and epidemics started popping up.


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[Assistant] Especially because the breakdown in public order had led to the breakdown in public sanitation.


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[Assistant] The streets of almost every city in Mexico were just an unwashed mass sewage and manure and garbage and dead bodies and rodent infestations. All of it had been left unattended for years.


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[Assistant] So all the old favorites started coming back. Smallpox, influenza, measles, a bit of cholera. And then the big one that got going was typhus, which spread rapidly through the population, killing at least as many people as bullets did.


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[Assistant] It's frankly kind of a miracle that Carranza survived as long as he did, given that his reward for having quote-unquote won the revolution was the right to be blamed for all this. And next week we're going to talk about how he managed to arrest the cycles of national governments collapsing.


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[Assistant] But for now, we're gonna turn back to Pancho Villa, who looked to be the beneficiary of Mexico's humiliation and misery, because he could now pin it all on Carranza.


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[Assistant] Sophia hammered Carranza for his corruption and for the failing economy, for the famine, the rising prices, the falling wages, and most especially he hammered Carranza for the humiliation of allowing the Americans to treat Mexico like one of their colonies.


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[Assistant] And though, via public rhetoric and occasional public speeches, hammered on patriotic and nationalist themes and a hatred of the gringos,


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[Assistant] The principal accusation was that Carranza was their stooge and puppet, and so he directed all of his attacks on Carranza's forces, never the Americans. He actually studiously avoided tangling with the Americans. An attack on Pershing's inert troops would now be counterproductive.


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[Assistant] And there they sat like an infected wound in northern Chihuahua that Villa could blame for everyone's problems. And he never even really talked about the fact that he was the one who had led the raid on Columbus. He never actually took public credit for it. It was always just sort of a thing that had happened.


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[Assistant] So, mostly ignoring the Americans, Villa made his return to the field in the summer of 1916.


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[Assistant] It had been four months since his not publicly claimed raid on Columbus. His legs still hurt, and he now sported a huge mountain man beard. But everything else was going swimmingly.


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[Assistant] Circumstances in Chihuahua had now changed quite a bit since Pancho Villa had been reduced to a cornered animal who was abandoned by all his old friends.


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[Assistant] The breakdown between Carranza and the Americans, and the unpopularity of both among the citizens at Chihuahua, had opened a big ol' vacuum for the great Quirovia to ride back into.


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[Assistant] Via sent word round that it was time to get the band back together, and many of his old comrades remembered the thrill and success of writing with Pancho Via.


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[Assistant] He also had weapons caches all over the place, and despite the buildup on the Mexican-American border, he was able to do a pretty good smuggling trade.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, Carranza's forces were now hindered by poor morale, bad leadership, and the sudden embargo on arms from the United States.


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[Assistant] Back in Washington DC, the mission of the Punitive Expedition had now changed.


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[Assistant] Catching via would be nice, but it was no longer their principal goal. This was no longer about a hot pursuit for justice and avenging American honor.


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[Assistant] Not wanting to start a war by continuing to operate an offensive campaign, the Wilson administration now hoped to exert dominance over Carranza and Mexico by refusing to withdraw the army until certain concessions were granted. The punitive campaign was now a bargaining chip.


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[Assistant] In September, representatives from both sides met in New London, Connecticut.


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[Assistant] Neither side wanted war but the Americans now demanded further assurances about American lives and property.


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[Assistant] Specifically, they wanted Carranza to agree that the Americans could come back into Mexico anytime they wanted if they felt like they had to protect American lives and property.


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[Assistant] And there was no way that Carranza was going to agree to this. And I mean, again, though Villa is constantly accusing Carranza of being an American stute, he was really not.


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[Assistant] Carranza and his negotiators instead dug in their heels. They basically say, you can sit in Northern Chihuahua for as long as you want, doing irreparable damage to your international reputation and likely risking another war, or you can do the smart thing and just withdraw unconditionally.


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[Assistant] But this now being September 1916 were leading right into a presidential election, so Wilson didn't want to do anything that would, one, start a war, because he was currently running on a platform of he kept us out of war, or, two, pull out without anything to show for their efforts.


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[Assistant] So the talk stalled, but the Americans stayed in Mexico.


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[Assistant] This meant that General Pershing got a front row seat for Pancho Villa not only running around free, but rebuilding his army.


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[Assistant] When he first came out of hiding in July, VIA had about a thousand men under his command. By September, that number was up to two thousand directly under him, with another couple thousand scattered around operating under allied commanders.


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[Assistant] And while Pershing was hindered by the constraints he was under, Via flourished thanks to the constraints that he was under.


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[Assistant] Via was good as the wily chief of a guerrilla army.


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[Assistant] It focused him. It made him plan and think things through in a way that he had just sort of given up on when he bought into his own hype and thought that the division del norte would just steamroll to victory.


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[Assistant] Operating against a much superior army, there was like 10,000 constitutionalist troops in Chihuahua, made via a better general.


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[Assistant] It also helped that the commanders he was squaring off against were not of Overgone's caliber, and VIA started leading them into trap after trap.


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[Assistant] His now regular move was to send in a small force, have those guys feign a disordered retreat, to draw the enemy into an ambush just down the road. VIA did this repeatedly, and it just kept working.


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[Assistant] Eventually, Via did get a little bit more ambitious, and he got it into his head that he could score a major PR victory if he captured Chihuahua City and showed everyone that the Carancista takeover of the state was not inevitable.


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[Assistant] VIA planned his attack for September the 16th, so it would coincide with Mexican Independence Day.


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[Assistant] At midnight, when the city was in the throes of its celebrations and the garrison was distracted, Via and about 2,000 men penetrated the city.


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[Assistant] Their targets were the barracks, the government palace where Via used to sit in his days as governor, and the penitentiary where they planned to spring all the prisoners.


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[Assistant] The Constitutionalist garrison was completely taken by surprise, and for at least a few hours, via successfully occupied most of the key parts of the Capitol.


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[Assistant] But this plan was never to hold the city for any length of time. And by dawn, Via and his men were pulling out.


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[Assistant] But as they rode off, they left in their wake the unmistakable impression that had been growing since summer. That Pancho Villa was back. And it was true. For a bit, Pancho Villa was back.


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[Assistant] VIA's re-ascendancy would last at least through the end of 1916, and the next few months would see him victorious in battle after battle.


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[Assistant] By late November 1916 he probably had 10,000 men under his command throughout the state, and he decided to make a second and even more direct assault on Chihuahua City.


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[Assistant] Over the course of four days, from November the 23rd to November the 26th, the city was engulfed by a running battle. And eventually the garrison commander decided he was running too low on ammunition and pulled out with his senior staff, not telling many of the men under his command that he was giving up and leaving.


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[Assistant] When the men realized that they had been abandoned, they surrendered, and Via was, for the second time, master of Chihuahua City.


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[Assistant] This comeback would be short-lived, however. Many of the same factors that were contributing to Carranza's unpopularity would also contribute to Villa's unpopularity.


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[Assistant] The population was sinking more and more into resigned exhaustion rather than a desire to really go set the world back on fire.


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[Assistant] The inertia of revolution and civil war was starting to find some resistant friction.


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[Assistant] So next week, we will talk more about how Kuranza managed to ride a kind of cynical exhaustion to power. Though, there was something of the old spirit left.


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[Assistant] And certainly when Carranza convened a constitutional convention at the end of 1916 to make some cosmetic alterations to the old constitution of 1857, he did not anticipate just how radical and visionary the result would be.


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[Assistant] Before we go this week, I do want to mention that I recorded one of my most favorite podcast interviews that I've ever participated in last week.


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[Assistant] You guys know that I am a baseball fan, and specifically a Mariners baseball fan.


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[Assistant] Well, me and the guys at the Dome and Bedlam podcast recorded an episode where we talked about the long overdue election of Edgar Martinez into the Hall of Fame, and then we did a draft of our favorite Mariners of all time, which


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[Assistant] Started out very normal and predictable, you know, I take Randy Johnson and then you take Ken Griffey Jr., but then it devolved into a lot of silliness.


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[Assistant] Happy to say that I got Ricky Henderson in left field because I love Ricky Henderson and technically he played for the Mariners.


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[Assistant] So if you want some unscripted Mike Duncan baseball content, please check out Dome and Bedlam. They're on iTunes, they're on Stitcher, they're on SoundCloud, and I will put a link in the show notes. Until then, I will see you next week.


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[Assistant] It's a pleasure, it's a pleasure to be a guest on a John Hosted Dude Soup because, and I'm not saying this to get in your head, but you get in your head. You get in your head too much.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I feel like we're getting some news. We're getting some substantial news that isn't, you know, a delay or a delay.


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[Assistant] Uh, of these gamers, it's like, yeah, they're probably not like all streamers in their personal time.


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[Assistant] You know, they're, they're doing the speed running and they're capping and, and, you know, doing that aspect of it. They're not doing live at home production.


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[Assistant] It could be the people that haven't been affected by any kind of financial hardship are donating more than they typically would because they know that, you know, there's an offset there.


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[Assistant] And then Warner Brothers Montreal is handling Gotham Knights.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I wonder what was happening if they, maybe they were working on something else and pivoted or what the story is there.


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[Assistant] Not exactly. It's weird, it's weird how they like, they, cause with, with the movie announcement we got like this, this endless cast of characters where I'm like, I don't even know who's in the Suicide Squad movie. There's too many of them. Uh, this is more than a squad.


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[Assistant] You know, this is like a murder of, of suicides or something, I don't even know, but with the game, they narrate, they narrow it down to four of them. It's King Shark, uh, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, and then who's the fourth one? Uhm.


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[Assistant] Batman is not actually dead in Gotham Knights and toward the end of the game or something, he's gonna, you know, reveal himself and you'll play as Batman at the end.


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[Assistant] I'm watching this trailer and am I right in thinking that you play as this little insect that's flying around?


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[Assistant] Which is crazy. It's a shame because James wasn't feeling great so he couldn't be on Dude's Soup today, but he loves Sekiro.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so I feel like the visuals of this he'd be very invested in and he loves monkey men.


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[Assistant] So I feel like that would be right up his alley.


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[Assistant] A former full-sale student that was acting as like a, you know,


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[Assistant] Yeah, cause if you actually did the program, they prepare you to work in animated films, TV shows, special effects for movies, making props, working on video games. We were just trying to, I guess, not


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[Assistant] But a lot of full-sale graduates have gone to work at Disney and Pixar and on Westworld and on The Last of Us Part 2, so I'm, I'm like pretty hopeful.


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[Assistant] I will say like, I was a little nervous going into it because I had no experience with modeling software, but I did feel like I


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[Assistant] Yeah, watch them, they're really fun. I, I thought it was a fun time and it starts on August 28th on the Funhaus channel and then the next episode September 3rd on the Rooster Teeth channel.


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[Assistant] I'm trying to figure out what all these buttons could possibly be for. I don't know. Uh, trouble and-


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[Assistant] I think that something that could really bolster a next gen switch would also be finally giving us.


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[Assistant] Be stupendous. Like so many of those GameCube games could get so much love. All the colors. All the colors. That could do so well.


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[Assistant] Where does that switch light sort of then fall in this hierarchy? Cause I, the switch light just doesn't, uh, you can't capture from, right? Or are there any other differences?


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[Assistant] And I bet the joycon drift, I bet you probably don't have that kind of issue. I don't have any joycon drift.


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[Assistant] $100 from Adam. $100 from Adam. That is the price you put on it.


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[Assistant] Performance upgrades performance power, do you think that there's going to be any changes to the actual structure design of the console itself like especially for the handheld, reading a bigger screen.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but, but I do think like there, there are some just general hardware, uh, hardware upgrades that could be made.


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[Assistant] Like, you know, could the switch itself be bigger? Probably not. That's probably not. But I can see the screen. Something with the screen.


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[Assistant] No, I mean Breath of the Wild 2 and Metroid Prime I am super excited for. Even like I've played both Bayonetta games and really enjoy those.


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[Assistant] To me, it's just, I feel like we've been asking for these GameCube remakes for so long and been so hopeful for them that, yes, I would, I would.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just looking at some of the games here, what I would want, Double Dash, Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door, Eternal Darkness, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like super cheap on Steam or something and I was like, you know what? I had to go back and do Beyond Good and Evil. It was hard to play.


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[Assistant] Hopefully we get some kind of remake remaster playable version of Beyond Good and Evil. It's a weird game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, one of my favorite games of all time is beach spikers volleyball for the game cube. Oh, there you go. Didn't you have a summer of beach spikers?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The gulls are infected in the mind.


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[Assistant] I need more news, I need news that's gonna make me stand up in my chair. Alright, next one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, excuse me, I don't believe this story is real. That's not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe it contains some kind of nutrient that they're no longer getting from the foliage around them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you know what, no, we, I believe it was in the 90s we had to send a bunch of Canada geese, we had to, in Ontario, there were too many Canada geese, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The government had to round them up and I think they sent them to Buffalo or maybe the Maritimes or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I get it. I get there being a problem where there's a native species that's just overrunning. They are being aggressive. They want your pee. You gotta, you gotta, you know, move them. I get it.


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[Assistant] I think he might be crossing the boundaries of the cat.


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[Assistant] They came into the cat, you know, some people don't purchase cats, some people come into cats.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's what I'm thinking, every couple at some point in their relationship has a cat issue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a cat that creates strife in their relationship. We fortunately haven't experienced that yet. But I would like to think that if we did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean have you considered maybe just putting like a collar on it with a node attached or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were there at them and their roommates they were feeding this cat this scrawny cat and they felt really bad for it and wants to take it in.


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[Assistant] So, they still feed the cat. And it still I think sleeps at their place at night.


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[Assistant] Bottom line, you're being a really great humanitarian here and just needs to stop being a total B.


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[Assistant] I will say, I do feel like outdoor cats was more common for me back home in Toronto because I think LA is just a very unsafe city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, one of my friends when I was in elementary school, she had this fat cat named Buster and that cat would go all over the neighborhood and get fed. It got so overweight because everyone was just feeding it.


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[Assistant] Apple is making a lot of enemies right now. Facebook, Microsoft, Fortnite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, and all of these other companies have their own proprietary platforms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and now even Microsoft is having its own battle with Apple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because Apple came back and said, well, we know we can't have past games come through the Apple Store.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So everyone's, same with Facebook, like everybody's having this same kind of showdown with Apple where they're getting really protective of the platform. They're saying if you don't abide strictly by our rules, you cannot operate within it. Which I understand, I mean I understand it's a terms of service thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess Apple has it within their right to say if you don't want to abide by what our service requires of you to do.


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[Assistant] But it does feel a little bit like Apple is changing the rules maybe to secure a monopoly.


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[Assistant] Yeah, we're a huge client. It benefits you to have us using your platform, even if at less.


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[Assistant] I was just gonna bring that up because that kind of was what felt to me like a little bit of the little guy getting punched down at in this. Yeah, so a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, a lot of the games that were being referenced were console or PC platform before being ported to, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let me ask you this James, has Adam ever tried to maybe slip a tracker on you somewhere?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Roki is another game that I'm waiting. Roki just came out recently on Steam, I believe. It's just a beautiful little, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thank god I would have had to crack the glass, break out the emergency funds. So we can get you that game that you own on three other platforms.


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[Assistant] 2021. This seems like it's gonna be the trend a little bit for this fall season.


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[Assistant] Gotta be tough, I think just thinking through how hard it's been for us, and I can't imagine trying to be in a studio where you're working together to make a game and you're handing off assets, how, or working on a shared server, how tough that has to be.


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[Assistant] I would love to do some co-op story missions in that game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, but it's not, uh, could you play together?


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[Assistant] I will say like, has Jess just like sat down and played Fall Guys? Like have you guys just kinda, cause you could play Fall Guys together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I love BattleBlock. Uh, a game I was thinking that actually, not that we would play it together obviously, but we would take turns Hellblade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've got it, my friend. I've got it. Uhm. The game? Jess, as I know, like myself, is a huge Scream fan. And while this is not Scream worthy, I think you should just play Until Dawn with her.


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[Assistant] I just, I think Jess, until, I think she'd be screaming at those teenagers. She'd love how cheesy it is. I think she would like it.


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[Assistant] One of our friends got one a few months ago and that's definitely where the cost comes in is your materials.


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[Assistant] I was talking with uh, Katie Ward, who the Rooster Teeth community knows her from running RT Extra Life.


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[Assistant] Uhm, alongside Jack Patillo and, uh, she being Australian, uh, and myself being Canadian, you know, we got all that great UK Commonwealth programming when we were kids and we were recently talking about Art Attack.


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[Assistant] Which is this show that was hosted by this dude named Neil and I watched it religiously because when I was young I did a lot of art and


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[Assistant] On Art Attack he'd be doing a ton of like little projects, you can do them yourself and mine always turn out so shitty. Like Neil would be like, he just put some PVA glue on it. He put PVA glue on everything, that was his thing.


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[Assistant] I, I know that everyone in the commonwealth will know what I'm talking about here, but yea, art attack, and then, and like, and then he'd be like, just mash up, mash up some toilet paper and put some PVA glue on it. That's not, that's not Neil. Yea, oh and then there was the statue puppet.


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[Assistant] I think the pod that you can get put in that becomes a tree is pretty neat.


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[Assistant] I sort of feel like when you die, your body should just become part of the everything again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're put, if you're put in a coffin, you know, there's that, it's gonna take a little bit longer.


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[Assistant] Yes, but then like, you know, there was, there were two shoots, one that said medical science and one that said, you know, bombing.


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[Assistant] You know, it can happen, and you can rise in the ranks.


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[Assistant] Sometimes if you don't, if they didn't make it for like E3, sometimes they'll come out, they'll be like, we'll get it at Gamescom, don't worry. Cause then that's like, or maybe they didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, they didn't have room for them, and so sometimes you get some scraps. Some really tasty scraps. But Gamescom, I feel like every year has been getting better and bigger, so...


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[Assistant] Uh, this obviously was a big gut punch, but uhm, this one felt lighter than typical ones for some reason. I couldn't put a finger on it, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Definitely. Yeah, less rave-y for sure. I like the rave atmosphere, the European dance club vibe. Yeah, that was sadly gone in the form of all the trailers. Jeff Keighley just brings the room down. I'm gonna say it. What? I'm sorry. Yeah, I do.


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[Assistant] The weirdest stuff I've ever seen has been at Gamescom where there are just kids, these, these kids drink it and they got a drink and they got a Heineken in one hand and then the dude is on stage yelling about the DPI of a mouse and they're losing their minds.


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[Assistant] Whatever. Yeah. You can also drink outside. They don't really care. So, we would go to the bodega, as they called it. Uh, or no, they called it something, I forget.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, I was like, I said, come on guys, let's go to the bodega. And then they looked at me, strangely. And I'm not even sure if you're allowed to drink outside, I just saw everyone else doing it. So, we were just like, cool, you're just outside of a club with a, yeah, a rum and coke. Pre-mixed.


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[Assistant] No, that's the rule of comedy, like the first three times it's not funny, but then on the fifth one it's really annoying, and then the sixth time you get a chuckle because now it's just nostalgic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember, because we had a meeting shortly after that and they're like, what about this James Willems guy? Should we hire him? And I thought of Diagon Alley and I chuckled. Yep, that's a yes. Let's keep him. I think he's, his edits are utter garbage, but man, he makes those Diagon Alley jokes.


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[Assistant] But yeaah, I mean also, they just found out they were a success 48 hours ago, so.


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[Assistant] This is, this seems to be the threshold with video games, right? It's like either you come out, you're never to be heard of again, or you're the biggest game in the world, either you're, you know, you're Fortnite or you're Fall Guys Season 2, you know? It's just...


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[Assistant] I don't know. It seems to be these overnight successes. It's so extreme now. It's, you're the biggest thing in the world or you're nothing. I'm glad in a world like this, uh, Apex Legends still has found an audience. And you know, Cod Warzone, like there's enough battle royales for everyone, but then I guess Fall Guys scratches that itch, right? Uh, yeah. But John, you're saying you'll never play by yourself again. Yeah, I played it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Explain something to me, John, because I'm an old man and streaming is still relatively alien to me. When someone gets stream sniped, that is them watching a big streamer and then


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cueing up in the hopes that they get into the same server because you can't.


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[Assistant] Is there, what, are they using like a VPN to be in their area or something like that? Like how do you, how can you get in, how can you guarantee you get into someone's game who you're watching stream?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You Strouds, Strouds, Stalker, that's a name, right? Yeah, yeah.


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[Assistant] And there's just a bunch of people just pushing you and poking you and going, do something. It's me. Well, we did, well, Among Us, we did that stream. And like, I know Alana was trying to do the like, she's like, okay, here's the code, use it real quick, except when you stream it, it just shows the code for everybody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and, and so people would join and they would just stand there in the corner and they're like, I don't, I don't want to upset you, but it's like, well, no, no, we need you to participate if you're going to be in here. No, thank you. No, thank you. I just want to hang out. And it's like,


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[Assistant] Bless their hearts. Yeah, it's just funny because we do GTA with fans, you know, and like, those are people who are on our friends list who have a hard time getting in a game with us. There seem to be some sort of art. That's GTA though.


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[Assistant] It's, it's anyone's guess, the magic, keeping that engine running.


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[Assistant] The, the, the Capcom game, the, uh, yeah. That game with the timer counting down from


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[Assistant] Oh man, you missed that. You say that, but I also


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[Assistant] There was the issue where you only had one save slot, right? That was part of it. I remember that just being so frustrating and then I guess they fixed it. We should play the second one again at some point.


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[Assistant] Yeah, man, yeah, 360 co-op was always a gamble too. Cause like, I remember trying to play Saints Row. Was it?


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[Assistant] Anyway, thank god for PCs. If, if it still works. If not, then, uh, to fuck everything.


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[Assistant] That's like, that's an antiquated thing though. That's just like a leftover from back when, you know, when we were kids, we didn't realize video games were only 45 minutes long. It was just that they were so, they designed them in such a way that you'd have to just play over and over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so then now all of a sudden they have an ability to save and like, oh, we can add more content. But game developers are still like,


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[Assistant] No, timer. 45 minutes. You could only, like, there were, there were, like, uh, the guys who made, uh, Goldeneye, Rare. I remember when they, you know, they made first person shooter, like, well, the way you play is you stop, you hold a trigger, and then you aim.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you go home and he's like, yeah, yeah, there's always that one kid on the street and then they're like, why doesn't he have friends? I don't get it. I understand. No, go ahead, sorry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, there's that one and there's the kid, there's the rich kid on my stream. It's funny because I just referenced him. I was watching a Dreamcast video we just played. I'm remembering this kid and why I didn't like him. He invited me over one time. He said, hey, you want to come over and play Half-Life? I was like, oh cool, I have heard about this game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what he meant was, do you want to come over and watch me install some software so I can play Half-Life online, uh, for an hour? And after that we didn't hang out much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, but it's like we're at that point now where video games look better than...


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[Assistant] Uh, you know, the CGI movies that came out, you know, obviously, it's not fair because it came out 10, 15 years ago or whatever, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it's amazing that games are looking as good as Ratchet and Clank.


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[Assistant] Yeah, which I guess is harder to do, right? To make a compelling, beautiful cartoon of something that is fake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause you're running two games, two levels on top of each other and having to switch between them at the same time. Which, yeah, I mean, that's sort of the hope, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps we have peaked with graphics. I think like maybe we're, we're good. We're good where we're at. I think now it's what can you do with the art and what can you do with gameplay? Like, cause you see something like The Order or 1886 or whatever, you go, oh my god, what a great looking game. That's not a game, that's a movie. Okay, got it. Like you, you,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like, can you make a fun game that looks that good? And I think we're, hopefully at that point, I know it's expensive and it takes a lot of time and a lot of talented people do it, but like, hopefully with technology we have now peaked at that point where we just make everything look beautiful, as beautiful as human beings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's my theory that that's all of what social media is doing where everyone's so worried about like, oh, they're stealing my, my DNA and they're going to, they're going to clone it. Like, you're not that interesting. Don't worry. And like, you know, my connect is spying on me. Like, no, no, no, this is all just research and eventually someone's going to go,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have all this data. We could just, we can have an algorithm program NPCs and then you just have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really mundane NPCs, but that's what makes it interesting. I could see that happening at some point in the future. I mean, we're talking 10, 20 years away maybe, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Similar when you're talking about, when you're talking about Fall Guys and how you're worried that game developers will like, start tailoring things to streamers, whatever. That's like, the eSports sort of community of like, you have games like Overwatch, you're like, you're ruining it, and then you have regular Joes like James and I where like, I didn't notice you changed anything. You know, but it's like, who you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one is. No, there's no, no one person.


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[Assistant] I think you, I think you make friends with some Overwatch League dudes who are fans of yours. And they could be the worst team in the league and they would, they would carry you. I remember when we had those guys and when they were Cloud9, um, KaiKai I think was his name, he was the guy who came in and he was like their coach at the time.


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[Assistant] And he just got on my account, which I was like, you know, I worked pretty hard to get to diamond and he went in as like soldier and was just wrecking people. And he was like, this is fun. How he's like, this is fun. How terrible everybody is. It's like, uh, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, uhm, Ghostrunner is the one I think I'm still looking forward to the most. It's funny, I was out camping this weekend so I missed a lot of this stuff. So anytime I had an internet connection I was just sort of like catching up on the day or anything like that just to be up on it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and just reading the comments and it's like some of the games I guess run around like, I'm so into this, this is a perfect game, I love the demo, I want more of this. And just seeing people like, this video bored me, not for me. And I'm just like, whatever dude, this is so up my alley.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, I guess maybe I had some perspective where I'm like, I'm in the woods, uh, if I run out of water I might die, uh, this game looks amazing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The complaint I saw was like, oh, well the gameplay loop looks boring. Or like, oh, it looks too repetitive. I mean, really, all games have that problem. It's just how good are they at hiding it. And from my guest room, Ghostrunner, is you unlock those powers as you move on. Because like in the demo we played, there was no block ability, right? And that seems to be something that you get later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's just, it's like at this point though, after playing games for 30 plus years, it's like you, you see that pattern, you see that rhythm and the best games. It's, it's funny. Like when, uh, that the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Last Star Wars game came out, the, uh, Jedi Fallen Order, and when they were saying like, you know, it's like a Metrovania and you unlock powers, you're just explaining a video game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll just give people the bare minimum. It's like, no, they actually put work into it and they made something that people wanted to play. It's just like, it wasn't revolutionary, it was just like, this is what it looks like when you give a shit. Or you have enough of a vision of a game that you can design an actual video game around it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, with that said Ghostrunner will be my game of the year. You can't change my mind. That's it. If it comes out this year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, fingers crossed. I applied for the beta, I don't, uh...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, speaking of Elise, I've been using Sherlock release games knowing what time of year it is. So that's been good. I know it's been six months because they announced a new Sherlock, so they just pumped those out. Yeah, it's a prequel. We'll play it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It looks like Crossy Road. It has like a Crossy Road style to it, like that isometric, top down, kinda weird look, but it's just, it's just a bunch of weird, almost like Hotline Miami characters beating each other up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It looks awesome, yeah. Good pick, John. You win.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you were saying this was just like a proof of concept or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He'd be like, and we added this feature in this feature and eventually we were like, are you going to release a game or what? I guess it came out two years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, I never actually played it. I backed it, I mean, I bought it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, you're just, uh, you're like this, yeah, uh, half bunny, half man thing with a, you know, it's got weird physics and stuff. I completely forgot about the game, but the way you were explaining it, I was like, what happened to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What happened to that? Just remember every, every couple of months there was a dev video and he's like, we've integrated these cool features and this and this and he's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where's the game? But now I look at it, it's just furries fighting each other, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, good luck, right? I heard it's just been, it's a busted mess.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and then, you know, She-Hulk shows up, something, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think we should play it just because it's Avengers, but I, I think it's gonna be my name in my game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's gonna be my next game. That's why I'm doing it. I have such low hopes. Everything I've heard is just like, it's not optimizer. And what's like, what's the rush? There's no Avengers movie coming out. There's no Black Widow movie coming out. It's like, we gotta get it out for Mulan. What sense does that make?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, but they're still banking on people not knowing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With their own property. Yea, with their own property. They, they have it on, I've seen it on billboards around town where they're angled in such a way that if you're driving and you kinda look, you think you saw Chris Evans. But you're not really, it's like, oh, Avengers, like they're making it look like a movie poster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, Scarlett Johansson. Like, do you mean Johansson? No? This is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So is that a sign, because Neutron was that, or the last one, Neutron Legacy was, he was all clean and nice, and since Jared Leto is kind of a greasy bad boy, does that mean like, instead of Daft Punk, who is, you know, known for their kind of clean aesthetic, you get someone


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, Grimes is, she got, she got picked up by cyberpunk. She's, she's stuck with them, and then I think Lady Gaga will do something with Bayonetta one day, but uhm, Carpenter Brew and Tron, I think I've seen that idea floated around. I, I could be into that, like a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like do a Fury Road style Tron movie. I don't know if you need the Flynn story anymore, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess, but this is, they keep making sequels of movies that don't do well because there's no other, well there's no other IP. No, I'm a Tron Legacy Apologist. I love that movie. I rewatch it every once in a while. I'm actually, I was happy it got made. I was so happy for that movie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, they go, it's got a roller coaster. It's got, you know, it's streaming well on Disney Plus. People apparently like it. Idiots, I know, but we did set up this, you know, Sark story, son of Sark's storyline with, uh, what's his name? Scarecrow. He's in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Silly Murphy. Yeah, yeah. Killian. But yeah, he's there for half of the story. I don't know. I'm like, there's enough there that I'm sure, yeah, when they go to their book, they go, well, we got this original idea where a girl befriends a dinosaur.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's made, it's done, I don't know, like, let's just, yeah, Jared Leto goes in a computer, they just, they type it into the, the Excel spreadsheet and it, it spits out $600 million with like, like we can write it off as a loss, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. No, it absolutely is. The story goes, like, some Disney executive went to Shanghai and went on the Tron ride and went...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I loved it. I love that. I love we're getting it. I love that where they're like, Dune was a commercial flop, let's make it again. Alright, cool. Keep trying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the kid from Big Daddy calls him out on Twitter. That's for another time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and whatever Pacific Heights universe took place in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You probably won't be in a fun house. It's like when Drew Carey says all that racist stuff, they cut it out, but you might catch it live.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yea, I know, but it's like Tourette's on set. It's crazy. Yea. Yea. I might be thinking of someone else. Maybe Alan. I think you are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, John, that we recently did a, uh, Mario race run where we raced all the 3D Mario games against each other. And I was given the task of playing Mario Galaxy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I was always a fan of Mario Galaxy, but I think when I played it the first time, I just kinda like, played it and I was done with it. I was like, I just did the bare minimum to get to the point where I could, I could be done with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it is, yeaah, it's like kind of hybrid linear, but it's not nearly as linear as say, Galaxy 2. Galaxy 2 is like straight up just net one level to the next level to the next level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They are great games. When we were playing it, there was like a discussion over, you know, what's the best Mario game? And I know some people say Galaxy or Galaxy 2 is their favorite. For me, Odyssey is just pretty spectacular.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just feel like Galaxy, the weird gravity stuff does stand in the way of it just being like a very pure fun Mario platformer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So here's the thing, this is why Galaxy will never be like, like Mario Odyssey is just a Mario game. These gimmicks are so terrible and they've only gotten worse over time. Trying to use a controller to try and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Navigate this, it's just a burden. It doesn't feel like an exciting part of the game experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is fun, I mean, like, obviously I never got into Dark Souls, but the, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole aspect of being able to play a game again and again and appreciate it in new ways is like pretty wondrous, a wondrous thing. I'm getting a lot of that with Hades. Yeah. You know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where, you know, I played it again last night and I was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't even like the, uh, I don't even like the gun. But I'm gonna use the gun. Like why not, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. Sometimes it's the mechanics, you just want to be reminded of the mechanics of the game that you enjoyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I've only beaten Link to the Past the one time. So I don't really have, like, uh, like a preference necessarily.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most, most Zeldas other than Ocarina of Time I've only beaten the one time. Most games I would say I've only beaten one time.