Ed Helms
Appearances
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update: Eyes Closed Mouth Open
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update: Eyes Closed Mouth Open
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update: Eyes Closed Mouth Open
Second Date Update.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update: Eyes Closed Mouth Open
Second date update.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update UPDATE: Carjitsu Crazy
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update UPDATE: Carjitsu Crazy
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update Classic: Hot Date Hijack
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update Classic: Hot Date Hijack
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update Classic: Hot Date Hijack
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update
Second Date Update Classic: Hot Date Hijack
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Crook County
8 | The Rear View Mirror
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Crook County
8 | The Rear View Mirror
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Prohibition. It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula 6. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor. And all along, an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
So how did Prohibitions war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Prohibition ist synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers and of course failure. I'm Ed Helms and on Season 3 of my podcast Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
In der Tat, man könnte sogar sagen, dass es spektakulär zurückgefallen ist. Ich bin Ed Helms und in der Saison 3 meiner Podcast-Snafu bringen wir Sie zurück in die 1920er-Jahre und die Geschichte von Formel 6. Denn was Sie wahrscheinlich nicht wissen über die Prohibition, ist, dass amerikanische Bürger in riesigen Nummern durch gebratenes Likor sterben.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Und die ganze Zeit war ein unmögliches Duo, das versuchte, die Korruption hinterher zu stoppen. So how did Prohibitions war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying? Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing Prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more. Which she does. Arguably a little too well. Find out more on Season 3, Episode 4 of Snafu Formula 6.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying? Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing Prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more. Which she does. Arguably a little too well. Find out more on Season 3, Episode 4 of Snafu Formula 6.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying? Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing Prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying? Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing Prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more. Which she does. Arguably a little too well. Find out more on Season 3, Episode 4 of Snafu Formula 6.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more. Which she does. Arguably a little too well. Find out more on Season 3, Episode 4 of Snafu Formula 6.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Office Ladies
Webisode: Subtle Sexuality
So they asked me to audition for Subtle Sexuality, so I gave them a little followed by some and I sealed the deal with
Office Ladies
Webisode: Subtle Sexuality
Kelly gets to kind of erupt in this webisode series, but also Mindy Kaling does too. She's directing these.
Office Ladies
Webisode: Subtle Sexuality
Yeah. I'm really excited. This is going to be a great video.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Kate Cassidy EXCLUSIVE: Sharing Her Last Conversation with Liam Payne and The Real Story Behind Their Relationship
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Kate Cassidy EXCLUSIVE: Sharing Her Last Conversation with Liam Payne and The Real Story Behind Their Relationship
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay's Must- Listens: Before You Text Your Ex… Listen to This! 5 Love Experts Share the SECRET to Let Go and Move On (Ft. Esther Perel, Mel Robbins, & Matthew Hussey)
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay's Must- Listens: Before You Text Your Ex… Listen to This! 5 Love Experts Share the SECRET to Let Go and Move On (Ft. Esther Perel, Mel Robbins, & Matthew Hussey)
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Deepak Chopra: How to Ask AI The RIGHT Questions To Grow, Heal, and Live a More Fulfilled Life
You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Deepak Chopra: How to Ask AI The RIGHT Questions To Grow, Heal, and Live a More Fulfilled Life
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Alexis Ohanian: Why Discipline Creates Freedom & How to Incorporate Routines in Your Schedule in Order to Succeed
Ha, ha.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Alexis Ohanian: Why Discipline Creates Freedom & How to Incorporate Routines in Your Schedule in Order to Succeed
But these founders today are much smarter about it. Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and, of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Alexis Ohanian: Why Discipline Creates Freedom & How to Incorporate Routines in Your Schedule in Order to Succeed
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Dr. Vonda Wright: Formula to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (Why your Current Workout is Not Giving You Results)
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Dr. Vonda Wright: Formula to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (Why your Current Workout is Not Giving You Results)
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Khloé Kardashian: My Side that Nobody Knows (Truth Behind Headlines, Divorce, Co-Parenting)
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Khloé Kardashian: My Side that Nobody Knows (Truth Behind Headlines, Divorce, Co-Parenting)
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
He's trying to attack prohibition itself. So Bacon brings up a case where drinkers in upstate New York had tapped into a vat of methanol and dropped dead. He points the finger at Duran. This is you. This is your fault. These people died because of Prohibition. Duran deflects.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Bacon's convinced these deaths came from industrial denaturants. Duran counters that the wood alcohol could have come from anywhere. These deaths by methanol aren't on him. In fact, since he's facing a congressman from New York, he pulls in the testimony of one famous New Yorker as evidence for his side. He brings in analysis from Alexander Gettler.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Now this moment is, for lack of a better word, bananas. Because as we know, if it weren't for Prohibition, no one would be breaking into industrial warehouses to drink aftershave ingredients. They could just walk down to the liquor store on the corner and pick up some gin.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
For Duran to say deaths like this had, quote, no relation to the National Prohibition Act, it's just, well, it's an insult to anyone's basic intelligence.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
To be clear, it's true in the case of these particular methanol deaths that Gettler's analysis showed they were killed by pure wood alcohol, not wood alcohol that was mixed into liquor. But Duran is using Gettler's judgment of this one case to deflect from Norris and Gettler's bigger analysis, that prohibition was causing people to turn to denatured alcohol and that it was poisoning them.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
And by the way, James Duran knows what he's doing. See, behind the scenes, after the Christmas poisonings in 1926, Duran must have gotten a little nervous. Could those deaths actually be his fault? He wrote directly to the New York Health Commissioner and asked for the city's data on the deaths. The commish wrote back.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
So Duran had it right there in black and white. The New York Health Commissioner made the damning connection denaturing alcohol was killing people. But back in the present, now sitting in front of Congress, Duran has the audacity to tell the committee that Gettler's work exonerated him. It was a bold strategy, but then Duran was never gonna just roll over.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but this is a show about screw-ups. Duran's gambit worked. Deny, evade, deflect. It's an old playbook. And Duran was a natural. It was practically a reflex for him.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
And here's the real downer, Representative Bacon. He backed down. He asked a raft of questions. But at the key moment, when he could have asked some, you know, follow-ups, he just kind of wilted. The hearing moved on. Just imagine Duran wiping his forehead with a silk hanky and allowing himself a sly, satisfied smile.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
No handcuffs, no trial, just a little chit-chat behind closed doors and a slick set of lies, and he was home free. I mean, that's so fracking insane. Do all the stuff we've talked about. Hurt and poison and kill so many people. And just walk away. The Prohibition Bureau was well aware that people were getting injured, even dying, from drinking industrial chemicals.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
They knew the system in place to manage those chemicals was porous and corrupt. They knew it was getting out into bootleg liquor. They knew that denaturing industrial alcohol was not deterring people. And in fact, it was just killing them. The indifference to all of those deaths by Duran and the dries in Congress was negligent at best.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Personally, I'd go for cruel, reckless, and rooted in a callous disregard for human life. But even if Duran was able to smoothly lie his way out of this one moment of congressional accountability, not everyone was so easily fooled.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Duran might deny the link, but after the public outcry from Norris and Gettler's report, the American public was finally connecting the dots between national prohibition and people dying in their own towns and neighborhoods. And in 1930, they got a little more affirmation from a bootlegger in a green hat, George Cassidy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
As his case wound through the legal system, George made a connection, a reporter at the Washington Post. I imagine him chatting with folks as he walked in and out of the courtroom. George was a colorful character, and this was a high-profile bust. Some newshound was bound to catch him on a potty break.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
So that meant when the verdict came down, and he was going to take the fall, and no one else was going to pay any price at all, George knew exactly what to do. He was ready to tell his story. So, as Garrett Peck says, he gave the Post their first scoop of the century.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
That's right, six front page articles. Each morning, people around the country waited with bated breath for the next installment of old George's expose to land on newsstands. Will somebody please arrest me for bootlegging so I can get that kind of press?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Anyway, three weeks before people were set to cast their ballots in the 1930 midterms, a bombshell landed that made voters reconsider which box to check. On October 23, 1930, George wrote, I saw a side of Prohibition no one else has seen.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Previously on Snafu, Norris and Gettler finally got the nation's attention.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
What's black and white and wet all over? Yeah, a wet newspaper doesn't sound particularly threatening, but with this story, they were torching the dries.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
A good old D.C. scandal that couldn't have been more perfectly timed if you were a wet and gunning to kick Prohibition to the curb.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
as Fred Cassidy says. That didn't take any prisoners. And neither did the Washington Post. They followed the George Cassidy stories with another series from Butts himself, with headlines like... Prohibition in the Senate.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Okay, they definitely went for the bare butts thing, and God bless them for it. But of course, exposing the hypocrisy of the dries wasn't the only factor in the election. Because in 1929... It was panic.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
That November, the wets flooded the House, going from 76 seats to 146. Republican states like Ohio and Illinois and Kansas flung aside dry Republicans for wet Democrats. As for the man who helped push the tidal wave, George Cassidy was behind bars, locked away, serving his time. Well, sort of.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The Drys tried to shrug it off. You can't poison poison. But the backlash sent Mabel Walker-Willibrandt packing. Hoover had no use for her any longer. She was kind of an irrelevancy. Support for Prohibition was on the ropes.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
He was handed an 18-month sentence at a jail about two blocks away from his house on Capitol Hill.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Ah, yes, the old George Remus treatment. A jail term fit for a king. King of the bootleggers, at least.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
And remember Cassidy's little black book, replete with the contact information of each and every one of his customers, every politician who secretly solicited bootlegged liquor? Well, the Treasury Department got their hands on that little book, James Duran and his bosses. So what did they do with this comprehensive list of every fat cat and hypocrite in Washington?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Did Duran sneak into their offices and drip methanol into their whiskeys? Well, of course not, but at least they cracked down on them, right? Not a chance. In fact, they did the exact opposite. Every photocopied record of Cassidy's client list was tossed into a fire and burned. If George Cassidy got the treatment of a king, then the members of Congress were, I don't know, emperors?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The point is, even when it's clear an emperor has no clothes, in the American old boy crony system, he can always count on a James Duran to cover his ass. After the 1930s midterms, Prohibition was really on the ropes. Alexander Gettler and Charles Norris have spelled out the failures of the Prohibition Bureau's denaturing program.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Cassidy exposed the dry politicians for what they were, hypocrites getting sloshed. James Duran's crew, having failed miserably in their poisoning campaign, were totally flailing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
In 1931, Duran's chemists rolled out another new formula for denaturing alcohol.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
It was like the government's heart just wasn't in the whole mass poisoning thing anymore. There were no more incendiary newspaper stories about new deadly formulas. Prohibition Bureau officials, the Treasury Department, they all simply quit talking about it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
They started quietly backing away from the crime scene with a nothing to see here shrug, as if the killing of thousands of Americans never happened. Debra spent years combing through reports from newspapers, medical examiners, insurance companies, and coroner offices, and came to her best estimate on the final body count.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
In the early 1930s, support for the dry cause crumbled. The violence of liquor raids played a part. If you're keeping track, that's Richard Hart and the other agents like him. Corruption at every level of enforcement played a part, too. Big thanks to George Cassidy for dragging that one out into the open. And the outrage over the poisoning scheme?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
That was a body blow to the support for Prohibition. Gettler's research and Norris's essay exposed just how callous, how morally indefensible Prohibition enforcement had become. By the time 1932 rolled around, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate for president, declared that if elected, on day one of his presidency, taps were going to be wide open once again.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
You hear that one guy hollering? I love that guy. If my beer mug had been sitting empty in the cabinet for 10 years, yeah, I'd be voting for that too.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
As he addressed the nation, the banner behind him was adorned with his campaign slogan, Happy Days Are Here Again. The American people had spoken. It was closing time on Prohibition. The drinkers in Congress rushed to pass the 21st Amendment.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Bop the champagne, brewers could brew again, bars could serve again. And that means everything's going back to normal, right? Well, no. Prohibition had been an extremely violent mess. It had changed the American way of life. It hadn't stopped the drinking, but it had driven it underground, created black markets, destroyed legitimate businesses.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
James Duran, prohibition commissioner, is seated at a long table. Spread out around him are accounting documents, charts, lists of warehouses across the country where industrial alcohol is stored. He's flanked by his staff. He's been pulled into a congressional budget hearing for 1930. It ain't the C-SPAN era, but you can practically see the sweat steaming up Duran's round glasses.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The pre-Prohibition saloons, those immigrant living rooms at the heart of working class neighborhoods, They never really came back. And of course, the real cost was in human lives. People, so many people, had been hurt and killed along the way. So you're probably wondering the same thing I'd been wondering the whole time. Was anyone actually going to answer for all of that?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The boys in Washington already knew exactly who to pin the blame on. Mabel Walker Willebrandt. As time went on, they made her the figurehead of everything that went wrong with prohibition enforcement. During her time as Assistant Attorney General, she had been the face of the law, even swapping burns with Al Smith on the campaign trail, right?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Not that we gotta feel sorry for her after everything she did. I mean, she gave a thumbs up to the KKK. You can't just brush right past that. But by pinning it all on her, they made Mabel a scapegoat for the worst abuses of the Prohibition Bureau. All of the blood spilled. The whole pile of corpses. They got dumped at Mabel's feet. Prohibition Portia. Her fault.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
By making Mabel Walker Willebrandt the fall gal, everybody else got off scot-free. Take Duran himself. He weaseled out of accountability for the way he ran the Prohibition Bureau and covered up for Congress. Then he stepped down as commissioner in 1930 and went back behind the scenes. His behind-the-scenes position was, drumroll please, Commissioner of Industrial Alcohol.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Remember how the Prohibition Bureau got shifted over to the Department of Justice once Mabel was gone? Well, it was part of a big show by Congress to make it look like they were really changing things now. They passed the Prohibition Reorganization Act.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
Not only did it send Prohibition Policing over to the DOJ, but in its place, the Treasury established a new bureau, the Bureau of Industrial Alcohol. Duran was the new bureau's first employee. Once a commissioner, always a commissioner, I guess. In other words, with Duran having burned Cassidy's black book, essentially covering Congress's ass, none of those guys were going to come after Duran.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
But one year into the new job that's definitely not the same as the old job, Duran published his first annual report. It's big news. He's finally reversing course on the whole denaturing thing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
And sadly, that's as close as we get to an admission. It's like, yeah, the wood alcohol we were using was bad. It killed people, but we're stopping all that. And oh, look, check it out. It turns out we can actually come up with a non-toxic way of denaturing industrial alcohol. Who knew? Not sure I really trust the guy after, you know, everything. And now he's got to pass.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
He's just passing the word along. Don't worry, y'all. That little poisoning snafu, that won't happen again. To add one more olive to this already extremely dirty martini of a career, I bet you can guess what Duran did when liquor became legal again. He became a lobbyist for the country's biggest distillers. And he set out to fight against government regulation of alcohol. God damn.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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I mean, you remember his wife was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She was the one who wrote that book saying it was bad to even cook with alcohol. I'm dying to know what she thought when old Honey Bun turned around and started chilling for big liquor. And he wasn't the only one. Which brings us for one last time back to Mabel Walker Willebrandt.
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Stories have been swirling in the press about the Bureau's violence, its corruption, its cruel and casual approach to mass poisoning. Which means that when Duran sits down to talk about funding his agency, he finds himself in a defensive posture. Partway through, the congressman from New York, deliciously named Mr. Robert Bacon, decides to make Duran answer the kinds of questions he usually ducks.
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We left her falling off the tightrope in Washington. But let's just say she was also able to make a nice soft landing because, as Terry Winter says... When Prohibition ended, she went to work for a wine company. It's like... Yeah, these people. In fact, what makes it even crazier is that Mabel started working for this wine company before Prohibition ended.
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I mean, does anyone, anyone have a single atom of genuine conviction? It's just all so cynical. Not that Mabel made that her life's work either. She kept climbing from position to position. Eventually, she became a lawyer for two other interesting industries, the airlines and, oh wait, what's this? The movies. Hey, that's what I do.
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Also, I gotta say, it's a little ironic that of all the people to comment on what went wrong with prohibition, it may have been Mabel herself who put it best.
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Adios, Mabel. It wasn't all your fault. Well, that wasn't not your fault.
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It started as a moral crusade, as a minority of hardliners fought to remake American life in their own squeaky clean image. A powerful political lobby turned it into a wedge issue. Congress made it a crime. It was a culture war that made it all the way to the Constitution. Does all of this feel a bit familiar to you? It should, because it's basically the world we still live in today.
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Our political system is set up so that certain people benefit from nasty, unending political fights. For starters, take, well, lobbyists.
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That's my friend Josh Graham-Lynn. He directs a bipartisan anti-corruption organization called Represent Us. And full disclosure, I do some work with them, too.
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Look no further than Mabel Walker-Willibrandt and James Duran to see that this was a huge problem during Prohibition. To hear more about how it's still a problem today, keep an ear out for our bonus episode with Josh, coming very soon. And this revolving door for lobbyists, it's just one of a number of systemic problems in the way our government functions.
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Most people in the 1920s didn't want prohibition. Sure, maybe they knew alcohol could hurt people, but they also had a sense that banning it outright was probably not the most sensible solution.
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Well said, Paul. Let me reiterate that. Law is not how you change people's minds. I mean, think about the prohibitions we still live with today. Bans on abortion, bans on weed. We've only just overturned the ban on gay marriage.
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Since the 1920s, when the temperance movement played on racist fears and gave guns to domestic terrorists, it feels like we've been caught in one culture war after another. When lobbyists get those issues written into law, we end up enforcing moral codes with some kind of kindergarten justice. But setting off a culture war is like taking a jackhammer to the foundations of your own house.
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It just might bring your entire home crashing down around you.
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Bacon presses him on whether or not the people in New York were killed by his formulas, the ones that pumped lethal toxins into the industrial alcohol supply. In other words, did he sacrifice these people on the altar of prohibition? Let me just say personally, I love this moment. It's like, yeah, we're finally going to get it all from the horse's mouth.
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November 1933, New York City. The Waldorf Astoria is putting the finishing touches on three new bars. One of them, with blue and gold columns and a mirrored ceiling, is the jewel of the city. The Hotel New Yorker has purchased $100,000 worth of top shelf whiskey and is building out a new basement wine cellar to house the world's finest wines. All anyone knew anymore was bathtub gin.
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The waiters at Lewis Sherry's on Park Avenue relearn the appropriate wines for each course. A hearty Barolo with your steak. Maybe a Chardonnay with your chicken cordon bleu. Requests for liquor licenses filed at New York City Hall are coming in at a rate of 1,000 a day. At Bloomingdale's on the Upper East Side, the line snakes out the door and around the corner.
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Customers waiting for doors to open so they can snatch up bottles of imported scotch and wine. As for Charles Norris, well, the end of Prohibition is in sight, but he's still got plenty of work to do. He travels through New York, the waterfront, the Bowery, collecting data and writing down his observations for his annual report. The city is still far from perfect.
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The Great Depression now brings its own litany of suffering to the people around him. But the destructive wake of prohibition is finally dissipating. As he passes the Gothic edifice of Bellevue, it's hard not to remember the worst days of the poisonings, when the hospital was surrounded by bodies.
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I know we're back in the 1920s, but the drama of this moment, it's what I love about history. It's why we do this damn podcast. As Deborah Blum says.
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That was the thick of Prohibition. But now, the piers are clear.
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1933. Utah becomes the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment. That seals it. Prohibition is overturned. In New York, Bellevue Hospital makes an announcement, to little fanfare. The formation of a new department, Forensic Medicine. It's the first of its kind in the country. The head of the department will be Charles Norris, and the head of toxicology, Alexander Gettler.
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In the next chapter of his career, Norris loved the stage and the microphone, relishing his position as the face of public service. Meanwhile, Gettler continued to live out his days, a private man in a public job. He was offered a chance to do a TV show on forensics, CSI before CSI, but that wasn't his style. He kept his head down, and he worked hard.
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But he still couldn't avoid controversy altogether. In fact, according to his grandson Al, the family still remembers that one time Gettler's wife, Alice, dropped by the courtroom to see Gettler in action.
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That threat brought home the gravity of Gettler's work to his family, but to Alexander, that was the cost of doing work that really mattered. After Prohibition, even more new poisons were entering daily life. Leaded gasoline, the newly discovered and highly toxic element thallium, sold as a rat poison but so dangerous it was eventually banned.
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Not to mention an old poison in the air whose danger was just starting to emerge. Cigarette smoke. Alexander worked against all of these poisons. And in fact, Gettler is still celebrated today by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. They give an award in his name to toxicologists who develop new techniques for chemical analysis. And he wasn't alone.
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So true, Deborah. With the screws finally being put to Duran, would citizens finally get answers for the deaths of their loved ones? Would Duran, or anyone else for that matter, finally be held accountable for the Treasury Department's deadly poisoning scheme? I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3, the story of Formula 6.
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Because he launched a generation of forensic geniuses who followed in his footsteps. They went on to lead forensics labs from Long Island to Puerto Rico.
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They were a special club. They were chemists and toxicologists dedicated to public health, public servants who made sure that we wouldn't accidentally poison ourselves in the pursuit of better living through chemistry. they carried on his legacy. They even called themselves the Gettler Boys.
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Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
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This episode was written by Carl Nellis and Albert Chin, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter.
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How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. In our final episode, James Duran faces a reckoning, first in Congress and then for his career. Along the way, his Prohibition boys finally catch George Cassidy. But that slippery George has one more trick up his sleeve.
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As the Great Depression pushes Prohibition off center stage, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler take stock. And so do we. In the U.S. Senate mailroom, a new clerk is sorting the day's incoming letters. It's the spring of 1930, another election year. There's plenty of mail flying in and out as senators coordinate their campaigns. But this new clerk can't stay focused on his work.
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He keeps looking up, watching the flow of people coming into the building. He's got his eyes peeled for one thing in particular. He's looking for a green hat. He's looking for George Cassidy. As George's son says, So this guy had it out for dad, and he wanted him bad. The clerk job? It's a ruse. Just a cover.
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The guy's name is Roger Butts, and he's a young prohibition agent on his first big assignment. He's just 20 years old, but he's been specially assigned to catch, and I quote, the man in the green hat. You gotta admit, your brand is strong when even the haters are using your handle. Duran's Prohibition Bureau is making one final play to bring him down.
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The mailroom charade goes on for a while, but just scanning government offices for suspicious behavior isn't getting him anywhere. So Butts gets off his duff and takes action. He starts asking around.
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Yep, according to his own testimony, Butts is, and I quote, in search of some whoopee. One of those W words spelled with an H. I love those. Whiskey. While. Whatever. Someone eventually obliges and introduces Butts to Cassidy two days later in the Senate stationary room. Butts squares George up and determines he matches the physical description he was given by the Prohibition Bureau.
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But on this day, Cassidy isn't sporting his typical green hat. He's dressed to the nines in a blue suit, but his hat is tan. What a trickster! So Butts orders a fifth of gin. They shake hands. But Cassidy doesn't fall for the trap. Rather than deliver it to Butts personally, he passes the bottle off through a third party. No evidence. No gotcha. Butts tries again. And again.
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But round after round, Cassidy is just a little too slick for him.
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Finally, Butts decides he needs to take a different approach. He corners a staffer for a senator he knows is a customer of Cassidy's, and he reveals he's an undercover agent.
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Suspicious or no, the man agreed to help Butts make the arrest. The staffer calls Cassidy to place an order. And George drives out to the parking lot of the Senate building to make the drop. Now, I don't know if George let his guard down or what. Maybe this particular staffer was a regular, someone he trusted. Regardless, to George, it was just a normal day.
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As his son Fred says... He would have parked someplace close by. when suddenly, Prohibition officers surround his car. They grab him, pull him out. They pop the trunk and rummage through his vehicle.
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I think we can all see Butt's smug smile, right? All that hard work is finally paying off. He got his man. But that smile fades because George is smart. No bottles on him. No liquor in the car. A trailing vehicle tries to pull away, and the prohibition agents realize Cassidy is leading a two-car caravan. The liquor's in the car behind him. Agents spring away from Cassidy to stop the second car.
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I imagine it from George's perspective, pushed onto the hood of his car, officers grabbing his wrists. He's gotta be hoping his accomplice can shift into reverse and peel out of there. But Butts and the other agents are too quick. The second driver can't maneuver. He stopped and dragged out. The search that follows turns up a motherlode.
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Butts says they nabbed at least six-fifths of gin. George's mind must have been racing as Butts pops open the suitcases and counts the bottles. Was this finally it for him? His wife at home, what would she do if he was in the slammer? Maybe he hoped he could skate by because of his two-car plan. He's got deniability, right? They can't pin the liquor on him.
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But with the liquor in hand, Butts and the other agents turn their attention to George. When they go through his pockets, they pull out something even more incriminating than a hip flask. They get their hands on the key to his whole operation. A little black book. It's George's client list.
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It seems like many extra-legal entrepreneurs before him, George took notes on his criminal enterprise, and it's clear from his ledger he's been bootlegging in Congress for a decade. The case was a slam dunk for butts in the Bureau. When George went to trial, he found he was facing a year and a half in jail. That was bad enough, but then something else really got his dander up.
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As the court's decision came down, they ruled it was not a punishable crime for his, ahem, customers to purchase alcohol. In other words, while George was taking the fall, every gin-guzzling senator preaching the good word of prohibition was effectively immune from charges. The law wasn't going to lay a finger on them.
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Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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So George decided if the courts weren't going to give his sanctimonious customers their due, he would do it himself.
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
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Back in his budget hearing turned culture war interrogation, James Duran is fending off charges that he's been diabolically poisoning American drinkers and cackling behind his spindly fingers. Robert Bacon, the New York congressman asking the questions, wants to force Duran to admit mass poisoning through the denaturing program. But it's not just about that.
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That would be the U.S. Capitol Building. George's delivery route doesn't take him into the Capitol itself, but rather into the surrounding buildings where members of Congress have their offices. Stepping into the House Office building, George gives a nod to the security fellas at the door. And with his bags full of booze, walks right in.
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That's right, among the buyers for George's top-quality Virginia hooch are the nation's lawmakers. His clientele are powerful men of every political party and persuasion. You see, George isn't just any bootlegger. He's become the go-to bootlegger for Congress. And Congress, well, they're pretty thirsty. Now, Mabel's not blind to this. She makes regular visits to the Capitol.
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
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Sometimes she even sits in the gallery of the Senate chamber room to hear the nation's lawmakers present their plans.
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As people across the country were now drinking more than ever, and bootleggers across the Eastern seaboard were running wild, Congress was too shit-faced to even pretend that they were gonna do something about it. Mabel's corrupt bureau agents were proving to be just as worthless. It was time for Mabel to take things into her own hands.
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So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
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That's historian Deborah Blum. She says that everywhere across the country, from Mabel's D.C. to New York, all the way to San Francisco, industrial chemistry was becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyday Americans.
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Arsenic, mercury, chloroform, carbolic acid, I would go on. But the last time I had a close encounter with a beaker, I was watching The Muppets.
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That's a little shout out to my 80s kids out there. Point is, products of rapidly advancing chemistry were everywhere. In pharmacies, doctor's offices, grocery stores, kitchens, and, of course, also in bars. Where speakeasy backrooms were starting to look a lot more like chemistry labs. The reason?
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Classy clubs were hiring actual chemists to make sure that the illegal liquor they were serving to high-end customers wasn't toxic and was only going to fuck you up the right way. This is the prohibition you know. The razzle-dazzle of the flappers under the electric lights, where the big band served up bouncy rhythms and the bartender served up potent cocktails. At least, that's the front room.
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But the back room? It was all chemistry, baby. Remember, clean and legal alcohol had all been poured into the sewers at this point. What was left could be dodgy. So to keep their customers safe, top speakeasy managers would turn to chemistry.
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But what if you were running a bar and couldn't afford the high fees of a newly in-demand chemical brainiac? Or if you were a drinker who didn't have pockets deep enough to order your cocktails in the main dining room of the Cotton Club? In plenty of New York neighborhoods, back alley liquor was flowing just as freely. But no lab-coded expert with a safety checklist was looking out for you.
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As Deborah Blum says, America's poorer drinkers would rather overlook the dubious origins of their booze and literally stomach the risk. People were seemingly so eager for a drink that they just didn't care there was a chance it could land them in the hospital.
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You could get your smoke in the back of drugstores or paint stores. I know the scene in lower Manhattan has always been a bit edgy, but even without the spiky hair and the dog collars, this was grisly stuff. There was also the infamous Ginger Jake.
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These drinks could kill. During one stretch over a few months, deaths from smoke averaged one a day. When Prohibition agents managed to track down the suppliers for the deadly cocktail, they discovered the drinks were served straight from cans stenciled with the word poison on them.
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It's that risk big spenders were paying to avoid. Pay the cover charge to get into a big club? You were betting the owner had paid a nerdy chemist to make damn sure your gin and tonic was not a gin and toxic. These backroom chemists were clearly breaking the law. But a lot of them actually saw themselves as humanitarians.
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Mabel Walker Willebrand was hired to lead Prohibition Enforcement.
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Every time they caught a dangerous toxin in a gallon of hooch and kept it out of a drinker's mouth, well...
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They had done some good. And in part because they were so successful at keeping the party going in New York, city and state officials started to ask themselves, why don't we just stop pretending here?
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So, yeah, under the 18th Amendment, any state could just stick their middle finger up to prohibition if they had the votes to repeal it. Which is exactly what New York state lawmakers did. They weren't going to do any cracking down. New York cops weren't going to be making any arrests. And even if they did, New York judges weren't going to throw the book at any club owners.
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Federal law or no, there was simply too much money in the liquor game. So in effect, New York became a sanctuary city for American drinkers. And if you were a chemist in the city breaking the law on a daily basis, you could rest easy knowing that your community had your back. Not only that, they were downright grateful to you for saving them from Ginger Jake and Derail.
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And much of prohibition enforcement falls, strangely, to the U.S. Treasury Department.
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Even the cops, the mayor, and the governor were on your side. And the good liquor, it was still there for the drinking, if you had the right chemists in your pocket.
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This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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Yep, we're a long way from the speakeasies of New York, but we're here in the rolling French countryside to meet a new character in our story. He's sitting inside a combat tank clattering across the bloody battlefield. His name? George Cassidy. And he's under attack. The tank rolls down a slope as shells explode around it, and then it sinks into a crater of mud.
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If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
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A Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn. I can picture our pal Alexander Gettler in his favorite living room chair, dressed in a suit and tie, of course. The number one song from the most famous band in America, the Paul Whiteman Band, is buzzing in the background. Gettler's smoking a stogie as he scans baseball box scores from the morning paper. Knowing Al, he probably had some skin in the games, too.
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A bit of a gambler. Gettler couldn't resist a juicy over-under, and he had a regular card game with his pals. His other second home, besides the lab, was the horse track. Gettler was also a ruthlessly competitive bowler, a spirit he also brought to his work at Bellevue.
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When a new mystery arrived at his doorstep, he couldn't stand the idea of a poisoner outwitting him and his sleuthing partner, Charles Norris. On this beautiful spring afternoon, perhaps Alexander is scribbling down his latest betting card when all of a sudden, he gets a call from Norris. There's a new case. And oh, is Al gonna love this one.
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In 1922, our Sherlock and Watson have been a very busy duo, solving all kinds of crimes and many of them having nothing to do with the hooch on the streets. But each mystery Gettler solves, he learns a little more about the poisons permeating American life. On this day, when Gettler arrives at his lab, two dead bodies are waiting for him. He scans the police report. Here are the facts.
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Inside an apartment in Brooklyn, police had found a couple in street clothes lying on the floor of their bathroom. Their faces were blue, their lips covered with blood. The couple, according to the following day's New York Times, was, quote, dead from poison. Gettler reviews the report.
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The police on the scene had suspected suicide, but there was no corroborating evidence of any kind in the apartment. Gettler takes one look at the dead bodies and quickly suspects something else is at play here. A chemical substance that was now seemingly everywhere and was frighteningly lethal. Cyanide. Like mustard gas, cyanide was used in World War I as a chemical warfare agent.
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It had long been known as a dangerous poison, but little did the public know it was also becoming a killer in households. Fumigators used it to disinfect apartment buildings, emitting gas that could, say, suddenly kill an unsuspecting couple eating breakfast.
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Gettler's sure cyanide is the cause of death, even though he hadn't found any signs that cyanide had been ingested, and the police had found no empty bottles of cyanide anywhere in the apartment. But he checks back with the police, and soon investigators realize that Gettler was right. Pest control folks had just spent an afternoon spraying cyanide gas around the apartment.
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They realized the dead couple hadn't swallowed cyanide. They had inhaled it. Case closed. But Gettler's work isn't quite done.
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I'm telling you, this guy is a true badass. It was impossible for the newly invented science of toxicology to keep up with the deluge of modern poisons. But Gettler was doing his damnedest. And the New York City Medical Examiner's Office was beginning to earn nationwide respect for their work uncovering the hidden poisons endangering public health.
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And they were doing so with virtually no support from the government. The office's staff under Norris was in fact smaller than what it was under the New York coroner who preceded him. Their office at Bellevue was still a ramshackle, quote-unquote, country club. All the lab's new equipment was still paid for by Norris himself.
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Norris and Gettler were working around the clock, but they sure weren't making bootlegger chemist money. Gettler was making $3,000 a year, which today would be equivalent to a $55,000 salary in Brooklyn. No wonder he lived with his in-laws. So as poisons in the air were becoming more sophisticated, the caseload of the medical examiner's office was getting bigger.
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Its steel armor shields George and his crew from the bright yellow bursts of artillery flame. But it can't protect them from the mist that's engulfed the field. World War I's most insidious weapon, mustard gas. On the battlefield, poison gas was turning war into a new kind of nightmare. Both Germany and the U.S.
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And in 1922, one particular case caught their eye, the case of Robert Doyle. Doyle was a veteran of World War I. Like the tanker-turned-bootlegger George Cassidy, and like so many of the men who came back from Europe, Doyle found jobs were scarce in his hometown, Boston.
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So he left his wife and daughter and came down to New York City, the biggest city in the world, the thriving metropolis where it seemed like everyone was making money. And he tried to get a job. but no one hired Doyle. He didn't have George Cassidy's gregarious entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, or his Smoky Mountain liquor hookups.
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He didn't have Alexander Gettler's brains or his bustling Brooklyn community to rely on. In New York, Doyle found himself turned away from every job, be it bartender, garbage collection, even cleaning the sewers. Away from his loved ones and getting desperate, Doyle had reached for some chemical comfort to drown his sorrows, buying liquor in an unfamiliar city. He didn't know who to trust.
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He didn't know whose libations might be toxic. But he bought a drink anyway. One night, neighbors in his boarding house heard shouts coming from his locked room. Someone, or something, was killing Doyle. They forced the door and rushed inside to help him, but found him crawling on the floor, rubbing his eyes and moaning. I'm blind! I can't see!
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First, they sent for a doctor, but he didn't have any answers. So they bundled Doyle into a car and sent him to the hospital. Doyle was wheeled into the ER. This would be the part of the Grey's Anatomy episode where you'd hear the heartbeat monitor beeping until it slowly fades and flatlines. But this is the 1920s. There's nothing quite that fancy yet. Just... Doyle didn't make it.
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When he died at Bellevue, they moved him out of the line of patients waiting for treatment and into the line of corpses waiting for analysis. Analysis by Alexander Gettler. Now it was up to Gettler to determine who was behind this. For years, he had worried home distillers would accidentally poison themselves with their moonshine. But these deaths were stacking up in a way that didn't add up.
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Gettler knew about all the brainpower and advanced chemistry that was going into making industrial alcohol drinkable and not kill you. In theory, the supply was becoming safer, and yet the body count was only growing. Robert Doyle's death occurred as poison alcohol deaths rippled across the country, from New York to Washington, D.C. to Toledo, Ohio. This was proof.
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People like Robert Doyle weren't dying simply because of their own reckless thirst for alcohol. No, these people were dying from poisons. And their deaths, now in the hundreds and very soon to be in the thousands, were no accident. Next time on Snafu.
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Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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This episode was written by Nevin Kalapalli, Albert Chen, and Carl Nellis, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
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were experimenting with lethal gases that were quickly becoming the deadliest instruments in the history of warfare. The Great War had a nickname, the Chemist's War. And now, mustard gas seeps into George Cassidy's tank and into the eyes, noses, and lungs of the tankers. George and his two crewmates choke at the controls as the machine grinds to a halt.
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Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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The deadly mist causes the tankers to go blind, vomit, and start losing consciousness. The other two men pass out. George holds on. But poisoned by the gas, George is too weak to move. Blinking and struggling to breathe while the battle rages around him, his crewmates have fallen silent. Finally, footsteps approach the tank.
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George hears hands banging on the outside, shouts, shadows over the viewport as men peer inside. George's heart stops. Is it the enemy? The door swings open, and thank God, it's the Yanks. George is rescued. Carried up out of the crater in the pool of gas, George makes it off the battlefield alive. But he's devastated to find out he's the only survivor from his crew.
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In 1919, when a million American soldiers in France begin the journey home, George is among the troops packed like sardines into fleets of liners and cargo ships, leaving the blood-soaked trenches of the Western Front behind them. As he gazes across the Atlantic, George coughs. His lungs are pocked with chemical burns.
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For the rest of his life, every cough reminds him of the horrors he'd faced in the war. Horrors that showed how scientific advancements could be co-opted to create weapons of mass murder. But now George is heading home, and soon he'll be starting a new life. As the shores of the good old U.S. of A. come into view, George is pondering a very important question. Where the hell can he get a drink?
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Back home, that question was at the center of another raging war, one in which he would soon find himself smack dab in the middle. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3, the story of Formula 6, how prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people.
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Today, we're riding shotgun with the bootleggers, because men like George Cassidy didn't come home from the fight in France just to take the new laws laying down. As Mabel Walker Willebrand became Prohibition's champion, George Cassidy would become one of its greatest defiers. And the two sides they represented were about to clash.
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In 1922, two years into Prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrand was settling into her gig as head honcho of Prohibition enforcement. To get a sense of how the new U.S. Assistant Attorney General approached her job, there are a few things about her you should know. Little Mabel grew up crisscrossing the Great Plains in a 9-by-12-foot tent pitched in the fields of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
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Her family was always on the move, fleeing the latest natural disaster, tornadoes, ice storms, that kind of stuff. Mabel's earliest memory from childhood was of a flash flood rushing through their tent, her mom taking the kitchen table and using it as a raft to keep her daughter afloat and alive. A little like that time my Cub Scout trip got rained out, except I had a home to go back to.
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This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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Cold plunging is all the rage these days. I guess Mabel was just ahead of the curve. In any case, the Ice Queen didn't get to become the highest-ranking woman in the United States government by waking up each day to whistling birds opening her bedroom shades and the soft glow of the morning sun. No, she woke up every morning with her goddamn game face on.
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For starters, it wasn't just Satan's last stronghold, New York City, that was flouting the law. In Mabel's backyard, the supposed dry citadel, speakeasies were popping up on every corner. By some estimates, there were 3,000 in the nation's capital. But Mabel's headaches extended well beyond the metropolises of the Northeast.
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Also thumbing its nose at Prohibition was the fine city of Savannah, Georgia, which had turned into an unofficial headquarters for illegal drinking. Booze was flowing, and so were the criminals delivering it. Bootleggers, as they were called. The term goes back to the 1800s when traders slid their flasks of liquor into their boots.
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During Prohibition, bootlegging became a household term, thanks in no small part to the notorious Georgia syndicate, the Savannah Four. Their leader was a guy named Willie Haar. Willie owned and controlled a fleet of ships that transported liquor from Scotland and France to another British territory, the Bahamas.
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From there, it was shipped to a dozen different states in the U.S., often hidden in secret man-made caves up and down the U.S. coast. Willie Haar didn't exactly keep a low profile. His nickname was the Admiral of Bootleggers, and his Savannah Four had a recreational baseball squad. Their team name presumably slapped across their uniforms, the Bootlegger Team.
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I assume they were part of an all-criminal baseball league, along with the Tax Dodgers? Sorry, I had to go there. Mabel was determined to bust them up and even sent a dozen Prohibition Bureau agents to Savannah to do the job. But Willie Haar's ring had judges, politicians, and, it turns out, Prohibition agents on its payroll.
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And those agents, convinced to look the other way, came back from Savannah empty-handed. I hope they at least brought back some bootlegger team swag for Mabel. Willie Haar would have a future run-in with Mabel. Put a pin in that for a second. But as brazen as Haar in the Savannah 4 might have been, the most brazen bootlegger of all was operating right under Mabel's nose.
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After George got off the ship from France, he headed home to Virginia, and he had plenty of stories for his pals. He was just so damn gregarious. That's Fred Cassidy, George's son.
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George also had a signature green felt hat that gave him an unmistakable look, a snappily dressed party animal with a trove of war stories. Georgie was one of a kind, but he struggled to transition back to civilian life. Why? Poison. The mustard gas George had sucked in destroyed his lungs, which made it hard for him to find work.
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Before the war, George had been a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. When he came back, he couldn't pass their physical to get rehired. George couldn't find a steady gig anywhere else either. He put his body on the line for his home country, and now it was letting him down. When he finally did find work, it wasn't the kind of job that had his parents bursting with pride.
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You see, George didn't grow up in a household of drinkers. Really, the opposite. George's Irish-American father had been sober for decades. His mom, a Brit, made herself at home in the USA by becoming a proud card-carrying member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. But none of that rubbed off on George. He liked to imbibe. Everybody around my dad liked to imbibe.
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Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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Which isn't a surprise, given George was from the moonshining capital of the world.
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In Appalachia, moonshining had been prevalent since the Civil War, when moonshiners distilled illegal liquor at night and then drivers, or bootleggers, smuggled it across the region. When Prohibition passed, this was all supposed to get shut down, right? Well, turns out it ain't so easy to change an entire culture overnight.
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But that was essentially the task facing the Prohibition agents under Mabel Walker Willebrandt. A tall order in a place like Franklin County, Virginia, nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, where 99 out of every 100 people were connected to the moonshine business. One agent reported back to D.C. on the pointlessness of even bothering with arrests.
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And, you know, when the moonshiners themselves included judges, politicians, and the local police. How are you supposed to stop that? People like George came back from the war looking for work and saw an opportunity. Here's one American artillery captain who was in the Reserve Corps writing to his fiancee.
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That's 34-year-old future president Harry Truman. Fellas like Harry saw bootlegging as a lucrative investment opportunity. George Cassidy saw it as something else, a lifeline. You see, George was running out of options. He was a disabled veteran out of work, which is why shipping liquor from his neighborhood to moneyed drinkers across D.C. felt like a necessary career choice.
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He started small, just a couple of bottles for friends and friends of friends, then a few more and a few more. His Blue Ridge, Virginia product must have been pretty good because pretty soon the orders were flowing one way and George kept the moonshine flowing the other.
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George's lifeline was becoming a goldmine because George's clients, well, they were the kind of people who liked to meet at the Hotel Varnum in Washington, D.C., The Varnum's a grand old hotel at the corner of C Street and New Jersey Avenue, a meeting place. Outside, George sees two well-dressed white men. He gets out and shakes their hands, then heads around back to make a delivery.
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He hands off a small paper package. For his next delivery, George grabs two bags out of his trunk. One in each hand, George walks along New Jersey Avenue, nodding and smiling to passersby. He was the friendly sort. George then crosses the street at Independence Avenue towards his next stop, a white building with a very large, very conspicuous dome. Yeah, it's probably the one you're thinking of.
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
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At Bellevue Hospital, it's not just the bodies that have been stacking up. Alexander Gettler's notebooks are piled high everywhere. Meticulous records of all the data he's compiled since the start of Prohibition. Documented night after painstaking night. And the numbers, as 1928 winds down, are disturbing as hell.
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The body count from drinking-related deaths in New York City this year alone is 10,000. Ten years ago, when they issued their first warning on the eve of Prohibition, Gettler and Norris knew things were going to be bad. But this bad? At that 1926 press conference, the Prohibition Bureau issued a reminder to America, drink and you die.
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And Americans more or less responded with, cool, so yeah, make it a double. The grand irony here is that people are drinking now more than ever before. In New York, cases of alcoholism had been going down in the years leading into Prohibition. But since 1920, alcoholism was reaching all-time highs. Insurance companies reported that deaths from alcoholism were 600% higher in 1928 than in 1920.
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So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
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For those addicted to drinking, it was a dangerous time. Even if they heard government warnings, it wasn't realistic to think that they could just stop drinking cold turkey. For the rest of the population, well, the government messaging about the dangers of drinking just wasn't making an impact. Which kind of makes sense. I mean, remember that commercial from the 80s, This is Your Brain on Drugs?
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We all saw that egg frying in the pan, but isn't frying your brain kind of the point? And I do wonder who across the country beyond avid readers of the New York papers was actually getting the warnings from the government. News certainly didn't travel then the way it does now. Sure, they had coast-to-coast radio, but we're still a ways off from the days of push notifications.
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Now, Norris and Gettler were determined to tell the entire country just how fucked up things had gotten. So, on a fall afternoon, Norris sits down in front of a typewriter at his desk, alongside his man Gettler, and Gettler's stack of notebooks.
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Through the years, our duo had issued periodic messages to the public through medical journals and in press conferences for the local New York media, but it wasn't penetrating. It was just small potatoes. So, refusing to be ignored, Gettler and Norris decide they need to step things up.
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As Gettler flips through his notes and busts out his data, Norris starts typing and begins to paint a picture, first of what's been going down in their backyard, beginning with those horrific three days that had just passed in October.
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Yep, New York City subways in the 1920s were also scary. And this was before the days of Pizza Rat. Anywho. In a word, the word alcohol is not poison liquor.
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And how did the poison get into the liquor? Well, that brings Norris and Gettler to the government and their official poisoning program. Now, Norris acknowledges that alcohol made for industrial purposes should be protected and differentiated in some meaningful way. Sure, you have supplies of alcohol that are supposed to be used in perfumes and aftershaves.
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It makes sense that you'd try to deter people from drinking this stuff. But then along came prohibition. Legal liquor disappeared. And the aftershave is all that was left. People weren't stealing it to drink before. Then suddenly, they were. So whose fault is that?
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Yeah, pretty unfortunate, right? For any American who just wanted a drink.
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Thousands of people are dying from alcohol poisoned by our own government. And we're just like, okay, I mean, that's messed up. And what's even more messed up is that the government's response to all these people dropping dead was, hey, it's your fault. You drank it. Tough cookies. Needless to say, Norris doesn't see it that way. He throws down a challenge for his readers.
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These deaths, these government poisonings, they were caused by Prohibition. To him, they were the fault of the people who pushed for Prohibition in the first place. And then they were the fault of the people adding poison to alcohol, knowing that people were going to drink it.
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Norris and Gettler wanted to boil it down for readers, so people understood just how many people around the country were dropping dead from Prohibition. It seems pretty clear the only sensible path forward is to do one of two things, either end the denaturing program or end Prohibition itself. Things had gotten so bad, Gettler and Norris drew a chilling comparison.
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Previously on Snafu. As Mabel Walker Willebrand was doing everything in her power to stop the tide of liquor washing into America.
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Finally, Norris slaps a title on this baby. Our essay in extermination, Read between the lines. The title of Norris' piece was not our essay in tragedy. It was our essay in extermination. And who are those poor souls subject to said extermination from the failed experiment of prohibition?
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For the past decade, Norris and Gettler have watched the city's working class watering holes shudder, only to be replaced with backroom joints, where the liquor was deadly. Most of the poisoned liquor that Gettler was testing came from these dives, where bootleggers pushed low-grade, albeit affordable, alcohol.
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The quality of motor oil booze couldn't hold a candle to the stuff rich New Yorkers were able to get their hands on or what certain dry politicians were sipping on in the Capitol, thanks to our man George Cassidy. It was insane that America found itself here. But was anything going to change? Was Norris and Gettler's work going to make any difference at all?
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In late 1928, our essay on extermination first appears in a literary magazine called the North American Review. But it's not just the devoted readers of the North American Review who will read Norris's words. Nope. This time, Norris and Gettler get the attention of the whole country.
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Yep, that was big news, all right. Pour it all out, Deborah Blum.
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Prohibition agents were enforcing the law by repeatedly breaking it.
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News of Norris' essay splashed all over the New York papers.
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And the stories land well beyond the Big Apple. It was news in Florida.
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And with that tsunami of media coverage, Norris and Gettler finally get people to take note. And you know what? Americans across the country were up in arms. One priest in a working class Chicago parish nailed it when he said, quote, they give the good stuff to the sewers and the bad stuff to the people. The outrage reached the Capitol, too.
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The wet legislators, long outnumbered by the dries in Congress, had been howling against prohibition from the start. And I do want to be clear about this. A small group in Congress had been directly calling out the government's poisoning practices for a few years now.
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And the U.S. government kept upping the ante in their misguided plan to get people to stop drinking.
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A New Jersey senator went as far as to say the federal government was guilty of, quote, legalized murder for adding deadly poisons to the industrial alcohol supply. He even introduced a measure on the floor of Congress to look into the program. But the dries had steamrolled those efforts.
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They held their ground, believed in the moral superiority of their anti-liquor cause, and mocked the wets as drunkards. And when it came to denaturing, they lectured their wet opponents that alcohol itself was a poison. And as Senator Morris Shepard from Texas put it, You can't poison poisons. I mean, you can't fight that logic. But smug quips were losing their traction.
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Real people were really dying. Morris Shepard might not care. Hardline temperance advocates like James Duran might not care. Mabel Walker Willebrand might not care. Their coalition was willing to break a few eggs as long as America was a dry omelet.
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Now, in 1929, the Wett lawmakers finally had something solid to fight back with, Norris and Gettler's irrefutable data that the government policies were killing thousands. So the Wett legislators took action. They whipped up a bill. It demanded that government chemists stop using their deadliest poisons. They couldn't reach the hardliners, but maybe they didn't have to.
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They just had to reach the people in the middle, caught between the two sides. The people who could understand that no moral code was worth poisoning thousands. And with Gettler and Norris finally persuading Americans to their cause, the bill passed. Prohibition chemists were now required by law to ditch lethal formulas like Formula 6.
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They were told to go back to inventing concoctions which were merely revolting without being actually lethal. And I want to just pause here and take in what a turning point this was for Norris and Gettler. Because yeah, this was a moment when they finally won.
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If they had been beating their heads against the wall from before Prohibition even passed, that it would be a terrible idea and that it would kill people. Now, the nation was finally starting to listen. Norris' essay and Gettler's research gave the Wets what they needed to win. And it didn't stop with denaturing.
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The outcry over the Prohibition Bureau's actions continued to grow in the media and in the halls of Congress. A tide was beginning to turn across the country. State governments were slowly beginning to follow New York's lead in its dissent from federal prohibition itself.
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state and local law enforcement started to say, look, everyone knows this whole prohibition enforcement thing has been a complete charade, so why are we even pretending to do it? And it wasn't just the government. Public opinion was shifting too. And the shift was felt all the way to the White House, where Herbert Hoover was about to move in.
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1928 was a momentous year. At the movies, the world was introduced to a dapper mouse named Mickey and a nifty new innovation, sound. Radio had just gone national and the World Series was heard from coast to coast, much to the delight of Yankee superfan Alexander Gettler, who's tuning in to hear the Yankees sweep the Cardinals as he's slicing and dicing bodies in his lab at Bellevue Hospital.
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In early 1929, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was feeling good. Now that her man Hoover had won the presidency, Mabel was sitting pretty. I mean, come on, of course she was going to be rewarded for all that shattered glass in New York and all her fear-mongering across the country. Surely she'd be rewarded with a big fat promotion and a nifty new title, the Attorney General of the United States.
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And one night in February 1929, a few weeks before Hoover's inauguration, Mabel's phone rang. It was the president-elect. Hoover told Mabel that Congress was putting together a bill that would strip the Prohibition Bureau out of the Department of Treasury and move it into Mabel's domain, the Department of Justice, where Mabel assumed she would be given the reins.
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Hoover had buried the lead. Turns out Mabel wasn't going to be the new AG. Nope. The Solicitor General was leapfrogging her and getting that sweet corner office. Mabel technically was keeping her job for now, but she saw the writing on the wall.
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It was starting to sink in. Now that Prohibition wasn't useful to Hoover as an issue, he just wasn't going to be very serious about it anymore. Even less than his predecessor, old two-martini lunch Warren Harding. Mabel was crushed. And as she looked back over her time trying desperately to make Prohibition work, she could only regret how impossible her task had been.
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Mabel Walker Willebrandt was free-falling off the tightrope she'd been walking since the day she arrived in Washington, D.C. eight years earlier. So she handed in her resignation to Herbert Hoover. Mabel's war was over. But there was so much more fallout yet to come.
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Yep, 1928 was a real barn burner, all right. But most of all, because it was a big election year. The presidency was up for grabs. In one corner was Herbert Hoover, Republican and the guy for the dries. In the other corner, the wet warrior, longtime governor of New York, Al Smith.
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Time to head back out west. Let's check in with Richard Hart, the cowboy whose gunslinging ways helped turn the public against Mabel's campaign, making an unpopular law even more unpopular. You remember where we left Richard. He luckily ducked charges for manslaughter, but it still tanked his Prohibition Bureau career.
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But what came next was a twist so twisty even his wife and kids were caught off guard. First of all, he got himself some new assignments with the Office of Indian Affairs. That got him out of town. They sent him to reservations even further west. He was still hanging on to those old Wild West shows and live out his cowboy dreams. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was kind of known for that.
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Richard probably thought this was the place he could really keep up his costume drama, like he had an even more free hand to dole out cowboy justice. Once again, he drew his gun during an arrest, and when the man resisted, Richard shot him. This time, there was no ducking the charges. Hart was indicted for manslaughter. He was acquitted at trial, but this was finally enough.
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Even in the most circusy of bureaucratic circuses, Richard couldn't stop getting in trouble with the ringmasters. He was too violent for the wannabe cowboys, so he was fired from his federal post. So eventually he was back in Homer without a steady job. It was tough on him, and on his wife Kathleen, and on the boys they were raising.
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But despite losing his jobs, according to great-grandson Corey Hart, Richard was starting to flaunt some new money around town.
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And as Richard's grandson Jeff says, one night, when he was all liquored up, the two-gun braggadocio finally caught up with him. It was in a bar, I think on Lower 4th Street in Sioux City. He starts bragging about a new family business he's a part of. It's conspicuously lucrative and maybe a little shady. We'll come back to that in a minute.
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Eesh, some friends. Once the beating was over, Richard was bundled off to the hospital.
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As Al's speeches buzz over radios across America, I can picture Mabel Walker Willebrand sitting in her office at the Department of Justice, listening and fuming. You might remember that Al thumbed his nose at the law and repealed the state's prohibition enforcement statute five years before. Well, that put Al in Mabel's crosshairs.
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Kathleen was probably wondering about all that new dough that Richard was showing off.
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Turns out Richard had a bit of a safety net, his brothers, something he'd never let on to anyone in Homer. You see, while Richard Hart was strutting his stuff under a 10-gallon Stetson, his real identity was hidden. The truth is that Richard Two-Gun Hart was an Italian immigrant. His real first name was Vincenzo, and his last name, it wasn't Hart. It was a last name you've definitely heard.
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See, Richard slash Vincenzo's baby brother Alphonse was the one who really did something with the family name. You know him as Al Capone. Hold on a second. Al Capone's brother was a prohibition agent? Yeah, it's all as crazy as it sounds, folks. Once Richard, for simplicity's sake, let's just keep calling him Richard and not Richard Vincenzo Two-Gun Hart Capone.
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Anyway, once Richard was off the government payroll, he reached out for help to Chicago, and his brother answered the call. Richard left Uncle Sam behind and moved on to the Capone family ledger, and from a shack to the nicest house in town. And what we do know is that his wife, Kathleen, wasn't the only one asking questions.
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There were others cottoning on to Richard's hidden Capone identity, not to mention the clean new Seersucker three-piece suit that came with it. And here's where the story might start to sound familiar. When the government finally went after the Capones, they used the Mabel strategy, taking down bootleggers by way of tax evasion.
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Mabel may have been gone for years by now, but the prosecutors who followed in her footsteps, well, they kept using her methods. They knew where the evidence was, in the bookkeeping. And the Capone family bookkeeper wasn't Al. Nope, the family bookkeeper was his brother, Ralph.
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Money laundering. Take the dirty money from a criminal enterprise and put it through the spin cycle of a legitimate business with a little fabric softener and some tied fresh scent, and boom. On the other side, you've got a clean profit from a small business that you can safely tuck into a bank account. If you listened to the last season of Snafu, and if you didn't, you really should...
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In Mabel's eyes, Al was a man so morally bankrupt that he swept the Constitution aside to appeal to the masses. And appeal he did, promising to take his wet agenda all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Mabel wasn't having it.
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You would know that a certain J. Edgar Hoover, later known for his massive illegal surveillance programs, made a name for himself with cases like these. The Capone money laundering may have eluded most cops, especially if they were paid to look the other way, but Hoover's G-men sniffed it out. And when it came time to go to trial, they decided to make it a spectacle.
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Once Ralph Capone was on the stand getting squeezed, he let slip that there was a secret Capone brother out back, pinning those crisply washed bills in the sun to dry. Yep, that's right. Even from all the way out in Homer, Richard was part of his mob family's money laundering operation. And so Richard was pulled out of Nebraska and paraded in front of the press in Chicago.
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Testimony by Lost Capone. He peered through thick glasses and carried a white cane. He was led into the U.S. courthouse on the arm of his wife, a demure middle-aged woman who never could be mistaken for a gun maul. When she was asked for comment, Kathleen didn't give up much. All she said was, well, he's not a bad man. If you think about it, I bet none of the Capones thought they were bad guys.
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Just the misunderstood protagonists of their own superhero stories. Well, this was Richard's final chance to prove that at least in his case, that might be true. Was he really a fighter for the law? Or would he throw in his lot with the family? Richard answered those questions quite clearly.
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In the end, when the law came at him, Richard stood shoulder to shoulder with Ralph and Alphonse. He was given a chance, one final chance, to make his brothers face the music and tell the truth about the inner workings of their criminal enterprise. And he refused. He lied on the stand. like they had so many times before, Richard's lies paid off. Ralph Capone's case didn't go to trial.
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The story of Richard Hart, just like the twisted stories of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt and Formula 6, show us just how far off the rails things had gotten during Prohibition. But as we come to the final chapter of our story, there's still a huge lingering question. Would anyone actually be held responsible for the massive failures and fiascos of Prohibition enforcement?
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Because when Al Smith said he refused the, quote, old order of things, Mabel heard him rejecting the thing that mattered most to her, sticking to the law and enforcing the 18th Amendment.
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Richard Hart certainly wasn't. But what about the boss of the Prohibition Bureau, the guy who had overseen the IRS poisoning program, James Duran? That's next time on Snafu. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
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It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Akimany Ekpo.
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Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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Mabel and her team were entering the ninth inning. It felt like her squad, the dries, or as she saw it, the only ones who respected the Constitution, were behind, with two outs and no runners on. Her colleagues at the Department of Treasury had made public their deadly poisoning program to stop Americans from drinking, and yet still, America wasn't ready to give up the bottle.
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Now Mabel was the last batter up. And you better believe she was gonna go down swinging. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3, the story of Formula 6, how prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. In today's episode, our threads start weaving together.
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Prohibition hangs in the balance in the 1928 election. And for Richard Two-Gun Hart, the chickens finally come home to roost.
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Leading up to the 1928 election, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was one busy bee.
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As author Dan Okrent says, Mabel traveled the country speaking at churches, town halls, and women's groups, all in the hopes of scaring the bejesus out of people as she described a frightening American future under a potential president, Al Smith.
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Al fired back and accused Mabel of leading a bigoted anti-Catholic whisper campaign, which was actually a pretty fair characterization. Al even gave Mabel a nickname, Prohibition Portia. Now, as you history geeks will know, that's a reference to the Portia who apparently played a role in Julius Caesar getting knifed on the Senate floor.
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This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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Unlike Mabel's limp dog whistle zinger, Al landed a direct hit. Prohibition Portia stuck. Mabel absolutely hated it, which is part of what makes it such a good nickname, I guess. But also, Mabel, come on. I mean, it's pretty badass. Suffice to say, Mabel was pissed. She was hellbent on exposing Al Smith's New York City, his hometown, as a den of vice.
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And she came up with a plan straight out of Carrie Nation's playbook to humiliate him. After whiffing in her countless legal attempts to enforce prohibition, and then failing miserably with the freaking Ku Klux Klan, this was Mabel's Hail Mary to make her mark. Now she was going to bust heads. She was going to go into the speakeasies of New York City, smash them up, and shut them down.
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Obviously, she wasn't going to do it herself. She needed an army. Now, Mabel knew the NYPD was useless to her. New York cops had long ago said, forget about it, to enforcing prohibition. So she picked up the phone and summoned agents from all over the country, from Denver to Fort Worth to Kansas City.
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And in June 1928, as Al Smith was feeling good and officially accepting the Democratic nomination in Houston, Mabel's agents converged on the Big Apple. Eight years into Prohibition, savvy New Yorkers could spot a Prohibition agent a mile away. The most shabbily dressed man in any nightclub was always a secret agent. But Mabel had prepped her crew months in advance.
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She had them dressed to the nines, so they could blend into the city crowd and glide into the swanky watering holes. And maybe even throw back a few. And then these impeccably groomed agents stepped out to the center of speakeasy dance floors and got down to business. And I don't mean dance moves.
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They made their arrests and they shut down the bars. The raids would lead to a handsome haul for Mabel, over 100 indictments of speakeasy owners. As the raids were going down, Mabel sat behind her mahogany desk at the DOJ, pretty damn pleased with herself. These massive sweeps did exactly what they were intended to do. They became known as the June Raids, and they became a huge national story.
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And as Mabel was unleashing hell from the DOJ, a few blocks away, other plans were bubbling away at the Department of Treasury, where the Prohibition Bureau had a new commissioner, James Duran. Duran had presided over the implementation of the government's alcohol poisoning scheme, Remember, Formula 6 was just one of dozens of formulas the government cooked up to make drinks undrinkable.
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And just like they did for all the other government formulas, the bootleggers responded. In stills and makeshift labs outside the nation's capital, those bootlegger chemists were burning the midnight oil, coming up with a recipe to counter Formula 6. They re-distilled the tainted alcohol and extracted the poisons.
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When word reached James Duran that yet another formula had been defeated, he ordered his chemists to keep going.
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Wow. Gasoline? Tell me you're out of ideas without telling me you're out of ideas. After Formula 6 was successfully defeated, Formulas 3 and 4 were beaten and tossed out later that year. But there was one formula that was still effective. And it was barely a formula at all. It was a simple recipe. To your vat of fine industrial alcohol, add wood alcohol. Straight up.
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Yep, remember that original byproduct of home distilling that Norris and Gettler were warning New Yorkers about way back in 1918 at the start of Prohibition? Well, Duran's chemists had used traces of wood alcohol in their formulas before, but it was always part of a complex cocktail. Now they were just dispensing with everything else. And just adding a shit ton of wood alcohol.
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Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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Like, twice as much as ever before. But that's not all. As historian Deborah Blum tells us, the government chemists now had their hands on the purest, deadliest wood alcohol they could find.
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And of course, right away, bootleggers began siphoning it out of industrial warehouses and dishing it out on the streets. In October 1928, Bellevue Hospital is utter mayhem. Everywhere, people are vomiting, hallucinating, dying in the emergency room. Gettler and Norris are overwhelmed. Over just three days in October, they see 33 deaths from poisoned liquor.
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By Gettler's count, 25 from wood alcohol. And just in time for Election Day. Now, as Gettler examines the dead in his lab, you can imagine him listening to election night returns. November 6, 1928. The presidential election between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith ends in a landslide. A landslide? Of course it was. Americans were tired of the violence.
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They were tired of the status quo eight years in, and Prohibition was massively unpopular. Prohibition was on the ballot, and no wonder the election wasn't close. But hang on a second. I did pretty well in fifth grade history, and I don't ever remember there being a President Al Smith, which must mean... And Hoover sets a record for electoral votes and crushes Smith. Hoover won?
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Yeah, he sure did. In a knockout. In fact, Hoover won on economic promises. But Smith also couldn't overcome anti-Catholic prejudice and ginned up rumors that he was even taking orders from the Vatican and from the country's biggest bootleggers.
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Smith's crushing defeat was a win for Prohibition, and also a win for Hoover superfan Mabel Walker-Willibrandt, who saw the victory as voters practically putting their stamp of approval on her June raids. Mabel and Duran had pulled out all the stops Al Smith had lost, and Prohibition was here to stay. And, by the way, deadlier than ever.
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On the other side, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler didn't have a minute to waste. It was time for their big swing, to put an end to a national emergency.
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On the dry side was the temperance movement, zealous and all too willing to throw in their lot with outright racists. On the other side, a whole lot of German, Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants. Here's historian David Goldberg.
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We can only get in touch with David over the phone, which is why it kind of sounds like he's calling from the 1920s.
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David's not exaggerating in the slightest. Before long, Catholics across America were being smeared as not only drunkards, but traitors as well. Alexander Gettler was born Jewish, but married an Irish Catholic girl and then converted. That means he left one faith targeted by the DRY movement only to join another.
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The Anti-Saloon League's efforts were one of the first instances of single-issue lobbying to dramatically influence American politics.
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The Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League were the two main organizations carrying the torch, and or occasionally hatchet, for prohibition. They were the definition of single-issue voters. And when they found a candidate willing to vote for prohibition, they would go all in to get their guy elected.
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In other words, when dry candidates won, it didn't necessarily mean they'd won a majority of voters' hearts and minds. It just meant that the WCTU had an influential group of voters who could swing elections. And it worked, time and time again. State after state went dry.
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Here are a few actual lines from the Anti-Saloon League's propaganda.
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So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
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To me, this is starting to sound like just good old fashioned prejudice. And alcohol, just the latest convenient issue to inflame people's fears. the war unleashed a tidal wave of immigrant and ethnic hatred, all dolled up in red, white, and blue.
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Turns out fear-mongering beer boycotts are as American as hot dogs. Which, incidentally, got their name around this time too, because Frankfurter sounded a little too German. I'm assuming Sauerkraut also became Liberty Cabbage, and German breweries became targets.
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In 1917, the U.S. entered the war. That year, Congress passed the 18th Amendment, which gave the government the power to ban alcohol sales. All that was left was for Congress to actually use its new power. Finally, after almost a century of organizing, sloganeering, and hectoring, the dries got their way. Prohibition became law with the Volstead Act. But that raises a very critical question.
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Who the hell's going to enforce it? We'll meet them after the break.
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Previously on Snafu. In the 1920s, New York City was facing a record number of unsolved murders.
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This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
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In a nondescript office building somewhere in the nation's capital, a man stands over a beaker of liquid. He's white, middle-aged, hair starting to thin, heavy circular glasses, peering over his experiment like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Ekelberg.
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And not to get all middle school English teacher on you here, but just like those famous eyes from The Great Gatsby, James Duran was looking down on 1920s America with more than a little bit of judgment. Duran is a chemist and an avid supporter of the dry movement.
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Mild-mannered, methodical, a hard worker with a keen scientific mind, he busies himself with government work while his wife dedicates her time to the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In fact, she'll go on to author a book of non-alcoholic cocktail recipes. There are even substitutes for baking recipes that happen to involve alcohol.
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Not to nitpick here, Mrs. Duran, but the alcohol bakes away. People aren't out here getting drunk off pie. But in the Duran's defense, people in 1920 can find a way to get drunk off just about anything. In fact, that's precisely James Duran's problem. See, James is a chemist for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the predecessor to the IRS.
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If you're wondering why the IRS needs chemists, you're not alone. But as Thomas Pegram says, it's something that still happens today. You see evidence of it anytime you walk into a liquor store.
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Until unlikely duo Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler teamed up to investigate.
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The thing is, alcohol has a lot of different uses. In addition to being a wonderful social lubricant, it's commonly used as a solvent in industrial chemistry, a medical disinfectant, and as fuel. But I bet you've never been offered a medical alcohol swab as an aperitif. At least I hope not. And there's a really good reason for that. It's not the same stuff.
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Alcohol you're not supposed to drink gets denatured. In other words, it's made unnatural by adding a lot of really bad chemicals. These chemicals don't diminish the alcohol's industrial value, but they make it really hard to drink. Which is the whole point. You're not supposed to drink it.
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All of this allows the IRS to draw a chemical distinction between industrial alcohol and all that other yummy stuff you're supposed to drink. And the reason all this matters to the IRS is because different types of alcohol get taxed differently.
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And Uncle Sam needs a way to ensure nobody skirts the tax code by making drinking alcohol out of the stuff you're supposed to be using to sterilize needles. Since 1907, James Duran has been proudly polluting, sorry, denaturing industrial alcohol in service of our nation's tax code.
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But with the passage of the Volstead Act, James' job suddenly becomes crucial not only to tax enforcement, but to enforcement of the new nationwide dry law.
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Yep, in its infinite wisdom, Congress has decided to make alcohol illegal and to make the IRS enforce it. James Duran's job is about to get a whole lot more interesting, and he's not the only one. You ever see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? It's an old Hollywood classic. A scout troop leader from the American West played by, yet again, Jimmy Stewart. What's with this guy? Hi, I'm Jimmy Stewart.
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And basically, I just play every American archetype under the sun, you see. Anyway, he gets handpicked for a Senate seat by a bunch of fat cats. He comes into Congress, still brushing the Oregon trail dust off his necktie. The political bosses think he's such a rube, they can pull his strings and he'll be none the wiser. Of course, they get him all wrong. Why?
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Well, they think loving the founding fathers and reciting their speeches by heart makes him a naive bumpkin. But that turns out to be exactly what lets him see right through their greedy schemes. He's got principles, goddammit. Oh, wait, I mean, dagnabbit. And that means something in America.
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But two decades before Mr. Smith, another plucky Westerner arrives in D.C. for real. Her name is Mabel Walker Willebrandt. She's a rising legal star, the first woman in Los Angeles to serve as a public defender and the parliamentarian of the city's Women Lawyers Club. She made a name for herself providing free counsel to sex workers, and she's already proven that she can captivate a courtroom.
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Norris and Gettler issued a warning to the public as the bodies kept stacking up at Bellevue Hospital. The winter of 1901 in Topeka, Kansas was a cold one. Temperatures hovered in the single digits. I imagine the wind howling down the streets. Too much snow for a car, although someone might bust out a horse-drawn sleigh or two. But inside one saloon, the Senate Bar, the regulars got cozy.
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Mabel is a trailblazer, a crusading attorney who never hesitates to stand up for women. Definitely not easy in 1920. She has a well-earned reputation for defying men's expectations. So when President Warren G. Harding begins searching for someone to lead the charge for federal prohibition, a host of California lawyers and judges tell him, we want Walker Willebrandt. Harding offers an interview.
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Mabel says farewell to her parents in Cali and rides the rails across the country. Full of confidence, she'll be hired as Assistant Attorney General of the United States. And when I think of her stepping off the train with her big canvas bag and her hair and tight braids over her ears, I see a lot of that Mr. Smith story.
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I mean, Jimmy may not have had the braids, but as Mabel catches a trolley through the busy streets of D.C., she's also riding into a world she doesn't know. At just 32, Mabel has a resume that would make most lawyers in Washington green with envy. But enforcing prohibition remains an unenviable and largely untested task.
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because by 1920, the national experiment in prohibition is going pretty much exactly like Gettler and Norris had predicted. Enterprising Americans find all sorts of ways to skirt the law, from making moonshine out in the boonies, to smuggling in the good stuff from across the Canadian border, to going full mad scientist and making Franken-cocktails out of industrial alcohols.
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If this thing's going to actually last, the feds are going to need a steady hand at the helm of the brand new prohibition unit.
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So despite her reservations, Mabel aces her interview with the attorney general. Then, with his stamp of approval, she catches a cab to the White House for a face-to-face meeting with President Warren Harding. Harding and his attorney general had a long history together. They were something of an old boys club, backroom deals, etc. Mabel was a by-the-books West Coast lady trying to break in.
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All that is to say that whatever her principles, she needed to know how to play ball if she wanted this job.
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As the story goes, President Harding told Mabel, there's only one thing against you. You're too young. Mabel takes what Harding gives her and sends it right back at him.
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She knocks the interview out of the park. She gets the job. It's a huge moment for Mabel and for the country. Mabel Walker-Willibrandt is now the highest-ranking woman in government. She's young and ambitious, and in all likelihood, she's thinking that if she plays her cards right, she could get herself a federal judgeship or even become America's first female attorney general.
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But the reaction in the press is sadly predictable. These are actual headlines from the time.
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The media was already on Harding's case for handing out jobs to his friends and political allies, and now they were going to turn that anger on Mabel, with an extra layer of misogyny just for kicks.
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When she announces to the papers that she's not giving interviews until she's gotten her feet under her, one paper proclaims, "...a woman who was not ready and willing to talk or be photographed has been found." Mabel probably saw this coming. There's no question she's hit with snide remarks every time she steps into the spotlight.
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But what she can't have prepared for is the resistance she'll meet from her colleagues and the corruption she'll find around every corner.
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This was a favorite haunt for elected officials, situated not far from the state capitol, equipped with enough booze for the local elite to forget all about the cold weather, and also the fact that many of them had recently voted to ban the sale of alcohol statewide. At least that's how it was on most nights. but one freezing cold dawn. Before the place opened up, a silhouette fills the doorway.
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This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
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All right. Prohibition's the law of the land. And President Harding has hired Mabel Walker Willebrand to come to D.C. and get to work enforcing it. Just one problem. The apparatus that's supposed to enforce this law is less a finely tuned machine and more like, well, what's the 1920s equivalent of a shit show? I guess it's also a shit show. For starters, there's her boss, the Attorney General.
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He was A, a drunk, and B, corrupt. That doesn't make it easy. Thanks, Dan Ockrent. Then there's her staff. You'd think the newly created Prohibition Unit would be designed to resist the corrupting influences of the booze business. After all, most civil servants at the time had to pass a series of tests confirming their aptitude and integrity. But this new unit was made exempt from those tests.
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which is another way of saying we're going to use it for political payoffs. Which means Mabel is essentially the meat in a corruption sandwich. She's more or less the only person anywhere in the chain of command who isn't interested in taking bribes to look the other way. The guys enforcing this law and the guys overseeing the whole enterprise, they're all in somebody's pocket.
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That's Old Overholt the Bourbon. Yeah, it's bad enough for any member of the cabinet to own a liquor company, but as Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon has a major role to play in Prohibition enforcement. He's supposed to work closely with Mabel's office. And he's James Duran's boss. Drunks, bribe takers, liquor magnates.
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These are the people Mabel's supposed to work hand in glove with in the fight to enforce prohibition. Whenever the IRS gets wind of some alcohol-related skullduggery, they're supposed to investigate, gather evidence, and package it all up so the Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Willibrandt can swoop in and make the arrests.
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It's a woman, six feet tall and easily able to stand eye to eye with any corn-fed man in Topeka. She wears a black dress and black ribbons in her hair, like she's attending a funeral, and she peers into the darkened saloon through little oval-shaped glasses. It's highly unusual for any woman to enter a saloon in this day and age, let alone at 5.30 in the morning.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Mabel then wins the case, the bootleggers get tossed in the clink, rinse and repeat until the country goes drier than an anti-masturbatory cracker. Again, that's how it's supposed to work. But in practice, most of the people around her are either uninterested in enforcing dry laws or actively breaking them.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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So it must come as a huge relief to Mabel when she finally finds someone in the IRS bureaucracy who takes the law as seriously as she does. James Duran. She's an ambitious lawyer in the Department of Justice. He's a behind-the-scenes chemist in the Department of Treasury. Fate has brought them together.
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Mabel Walker Willebrand and James Duran will enforce prohibition, despite the corruption all around them. As such, they'll both quickly realize enforcement is going to require some new approaches, a new formula, if you will. But they're determined. They're idealistic. And together, these two dedicated bureaucrats are about to unleash hell on American drinkers.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Next time on Snafu, we meet the defiant bootleggers who were already making life a nightmare for the Prohibition Bureau.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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And meanwhile, our pal Alexander Gettler was back on the case in New York and making some shocking discoveries.
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Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
This episode was written by Nevin Kalapalli, Stephen Wood, Carl Nellis, and Akimany Ekpo, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
But this is a highly unusual woman. Her name is Carrie Nation. There's one employee inside the closed bar as Carrie forces the door open. Even if he doesn't know her by the look of righteous fury in her eyes, he can probably guess her intentions from the hatchet she's wielding in her hand. Carrie Nation didn't come here to crack open a cold one with the boys. Or at least, not the way you'd think.
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This hatchet is her signature accessory. And before the barman can stop her, she starts putting it to use. Carrie jumps behind the bar and smashes the liquor bottles.
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She smashes the glasses. She smashes the faucets, the cash register, the slot machine.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
But all of this is prelude, because finally Carrie Nation lays into her number one target, the kegs.
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She drives her hatchet into the beer kegs, flooding the bar floor with the devil's elixir. By the time the sheriff arrives, Carrie is soaked to the bone. Her behavior was extreme, but Carrie Nation was nothing if not a zealot. By 1901, she had become the axe-wielding face of the temperance movement. The Senate bar is just the latest stop in her crusade to destroy every last keg in America.
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And in that crusade, Carrie is far from alone. Before she started smashing stuff up, Carrie was a devout Christian and felt compelled by God to do things like making clothes for the poor or opening a shelter for the families of violent alcoholics. Her first husband had been a severe alcoholic himself, dying of drink in 1869 and leaving Carrie with their infant daughter.
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Influenced by her own experience and that of others around her, Carrie would later say that she felt personally called by God to rid the country of alcohol. Her devoted service to the poor earned her the nickname Mother Nation. At the same time, her manic attacks on saloons earned her the nickname Hatchet Granny. Carrie referred to herself as...
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Call her a bulldog, call her hatchet granny, call her whatever you like. Carrie Nation was an impassioned anti-alcohol activist. She and people like her were determined to remake America by any means necessary. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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This is season three, the story of Formula Six, how prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. Today, we're taking a look at the people responsible for prohibition. See, before the government set about botching the enforcement of dry laws, lone wolves like Cary Nation had already been taking matters into their own hands for decades.
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That's Terrence Winter, legendary TV writer and creator of Boardwalk Empire. His show, like ours, takes place in the 20s. But the full story of Prohibition begins a lot earlier.
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Terry made himself an expert on this stuff for Boardwalk Empire, digging into the research.
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That's historian Paul Thompson. Anti-alcohol sentiment, also called temperance, was a social movement. It eventually led to Prohibition, the outright banning of alcohol, but it didn't start out that way.
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Early temperance supporters urged people to abstain from drink, starting with liquor, but eventually also beer and wine. For them, it was a personal choice you could make to improve both yourself and society. Here's Tom Pegram, author of Battling Demon Rum, The Struggle for a Dry America.
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Self-control was all the rage in the early 1800s, and not just when it came to booze. Case in point, New England Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham.
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Graham loved temperance in all its forms. You name it, he didn't want you to enjoy it. He encouraged a diet of vegetables and whole wheat in order to best suppress those bodily urges. Today, he's most famous for his cracker recipe. Yep, that's right. Graham crackers were designed to stop people from masturbating. But it wasn't all about self-denial.
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Temperance advocates tended to believe in other types of social change, things which, even if they sound like basic human rights today, were actually quite radical in 1800s America.
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Temperance could easily go hand in hand with blatant racism. In fact, put a pin in that for later. But in the 1800s, the likes of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth were prominent figures in the temperance movement. The people fighting hardest for causes like racial equality and women's rights were often supporters of temperance as well.
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Here's author Dan Okrent on what it meant to be a progressive back in the 1800s.
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But the dries, as the temperance advocates came to be known, didn't arise in a vacuum. In fact, temperance started to gain steam at precisely the same time as immigrants from Europe streamed into American cities in record numbers.
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S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
Packed into unsafe tenement buildings, compelled to work exhausting and often dangerous jobs, these newcomers were in desperate need of a place to unwind and throw back a few beers.
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That's Annie Polland, the president of the Tenement Museum in the heart of New York City's Lower East Side.
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Welcome to Yummytown. That almost makes all the turn-of-the-century typhoid and dysentery worth it.
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Our man Alexander Gettler, chief toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital and himself an immigrant, would have been quite familiar with places like this. His family actually brewed their own beer in their bathroom, and their social lives would have been intimately tied to the saloons around them.
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Gettler was more workaholic than alcoholic, and there's no record of him joining any associations for singing, dancing, or gymnastics, but this was his world.
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People like Gettler worked their asses off to make a life for themselves and their families in the U.S., but as they did, they faced discrimination from the blue-blooded Protestants of this country, ironically, people quite similar to Gettler's partner, Charles Norris, who were fed up with immigrants, their foreign cultures, and their pernicious booze.
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Saloons became the primary targets for the Cary nations of the world, as did the immigrants who frequented them. Even though Prohibition was not technically an anti-immigrant policy, Prohibition developed as a movement to change laws to prevent access to alcohol. As its proponents began trying to force it on the country, the battle lines became clear.
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
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Alexander Gettler knows this is folly, but he doesn't know how much worse it's about to get.
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That's J.W. Quillen, head chemist at the IRS. Now, I know what you're thinking, and don't worry, our old pal James Duran is still around. In fact, he's moved up in the world. Duran's now the Federal Prohibition Commissioner. Quillen works for him.
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And on a hot August day, just a week after Babe Ruth's game-winning dinger, Duran has sent Quillen to deliver a warning from the government to drinkers everywhere.
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Okay, not exactly breaking news. The stuff has been blinding and even killing people all over the country. And I gotta say, it's pretty twisted to even phrase this as a warning because Quillen isn't some passive bystander here. It's his office doing this in the first place. He lists the chemicals the IRS has been using. See if any of them sound familiar.
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Last time on Snafu, double-toting two-gun Hart became a prohibition enforcement agent.
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This product is compounded with benzene, kerosene, rucine, and various other products which make it a very deadly poison. That's the fucked up cocktail of poisons Gettler's been seeing in dead bodies at Bellevue. And it's a formula with an official name. We call this concoction Formula 6. And there it is, Formula 6. It's kind of snazzy sounding, but still enigmatic.
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The important thing is, one of these toxic recipes has been given a public name. Here's Deborah again.
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Quillen reminds everyone what the plan for these formulas is all about.
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You see, there is a second, much more sinister layer to this press conference. Because Quillen goes on to say the Treasury Department knows that Formula 6 has not been effective enough, so they're going to release even more formulas that will be even more deadly. The really, really fucked up thing here is they know it's going to kill people. Just listen to the words Quillen uses.
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Kind of a weird way to talk about a public health crisis. And a downright evil way to talk about a public health crisis he himself was causing. I mean, imagine how different those Smokey the Bear PSAs would go over if we also knew that Smokey was an avowed arsonist. Quillen ended his press conference promising a wave of alcohol poisoning. As Debra Blum says...
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And ended up killing an innocent man. Back in D.C., Mabel Walker Willebrand roped in just about the last people who should ever be involved in law enforcement. This is where the Klan comes in, actually. So what was supposed to be a righteous moral crusade was turning into a bloody, morally compromised debacle.
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I wish I could tell you this shocked the nation, but it didn't. The next morning, a couple hundred words about the press conference appear on page 22 of the New York Times. Quillen's threat did not exactly start a national conversation, nor did it convert boozehounds into teetotalers from coast to coast. And honestly, did Quillen expect it to?
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I mean, did he or James Duran or Mabel Walker Willebrand or anyone really think that announcing they were adding a little more poison would finally do the trick here? We don't know what was in their minds or in their hearts, but we know they proceeded just as Quillen said they would.
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Oh, and even though Quillen is announcing the Feds are retiring Formula 6, that doesn't mean it's going to vanish overnight. Two months after Quillen's announcement, another bureau official casually tells the press he's aware of one million gallons of denatured industrial alcohol poisoned with Formula 6 sitting in warehouses right around New York City.
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These supplies belonged to companies who had permits to buy it legally for industrial purposes, but everyone knows that most of these companies are really just fronts for bootleggers. And all that alcohol is heading for the Holiday Punch Bowl.
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The feds know how much tainted liquor is out there, and they know that it's destined for human consumption. In other words, one million gallons of poisoned liquor, practically a loaded gun pointed at the city of New York.
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But for the moment, since it's categorized as industrial, it's legal. So in the minds of the Prohibition Bureau officials, well, there's nothing they can do. It's like, gee, we'd really love to do something about all that liquor we poisoned, but gosh darn it, it's perfectly legal and privately owned. Our hands are tied.
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As Christmas approaches, everyone from Gettler to James Duran knows what's about to happen. The only real question is, how many lives will Formula 6 claim?
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Christmas Eve, New York is aglow with holiday lights as a soft rain falls over the city. The evening starts off as a normal holiday shift at Bellevue Hospital. Cheery music wafts through the halls. It's quiet. For now. Then the ER doors swing open. A man barges in, ranting and raving, gasping for air. He's terrified. He says Santa Claus is chasing him with a baseball bat.
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The doctors are well aware that, spoiler alert kids, Santa isn't real. But the man who just burst into the ER seems pretty damn convinced. This isn't your normal holiday drunk. This guy is straight up hallucinating. And he's not the only one. As Christmas morning approaches, over 60 more people crash through the ER doors, drunk, sweating, and vomiting. Like the guy being chased by a St.
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And even after all that, the dries weren't done yet. On a cold, misty night in late November 1926, two Brooklyn cops stumble upon something extremely suspicious down by the docks on the East River. Under the full moon, a stooped man struggles to carry a big bundle of something towards the water.
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Nick, many of them are seeing things that aren't there. But others are already blind by the time they get to the hospital. That night, eight of them die. Returning to his basement lab after the holiday, Alexander Gettler finds his Boxing Day surprise. Eight new dead bodies, not to mention the dozens more people elsewhere in the hospital, blinded or hallucinating.
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He gets to work examining the man who spent his final hours raving about being stalked by old Kris Kringle.
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Nothing out of the ordinary, just taking a peek at the organs of the recently deceased. And on first glance, Gettler sees the hallmarks of death by alcohol poisoning. The ordinary kind. But that doesn't explain the hallucinations or the blindness. Gettler knows full well that alcohol impairs vision, but it can't blind you on its own, nor can it make you see things that aren't there.
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Whatever killed these eight people and poisoned dozens more, it contained some especially nasty chemicals. Gettler turns to his tried-and-true method. He takes biopsies of the body's liver, brain, and blood. He blends them into a sludge... He repeats the same process with each of the fresh bodies. Eight livers, eight brains, eight blood samples, 24 beakers of human chemical slurry.
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As he waits for the results, news of more grisly Yuletide fatalities come in from around the country. 150 dead in Philadelphia, 71 dead in Baltimore, 328 in Chicago. Gettler knows he'll get to the bottom of it. Sooner or later, he'll figure out what's in Duran and Quillen's latest formula. But the more pressing question is, will anyone stop them?
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We began this season with the story of Bix Beiderbecke, the virtuoso cornetist who, quote, cracked up and collapsed while on tour in Cleveland. It's time to come back to his story. See, Bix survived that 1928 incident, but he never really recovered. To be clear, Bix was already a full-blown alcoholic, which certainly didn't do wonders for his health.
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But ever since that night, he had trouble breathing. He had pains in his legs. And he's convinced he was poisoned. Paul Whiteman, leader of the orchestra in which Bix was a member, keeps hoping his star cornetist will recover. For more than a year, he keeps Bix's chair empty. Nobody knows what exactly happened to Bix, but most chalk it up to drunkenness. Maybe he just needs to dry out.
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First, Bix goes to his parents' place in Iowa to recuperate. Then he checks into rehab. I'm not sure what rehab was like in the 1920s, but let's just say it was less than fully effective. When he returns to his apartment in New York City, Bix is still in pain and still drinking heavily. When Paul Whiteman comes through town, he invites Bix to join them on stage.
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Whip through those old solos again, buddy, even if it's just for one performance. But Bix is wracked with mysterious pain and struggling just to breathe. Sadly, his playing days are over. It's not long before Bix is a patient at Bellevue Hospital. He was so close to Alexander Gettler. Do you think they ever met? their paths did actually cross, kind of.
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See, while undergoing treatment at Bellevue, Bix crashes with his friend, the legendary jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden.
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When the cops holler out and ask him what he's doing, he panics, kicks the bundle into the water, and runs away. The cops tackle him and handcuff him. But even once they get him to the precinct, he's still not talking. And this isn't just a regular old, I ain't saying nothing kind of silence. More of a stupor. He looks ill. His face oddly flushed. The police suspect he's had quite a lot to drink.
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He's got pneumonia. His eyes are still bloodshot. It's a struggle to keep food down. His breath is so shallow, it's starting to seem unlikely he'll ever be able to hit those great cornet licks he's so well known for again. So one day, Jack helps him out of bed and down to the street. Anything to preoccupy him, maybe help him regain a bit of his strength.
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But today, Bix is overcome by a strange impulse, a morbid curiosity. Something in his gut, still ravaged by the poison, tells him to take the elevator down to the basement level.
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They take the elevator down to the lowest level. The temperature drops about 10 degrees as they step out. It might just be a bad case of the chills, but Bix swears he can see his breath. They slowly teeter towards a heavy iron door clearly marked with the word, Mortuary. A watchman idles by the entrance to the morgue. Turns out he's a jazz fan.
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That, along with a five dollar bill, is enough to get them inside.
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Jack and Bix are the only living souls in the morgue. No doctors, no students. But there is a lone body lying on an examination table in the middle of the room. She's bloodless, as cold and smooth as marble. Soon she'll be embalmed, redressed, and placed in a pine box. A modest funeral. More than likely, she comes from a family who can only afford the bare minimum.
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With one foot in the grave himself, Bix must have wondered what he'd look like when it came time to splay him out on a cold steel table. When Randy told us this story, it really hit me. Because Bix stands out to me as the kind of person Gettler was trying to help, trying to save. And the fact that Bix visited the morgue. He literally walked the halls where Gettler was doing his important work.
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It has a kind of sad irony to it. Like, Gettler was working to put the pieces together and stop the poisonings. He was desperate to save as many people as he could, but it was too late for Bix. And it's almost like Bix knew it.
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Bix's last few days are hot. It was August in New York. So hot, an already addled Bix can't get to sleep. His neighbors hear him playing his piano in the wee hours of the morning. He's seeing people and hearing things that aren't there. Understandably, he's fixated on death. It comes August 6th, 1931, while Bix is still in his apartment. He's sweating, shouting that there are men under the bed.
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They have knives. They want to kill him. The building supervisor tries to calm Bix down by playing along. He gets on all fours and looks under the empty bed. Suddenly, Bix dives down from the bed and slams into him. The man struggles to catch him. A nurse who lives across the hall runs in to help. But the commotion is over. Bix goes slack and crumples to the floor.
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Bix Beiderbecke's obituary listed his death officially as pneumonia. Lungs filled with fluid, spasms, shooting pains, hallucinations. Formula 6 had done its job. Slow and painfully sure. But the bigger question was, would anyone face consequences? Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio.
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Eventually, they identify him as Francesco Travia, a longshoreman who lives in nearby Cobble Hill. They can't get a word out of him, but they do notice his pant legs are soaked in blood.
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It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Nevin Kalapalli and Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright.
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Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing music and sound design by Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato.
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The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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Sorry, I shouldn't laugh about this. That's historian Deborah Blum. Remember, she's an expert on the various ways chemicals can kill you. When you spend your career talking about poisoned corpses, sometimes you just gotta laugh. The police go to Travia's apartment, find a woman's dead body. Well, half of one. And her head is still there and her torso on the floor.
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The scene in Travia's apartment is gruesome. So it's not really a stretch to conclude that Travia murdered this woman, chopped her up, and has just disposed of her legs in the East River. The body is identified as Anna Fredrickson, Francesco's neighbor. Anna's family tells the police that she went to Francesco to scrounge up some booze and left his apartment in multiple pieces.
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To the NYPD, this looks like an open and shut case. They'd caught Francesco Travia red-handed, or at least red-panted. But then the city's chief medical examiner arrives at the crime scene.
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Norris emerges from his car and strolls into the apartment, no doubt dressed in an outfit that cost an arm and a lot of money. He takes a quick look at the crime scene, hears what the cops have to report, and immediately blows up the entire theory of the case.
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Norris only needs to see two things, the unnatural flush of the dead woman's skin and the lighting fixtures in the tenement building where she was found.
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As Norris knows, this gas is not only poisonous, it's also colorless and odorless, a deadly combination he and Alexander Gettler know all too well from their work examining New York City's dead. The presence of carbon monoxide also explains why Travia's been in a stupor and the strange hue of the alleged victim's skin.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Anna Fredrickson's death was a tragic accident. At some point, as she got drunk with Francesco, one of them must have caused the gas leak.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Charles Norris feels compelled to testify in Francesco's case. He knows this man is innocent. Well, innocent of murder anyway. And he has the scientific facts to prove it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
It wasn't the first time Norris and Gettler took on the political powers that be and won. And it wouldn't be the last. Of course, Francesco did still get convicted of improperly disposing of a corpse, and I'm going to give it to the prosecutor on that one, but he did avoid the death penalty because Gettler and Norris investigated and intervened.
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S3E6: Signature Cocktail
From gas leaks to lead pipes to radioactive watches, which is an actual thing you could buy at the time, there was a lot that could kill you in 1920s America. Time and time again, Gettler and Norris cracked cases that cops couldn't crack. And they were just about the only ones in New York City capable of getting to the bottom of the especially twisted mystery of Formula 6.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This is the story of how Prohibition backfired so badly that the government chose to poison thousands of Americans. Today, a string of mysterious deaths presents Norris and Gettler with another mystery, even as the culprit hides in plain sight. One thing we know about Alexander Gettler is that he loved the Yankees.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
And we also know that, as a workaholic, his thoughts were never far from his work. So indulge me as I paint a picture for us. Gettler attending a real Yankee game and piecing together a few work thoughts. Sunday, August 2nd, 1926. Alexander Gettler, notorious workaholic, has given himself a rare day off to enjoy Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.
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S3E6: Signature Cocktail
His beloved Bronx Bombers are facing the Chicago White Sox, and they're off to a rough start. In the top of the first, Chicago left fielder Bib Falk hits a weak ground ball off Yankee pitcher Waite Hoyt and drives in a run. Bib, Waite. Come on, you gotta love these old-timey baseball names, right? But Gettler, well, he's not loving it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
By the time he's gotten to his seat and lit up one of his White Owl cigars, his Yankees are already down by a run. Now, even amidst all the peanuts and crackerjacks, Gettler's mind wanders to what he's been seeing in his lab and in the news. All over the city and all over the country, people are dying, going blind. Remember that bootleg cocktail, Ginger Jake?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
There are people walking around town with a condition nicknamed Jake Leg, which causes the legs to twitch uncontrollably. By now, it's common knowledge that lots of ill-gotten hooch has serious, even fatal side effects. But people are still drinking it. The Yankees have their own formidable tag team, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
They're both in the midst of incredible seasons, smashing homers and breaking records. But in the bottom of the first, the Chicago pitcher gets Gehrig to ground out into a fielder's choice, intentionally walks the great Bambino. Oh, come on, pitch to him. Scary cut. And retires the side without letting up a run. Gettler puffs his cigar and cogitates.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
There's been a commotion upstate in Buffalo where the health commissioner is alleging that dozens of recent deaths, chalked up to heart disease or apoplexy, were actually the work of methyl alcohol. In his own lab at Bellevue, Alexander's been seeing some downright bizarre things in his test results. And I don't mean the sludge he makes out of dead people. That's all in a day's work.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
But the chemicals he's finding in that sludge? Well, they're getting weirder and weirder. Pyridine? What the? Pyridine is colorless and highly flammable. It's commonly found in herbicides and insecticides. In other words, it's poison. Gettler knows the mafiosos distributing tainted liquor aren't afraid to get their hands a little dirty. But still, intentionally serving people insecticide?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
and it gets weirder. There's also kerosene and industrial benzene, commonly found in rubber and gas. Now, you don't need to be chief toxicologist of Bellevue Medical Center to know kerosene and alcohol are a bad mix, but never one to jump to conclusions.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Gettler wonders if there's a way these victims might have accidentally consumed these poisons, which sounds crazy, but he's actually seen a lot of it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Back in 1925, a dozen women died, and at least 50 more became ill with mysterious symptoms, including necrosis of the jaw. Since they all worked at the same watch factory, the cases were assumed to be connected. However, the company doctors tried to sweep it all under the rug. That's when Gettler was called in. He ran some tests and figured out exactly what was going on.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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In order to make the watch faces glow in the dark, the workers painted them with radium, which, just like it sounds, is radioactive. The radium girls, as they came to be known, had been licking their paintbrushes to wet them as they painted, unknowingly consuming toxic radium every time. So now back to these latest poisonings by benzene and kerosene.
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Maybe all of these victims worked at a rubber tire factory and they were all roommates in a building heated by burning kerosene, but probably not. Gettler can't find any connection between them, apart from the unique blend of the poisons that killed them.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Each of these chemicals is gnarly enough on its own, but when you put them together, it becomes clear whoever invented this cocktail had a deeply sinister intent. Benzene brings on a seizure. Kerosene constricts the throat. Pyridine sends agonizing pain shooting through the gut. Still other additives would have made the limbs go stiff.
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S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Methanol sears the optic nerve after a few gulps, and nearly all the victims went blind before they died. Babe Ruth strikes out to lead off the bottom of the fourth inning. The Yankees are still down, and they haven't even recorded a hit yet.
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S3E6: Signature Cocktail
Alexander is starting to worry about the dollar he's wagered on this game, but he's far more worried thinking about those noxious chemicals showing up in his lab sludge. Yankee pitcher Tommy Thompson keeps the White Sox in check through the fifth inning, but his team is still behind.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
The crowd is restless, especially Alexander Gettler, as his mind turns to the most fucked up thing about all these poisonings. Since the dawn of Prohibition, the bootleggers and the mob have been competing directly with the government. The Prohibition Bureau, Mabel Walker-Willibrandt, the IRS, James Duran, and all their cronies.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
They've been going back and forth, taking their swings at each other, as the government keeps putting nastier things into industrial alcohol, and the outlaws keep hiring chemists to thwart them. Gettler knows what he's seeing is no accident. Finally, in the bottom of the sixth, with Gehrig on base, Babe Ruth gets a hold of one.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E6: Signature Cocktail
The Colossus of Cloud hammers his 30th home run of the season, and the Yankees take the lead. Gettler rises to his feet with the rest of the crowd as he watches two all-time greats cross home plate. Sorry to spoil it for you, but the scoreline will hold. The Yankees win 2-1. All in all, a bad afternoon for Gettler has turned good thanks to a single swing of the bat.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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But as he joins the crowd streaming out of the park and towards the 161st Street subway station, Gettler can't help but wonder, how many of these people would the government be willing to sacrifice for this insane failing strategy of deterrence? Gettler knows better than anyone this strategy isn't working.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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If denaturing industrial alcohol stopped people from making drinks out of it, people would have stopped getting drunk. But that's clearly just not happening. If introducing more and more pernicious cocktails of poisons actually scared people away from drinking, they wouldn't keep ending up on a metal tray in Gettler and Norris's lab. It's madness. It's madness.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Gettler thinks to himself as he boards a packed train back to Brooklyn, not only are Duran and his boys intentionally making industrial alcohol unsafe, but this latest concoction seems to be a sign they're going to keep upping the ante. As if there's some magic formula, a perfect mixture so deadly it could finally convince drinkers to give up the booze.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
OK, so we've established that public policy, as as it is generated by Congress, has a statistically nonexistent connection to the desires of the public. Why? What what are the primary what is sort of the underpinning reasons for that? Yeah, I mean, the simplest answer is follow the money.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
We know prohibition was obviously a colossal government snafu and a fascinating story in its own right. But what are the nitty gritty lessons or insights we can walk away with this season? I wanted to talk to someone who could help us zoom out. Someone who thinks deeply about how power, corruption and unintended consequences shape our world.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Right. It's corrupt and legal. Right. It's corrupt and baked into the system that we have.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And it feels like it's such a cliche to say, like, it's the system. We're going to put the system on trial. But that kind of is the deal. Like, that's exactly what we're dealing with, with our political system right now.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Yeah, most of the two of us that are here do think it's our job to change that system. There are a lot of reasons that we feel polarized as a country right now. And, you know, we can point to the obvious wedge issues. We can point to the information silos, the social media and all of these things. And those are very real. And there are cable news, which is very corporate and cynical.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And these are these are very real factors. Right. But there are also a number of structural factors that are wedging us, things built into the political system engineered to polarize us even further. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about those more structural issues. Yeah, sure.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So I called up Josh Graham Lynn, the co-founder of Represent Us, an organization dedicated to fighting political corruption and making our democracy work better. Unlike, say, a democracy that poisons its own citizens. Josh helped us dig into big questions that inform our understanding not only of Formula Six, but also its lingering echoes into the present.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
You said much more competitive. What are the numbers on how gerrymandering has affected the competitiveness of congressional elections?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
In the primaries- I just wanna put an exclamation point on that, because it still blows my mind. Over 80% of congressional elections are non-competitive. And what that means fundamentally is that they aren't really elections. Like they're not – they're just kind of a rubber stamping ritual, a process, a kind of like a quaint nod to the past. But it isn't – it's not an actual election. Right.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
We're doing the song and dance. We're doing the song and dance of putting a Republican and a Democrat against each other. But in 80 percent of districts, one will always win. Yeah.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And we know that generally the voters that participate in primaries are the most – sort of extreme voters of that group. Yeah, it's the party base, right?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And this is why we see so many politicians emerge that everyone's kind of shaking their heads like, how did this guy get nominated? How did this lady get there? Like, that seems crazy. Well, it's because like the most hardcore fervent Partisans are the ones nominating those people. So you brought up before this sort of question about the media environment.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
How do we break free of political influence and lobbyists? How do we bring power back to voters? And ultimately, how do we strengthen democracy for future generations? Turns out the tangled mess of bad decisions behind prohibition isn't just a history lesson. It's a warning. So here it is, my fascinating conversation with Josh Graham-Lynn. Hello, Josh Graham Lynn. Hello, Ed Heckenweiler Helms.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
You're saying that more level headed people will reach higher levels of government and they will be the mouthpieces that we see on the media. And that more measured kind of dialogue will have a cultural impact on all of us. Absolutely.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
How do you change those incentives?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And that's one of those things, like... That is such a no-brainer, right? And yet we're in this feedback loop where the people that are making those rules are the people that benefit from – the existence of gerrymandering. So what then becomes the way that citizens can make those changes or force our representatives in government to make those changes?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Yeah. And I think I don't I think a lot of people don't realize like how much power citizens can have in that way, that what ballot initiatives can do and that they're really they are really just initiatives from the citizenry. They're not it's not a that doesn't have it's not a political process. It's something that goes citizens initiate and it goes before voters.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And so things like gerrymandering, which no politician is incentivized. Some might have the sort of moral backbone to to to back it up, but they're not incentivized to fix gerrymandering because they're all benefiting from it. So, yeah. So it's it is it is up to us and represent us as seeing a lot of success with ballot initiatives.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Close. Well, hey, so I'm so excited to have you on our Snafu podcast, and I'm just going to throw a couple of disclaimer slash context bits out there first. The first disclaimer is that I know you very well, and I I don't like you at all. No, that's not true. We're very good friends. You are a very good friend of mine.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Yeah. What are some others?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
All right. Tell us about that.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So I will explain. Is that right? Australia has used ranked choice voting in all of their major political elections? That's just how they do it. Yeah. I did not realize that. That's amazing. Yeah.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So it's really interesting the amount of misinformation and disinformation that's out there about ranked choice voting because a lot of entrenched power on both sides of the political spectrum realize that it's a shakeup for them.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And the reason we know each other well is because you run an organization called Represent Us. And I have been very active with that organization because I really believe in its mission. So with that out of the way, tell us a little bit about Represent Us and your involvement, how it got started and how you got roped in.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So your incentive is to temper your message and not cater to the extremes. Totally. I mean, how much more chill would our world be if elected officials felt a need to speak to a larger audience?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Another term for ranked choice voting is instant runoff, right? Is that a phrase that kind of, I think, I like that phrase because it helps me understand that it's sort of a, then the vote counting is a sort of multi-step process. Yeah. Can you walk us through that a little bit? Sure.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
The ranking is your sort of second round of. Yeah, exactly. Of the votes. It is so elegant. It's so simple. And it's so intrinsically fair. No wonder we don't use it. Yeah. No wonder we don't use it. Exactly. Exactly.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
There's another really interesting bit of represent a strategy that has echoes in prohibition. The Volstead Act prohibition was overturned in sort of a – a movement that grew state by state. And it turns out this is part of a larger trend of laws that have passed in this same kind of incremental way. Tell us about how that factors into Represent Us strategy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And it doesn't take as much momentum as people might think, right?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And you're saying victories meaning like states building. States changing laws. Like one, two, three, four, five, six states starting to change these laws. Right.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Yeah, right. Because people I think people think it's so overwhelming to just like change a massive federal law. And that does feel overwhelming and almost incomprehensible. Like, how do you do that? But it does start small. You can start with these state initiatives and and then it really is a domino kind of momentum thing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And it's cool to sort of see that track through history with some of these major cultural moments. prohibition, marriage equality, and so forth. When people are advocating for the American government to work better, that is part of a really remarkable legacy of work that goes back really to the founding of the country.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Ever since we got this country going, there's been an ongoing effort to just make it work better. Can you speak... More to that legacy broadly and what it's really looked like over the last 200 years.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
We've already talked about more perfect. Let's just make it more perfect. Like we're getting there. It's always going to be more like we always have to be making adjustments, trimming the sails. And we've sort of talked about it.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
More perfect. We'll get there. What would you say to our listeners out there right now, anyone who might be feeling like a little disenchanted or like, what can I do? How can I be part of this process? All of this sounds great, but it's a little out of reach for me and I'm just depressed. Like, what would you say to connect to that person?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Right on. Right on. Yeah. Every time I hear that, I just get all excited about Represent Us.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Isn't that the state where no politicians had to disclose gifts that they got from lobbyists or citizens?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
That sounds good. Well, Josh. Some movements are built in the modern era. There you go. You just clone people. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on, Snafu. I really, really appreciate it. And I think our listeners will, too. Just hearing a lot of your insight and point of view on this stuff. This is a show about history's greatest screw ups.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And I just want to thank you for trying to make our country a little less screwed up.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Thank you, sir. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And I think there is just a very pervasive sense in America right now that things are feeling a little broken. No matter what side you're on, if your team won or your team lost, there's still this sense that like, well, still a lot of people are feeling kind of screwed and unheard. And that's really what Represent Us is trying to fix. How did it get started? What's kind of the origin story?
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Ekemeny Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Our associate producer, Tori Smith, edited this episode. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Our amazing theme music is by Dan Rosato. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Right. And this is because political donations are considered a form of speech. Yeah. Under free speech.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So why are we talking to you in the context of season three of Snafu, which is all about early 20th century prohibition? Well, it's one of the first big sort of conflagrations of values in 20th century America. Of course, culture wars go back centuries.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And before we go further, I kind of want to I think it'd be cool to actually read a definition of culture war because Wikipedia sums it up quite nicely. So a culture war is a form of cultural conflict.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
a metaphorical war between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology, moral beliefs, humane virtues, religious practices, et cetera, upon mainstream society or upon the other. In political usage, the term culture war is a metaphor for hot button politics about values and ideologies realized with
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters of public policy and of consumption. So one of the really interesting things about culture wars and prohibition is a perfect example of this is how laws get passed and with very little actual support from the general public.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
So in the early 20th century, we had organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, and they made a lot of noise, and they also preyed upon a lot of broader cultural fears associating alcohol and drunkenness with immigrants and big cities and crime.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Temperance, on the other hand, was portrayed as an expression of the sort of pure and lily-white, lovely, small-town, old-fashioned American values. But even so, Broadly speaking, the general population did not support a national ban on alcohol at all. And yet it passed. So this is where I'm getting back to where you were starting to jump to in the beginning.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
You often talk about a famous Princeton study that demonstrates this phenomenon. Tell us about that study and some of its real world implications in contemporary policy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
It's literally the opposite of what we all think. And it's the opposite of how we think our government was structured to work. Yeah, right. It's nuts.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
What are some contemporary policy examples of this, of how this is taking effect? Yeah, I think there's a lot, actually. And some of them are very, you know, very hot. It's arguably every policy. I mean, it really is.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
And it is so interesting that so much of what we hear surrounding these issues is triggering. Right. And that's intentional. It's just trying to get emotional responses out of us because. That clouds our judgment and also like creating more polarization and adversarial dispositions among the general population makes it easier to control the general population.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
Hey there, I'm Ed Helms, and this is SNAFU, Season 3, Formula 6. How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. This is a bonus episode, and as you may recall, I like to bring in guests for these bonus episodes and try to learn something a little bit new or different about the subject.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Well, it turns out that even for someone who wanted to do good, even after he started his job as chief medical examiner, the odds were stacked against him. Because, it turns out, there were plenty of officials who simply liked the old way of doing things. Norris' budget for his staff and his workspace was laughably small. That drunk coroner had left him in office literally in shambles.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Before, police officers used coroners to play their political games. But now, with Norris in charge, they were in for a surprise. Like when a few officers brought Norris a body to examine, which happened to be riddled with bullet holes. They asked for a simple John Hancock on a, let's say, pre-filled-out death certificate that said the cause of death was suicide.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Norris was serious about his work. He was serious about building the office of the chief medical examiner into an effective research team that could get to the bottom of all the deaths in New York City. But to do that, he needed help. Norris was a doctor, not a chemist, who could detect toxins or poisons in a dead body. And during this time, there were more and more poisons surrounding Americans.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Morphine and teething medicines for infants, opium and sedatives, arsenic and everything from cosmetics to pesticides. And don't even ask about how much formaldehyde they were mixing with cow brains and putting in milk. And I thought the microplastics in my water bottle were bad. And it's not like it was harmless. People were dying from this stuff. So often, in fact, that it was hard to keep up.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But here's the thing about poisons. They're just not quite as obvious as bullet holes. And so Norris had a crazy idea. To create a dedicated lab where chemists could work on determining causes of death. Call it a toxicology lab. At the time, no other city in America had one. And you know Norris and his cashmere. He always had to have the best.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
This lab would be installed at Bellevue, a New York hospital perched along the East River since 1811.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Norris just needed to pick the right brainiac for the job. Fortunately for him, there was someone who fit the bill right down the hall, an assistant professor at the Bellevue Medical College. And the award for forensic toxicologist for the newly established New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where the clocks don't even work, goes to Dr. Alexander Gettler. Come on down, Alex.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Well, when Norris approached him, this Alexander Gettler fellow wasn't convinced that playing Robin to Norris' Batman was his dream job. You see, Alexander Gettler was already in a position that was nothing to sneeze at in those days. And, well, if you looked at where the invitation was coming from...
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Let's just say it was pretty clear the medical examiner's office was in the build-the-plane-as-you-fly stage of its existence. Not to mention Gettler was from a completely different world. He was quite different from Flash the Cash Norris.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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That's Dorothy Atzel, Alexander Gettler's granddaughter.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And that's Vicki Atzel, Alexander's great-granddaughter.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Gettler worked as a ticket taker for the 39th Street Brooklyn Battery Ferry and took the overnight shift. During the day, he earned himself a PhD in biochemistry at Columbia. Those brains and, you know, fairly intense work ethic got Gettler his teaching job. He had put in the hard yards and he had earned it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But outside of work, he lived like a lot of other people in his Brooklyn neighborhood, tucked snugly in a brownstone with his wife's son and more than a half dozen Irish in-laws.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But going back and forth between a busy home and a busy hospital, he saw the difference medicine could make in the lives of everyday people. So even though he had turned down Norris's offer, he couldn't put it out of his mind. Maybe if he joined the medical examiner's office, he could do some good. So when Norris came around again, Gettler was ready to consider the job.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But Norris was also completely honest with Gettler. This was nothing like a cushy job in academia. Gettler would have to design the lab from scratch. He would have to figure out for himself how to do the work of detecting poisons. There were no training programs in forensic toxicology. He would have to blaze his own trail.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
That was all right, though, because Gettler loved nothing more than a challenge. And cramming more chemistry work into his days, he agreed to take the position, but only if he could keep teaching at the medical college. That's how much he believed in his grind. Norris looked around at the backlog of bodies stacking up in Bellevue and said, Sure, man, whatever you want.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And while the scientific trenches of New York may have been metaphorical, there's no question that our dynamic duo had a very real fight on their hands. Because it turned out that even though the city was moving on from the flu epidemic, and the war in France was winding down, a different kind of war was just getting started.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
November 30th, 1928, Cleveland, Ohio. The city has just opened a new music hall downtown. It's 1920s opulence from top to bottom, arched ceilings in an Italian style, columns and balconies glowing with gold leaf, a giant plaster eagle looking down over the stage. Maybe not how I would do the decor, more into tasteful minimalism myself, but the folks in Cleveland are eating it up.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And Norris and Gettler had gotten together just in time for the shit to hit the fan.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
She's meeting with one of our writers, Albert Chen. She's very, very carefully handling a dusty blue hardbound book that's older than my mom's wedding china. The book is a collection of typed reports written by Alexander Gettler over the course of three decades.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Yeah, it's been a while since 10th grade chemistry for me, too.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
A massive sparkling chandelier spills light over a crowd of thousands who are all losing their minds, cheering for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing their hits. They're the most popular band in America, and they have a talented young cornetist blowing sweet notes from his horn. That's Bix Beiderbecke on the coronet. Not many folks name Bix nowadays. That's how you know you're in the 20s, baby.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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A great question that before Gettler and Norris came along, no one had any clue how to answer. But Dorothy's daughter Vicki says Gettler figured it out.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
That blue book contained all the detective work that Gettler and Norris pursued in their day, and that work kept them busy. Very busy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Despite what you may be thinking, the apparent lack of nearby urinals was not the biggest public health crisis Norris and Gettler were facing. By early 1919, the deadly wave of influenza was finally passing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But Norris and Gettler were seeing a concerning uptick in victims, reporting similar symptoms, a sudden sense of weakness, severe abdominal pain, and vomiting, blindness, a slip into unconsciousness, heart failure, and even death. But why? They had a hunch it had something to do with a ubiquitous substance floating through the streets of New York City in 1919.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And no, I'm not talking about all the urine flowing from Gettler and Norris' big laboratory sink. We're talking about liquor.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
That's LaShawn Harris, historian of New York City's underground economy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Light beer, cocktails, a little bit of rum? Not if you were part of the Anti-Saloon League. Let me tell you about these folks. Their mission statement wasn't exactly hard to get at. It's kind of right there in the name, Anti-Saloon. They wanted to hammer the bung back into America's whiskey barrel. To them, drinking was a moral outrage, a sin, and the root of all society's ills.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
From small beginnings, they grew into the most powerful lobbying group in America. In Ohio, where they started, they ran a pressure campaign that beat a popular governor. Ohio was dry. But why stop there? They got ambitious. They wanted to wring every last drop of liquor out of the whole wet nation. So as their next target, they set their sights on Gettler and Norris' stomping grounds.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
New York City. You see, by their count, New Yorkers drank a dozen pints of alcoholic beverages a week for every man, woman and child, a per capita consumption that was more than three times the national average. One saloon for every six people in New York, the league said.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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As Dr. Harris says, New York City at the end of World War I was bursting with working-class saloons, chandeliered hotel bars, and wine-soaked bohemian cafes. The Anti-Saloon League called it the Liquor Center of America. To them, the Big Apple had fermented into a cidery slush of drunkards and degenerates. They had the nation, and especially the nation's politicians, running scared.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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He's standing in the back row of the band, doing his thing. Bix is a small, dapper fella dressed in a tux with slicked brown hair parted down the middle like an open Faulkner novel. A few songs into the performance, something strange happens. Bix's eyes roll back. He slumps over on the stage and falls to the ground, completely unconscious.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And then came World War I. It was exactly what they'd been waiting for. The Anti-Saloon League saw the chance to justify a national ban on liquor as a wartime measure. That was easy. No politician wanted to be unpatriotic. But the wartime measure was just the first step. What they really wanted? A permanent ban on liquor enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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One by one, lawmakers in state houses across the country fell in line.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But New York City was, as one paper called it, Satan's last stronghold.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
The Anti-Saloon League, they were a lot of lawyers and Methodist ministers from, like, Ohio. New York City, meanwhile, was a lot of working class, immigrant, black and Catholic neighborhoods constantly evolving. These New Yorkers weren't exactly interested in test driving someone else's moral experiment in turning the city dry as a kale chip.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But when a ban hit the whole country, they had no choice. The entire commercial beer supply in New York City, from the warehouses to the grocery stores to the cabinets of every legitimate business, got poured down the drain. But you might be surprised to hear, despite all that beer saying goodbye, New York nightlife wasn't changing. The alcohol fueling it, however, was.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
With the beer taps dry, saloons were now serving stiffer and more mysterious concoctions, this time with distilled liquor.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Wood alcohol, known to those of us who passed 10th grade chemistry as methyl alcohol. It was used as a solvent to make varnish and as a fuel, and unfortunately sometimes to mix cocktails. From the taste, you couldn't tell exactly what was in those drinks. But you might find out the next day when you woke up in the hospital, your body loaded with methyl alcohol, a very toxic substance.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And that's if you were lucky enough to wake up. More and more people from all parts of the city were ending up on a gurney outside Gettler's lab.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
A bandmate jolts him awake, helps him backstage, and eventually takes him back to his hotel room. That night, Bix has a freakout in his hotel room. He yells hysterically. He destroys furniture. This surprised everyone who knew him. He was a jazz musician, not a member of Led Zeppelin. His bandmates would later describe it as a fit of delirium. They said he cracked up.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
In 1919, Bellevue just opened a new pathology building, six stories high, made of solid granite with long arched windows. Inside is the city morgue and the medical examiner's offices. There are autopsy rooms and a forensic chemistry laboratory for Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler to study the dead.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Gettler's laboratory is a layer of blue flames leaking out of Bunsen burners, hissing heating systems, boiling dishes. The wood floorboards are discolored by chemicals and burns. When Norris and Gettler see a rise in cases of people who've been crippled by blindness just before death, they have a hunch that the reason is poisoning due to toxic liquor. Wood alcohol.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But no test exists to detect wood alcohol in cadavers, so Gettler does what he always does in cases like this. He creates one. Gettler's test is grinding up a chunk of tissue into a flask and then boiling it into a dark sludge. He measures the formaldehyde bubbling out. Most alcohol would release just a trace of it. Wood alcohol releases an overpowering amount.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
A fair amount, actually. For generations, people had been making their own liquor and getting sick doing it. Moonshine, white lightning, liquid courage, call it what you want. But this cheap homemade stuff mostly stayed at the margins of American society. Now, however, it was becoming the mainstream.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
So, in 1918, Gettler wrote an article for the country's leading medical journal to get word out to doctors and public health officials. He saw prohibition coming, and he knew exactly what it would mean.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Gettler connects the dots. What he sees in 1918 makes him think that people aren't going to be drinking less because prohibition is the law of the land. Instead, they're going to be drinking a much more suspect, much more dangerous supply. This message, it didn't land. But he was right. By the winter of 1919, more than 60 New Yorkers died from drinking wood alcohol. Another 100 were blinded.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Then, almost that same number of alcohol-related deaths, only this time, just in the month of December alone. So Gettler sat down at his desk, picked up his pen, and tried again.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Don't get confused here. Wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, and methanol? Those are just three different names for the same nasty beast. And you should never, ever drink it. As Gettler's granddaughter Dorothy says...
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
In this report, Gettler begins to identify the presence of wood alcohol in an alarming number of cases. On the day after Christmas in 1919, Gettler and Norris switch tactics. Just writing for America's doctors wasn't going to save the country's direction. Sorry, doctors. I mean, you've been telling us it's all diet and exercise for, like, ever, and we just don't listen.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
So with two major reports reaching too small of an audience, Norris and Gettler take this story straight to the general public. They called a press conference. They invite a throng of reporters from the New York papers into their offices in Bellevue. The newshounds file in past broken chairs and over the blood-spattered carpet left behind by the drunk coroner as a parting gift.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
That little ditty is the American songbook classic, Georgia On My Mind. Maybe you know the iconic Ray Charles version, but this is an original recording with the composer Hoagy Carmichael from the last recording session of Bix's career. In his solo, you can still hear Bix's genius.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
They issued that warning in December 1919. Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler were now on the case, a case that would consume them across the next decade, and expose the killer of Bix Beiderbecke. Remember him? The jazz musician who collapsed in Cleveland at age 28. It would take our dynamic duo to the heart of a cruel and misguided scheme, a snafu that led to the mass poisoning of thousands.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
This episode was written by Albert Chen, Carl Nellis, and Nevin Kalapalli, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Editing music and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And though you might not be able to tell, Bix reportedly didn't have enough breath to finish some of the gorgeous phrases in his solo towards the end of the song. Bix is struggling. He never really recovers. A year later, Bix is home in his Queens, New York apartment. By now, he's bedridden, down to just 150 pounds, complaining of constant headaches, dizziness, memory loss, and blackouts.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
This summer night, a neighbor visits and finds Bix in bed, under the sheets, hallucinating. Bix dies that night. He was just 28. What happened to him? That question haunted Bix's family and his fans. Sure, they knew Bix wasn't well, and they knew that like a lot of touring musicians, Bix was a heavy drinker. That had been true since his teens.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But it would take years for anyone to see how this all fit into a larger story. In the 1920s, taking a drink put Bix, along with millions of Americans, right in the middle of the decade's bitter divide over alcohol. In the end, the war between the wets and the dries would have a massive human cost. I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Last season, we told the story of the burglary that exposed J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI. This season, we go back a little further in time, all the way to the 1920s. We're bringing you a dark tale from the heart of the Prohibition era. As we all know, Prohibition did not work. It was what you might call a snafu.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Within that snafu is another snafu, one you probably haven't heard, about how a lot of Americans started dying mysteriously, and the unlikely duo who tried to figure out why and save them. on this season of Snafu, the story of Formula 6. How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. I thought I had a pretty good handle on Prohibition.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
The 1920s, the era before the Great Depression when we felt like, hey, World War I is over. What better to do than party? The Harlem Renaissance, jazz, votes for women. America was feeling a burst of new energy. We were trying out cars, trying out radio. Heck, we were trying out movies. And as a Georgia boy, I can't help loving how much love Georgia was getting in that decade.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
In addition to Georgia on my mind, another classic emerged, Sweet Georgia Brown. And the background to all of that was, of course, Prohibition. It's just kind of part of our mental furniture, right? For me, the word Prohibition takes me back to all the great portrayals in classic American cinema, like The Untouchables, two straight hours of mafia set pieces.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Who could forget when Elliot Ness faces down Al Capone in a hotel lobby?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
If you didn't sneak out to hear De Niro drop F-bombs in an Italian accent, were you even 13 the summer The Untouchables came out? I mean, just listen to that macho chest thumping. Cops and mobsters, good guys and bad guys going toe-to-toe. It's classic Hollywood stuff that just reels you in.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Yeah, almost no one had. So I called up someone who really brought prohibition into focus for me, along with millions of TV fans like me.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
It's so, so great to meet you. That's Terrence Winter, creator of the epic TV series Boardwalk Empire. I put the question to him. I'm curious if you hit on in your research, are you familiar with Formula 6? I am not. And that was wild to me because his show is stacked with the kinds of details that made 1920s Atlantic City come to life.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
But the sense we have that we already know prohibition, it can actually lead us astray a little because cliches about life in the 1920s are so thick. Thank you. We assume we know what it's all about. You know, liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake. There was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns. And then it got repealed.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Obviously, yes. I mean, we're talking about the birth of jazz. We're talking about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lang, Earl Hines. I could go on. The point is, we tend to paint history with broad brushes. Like Terry says, when we think about the prohibition era, our minds probably go immediately to the cliches we know best.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And the real, complex human lives that ordinary people lived in the past don't always come through when we talk about history. But this story, the story of Formula 6, reveals something bizarre that was happening all along underneath all the organized crime and speakeasy gin and temperance moralizing. A shocking government plot rooted in the first modern American culture war.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
It starts with a pair of scientists, investigators, who happen to see it coming. In fact, they tried to stop it It's 1918 in New York, and the city is facing a problem. Okay, the city is facing a lot of problems, but here's a tricky one. A record number of murders are going unsolved. A city report lays blame squarely on one government office in particular, the office of the coroner.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
The coroner was essentially the city's chief death investigator. He issued death certificates and performed autopsies for all murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. A pretty grim but important job. And yet, the city's coroners were either horribly unqualified or terribly corrupt. Or, quite often, both.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
That's Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook, Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. She describes how at the time, the police essentially used coroners to rubber stamp false reports and sometimes even cover up murders. And when she says anyone could become a coroner, she means it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
And if you think that's bad, let me introduce you to the head coroner of New York in 1918, a guy who showed up to crime scenes completely hammered.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
After stories like that started coming to light, the mayor had no choice but to make some changes. It was time to find someone who could get to the bottom of all these crimes. Someone who is less Homer Simpson and more Sherlock Holmes. Or, I don't know, maybe anyone who could stand upright? City officials decided the coroner's office was a joke, an embarrassment, and a waste of taxpayers' money.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold
So they shut it down. But they couldn't just ignore the reasons people died in New York. They had to replace it with something. Their idea? A new system for the city and a new position that would be filled by a qualified doctor who would appoint a trained staff to examine cases and rule on causes of death. This new lead position was chief medical examiner of New York City.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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So they announced the job opening and in walked a fella named Charles Norris. No, love Walker, Texas Ranger Chuck Norris, and God knows I'm scared of him. But just to be clear, this is Dr. Charles Norris of New York, New York.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Which means that, yep, Norris was rich-rich. He didn't hide it. Norris was a public servant who rode around like Bruce Wayne.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Not exactly a man of the people, you'd think. But moneybags aside, it turns out public service actually ran deep in Norris's blood. Norris's ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. Ever heard of it? They stripped lead gutters and rain spouts from their house to make bullets for the Continental Army.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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And then, in the Civil War, Norris' grandfather negotiated the first $100 million loan financing the Union government's war against the Confederates.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Norris took the do-gooder spirit of his ancestors and studied medicine, became a doctor, and now, as the Great War raged in Europe, he was looking to do his part, to keep the people of New York safe. So he made a real run at the position of chief medical examiner when the job opened up. An actually qualified doctor who wanted to use his position for the public good?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
It was October of 1923. Back in New York, Alexander Gettler is starting to earn a reputation as a forensic Sherlock. He's just published a groundbreaking study on the deadly solvent benzene, which to his horror, he's finding in dead bodies in his laboratory at Bellevue, though he's not yet sure why.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
Meanwhile, in D.C., Babel Walker Willebrandt is just starting to unravel the epic corruption all around her at the Department of Justice. And back in the heartland, no pun intended, Richard Hart catches a break, too. He gets a tip about a bootlegger smuggling liquor onto the Winnebago Reservation near Homer.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
He meets with some of the Winnebago men who are willing to help him stop the flow of liquor into their community.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
The operation kicks off when Richard and his guys get the details of a midnight rendezvous between a rum runner and his local customers. They're going to intervene. Richard parks out of sight nearby while his comrades roll into the meetup posing as customers.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
But the liquor crew gets suspicious. Something's a little off. They refuse to sell anything to Richard's accomplices, who come back to him empty-handed. There's nothing Richard can use to make an arrest. For someone else, that might be the end of it, a failed operation. But Richard isn't done. He wants to nab his bootlegger. He continues to lie in wait nearby.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
And sure enough, a couple of hours later, more cars pull up. This time, Richard doesn't try any tricks. He decides he's just going to let the deal go down and then scoop up one of the customers to get his evidence. When the meetup is over, the cluster of cars splits up. Richard and his partner give chase. So they're chasing after what they think is the bootlegger vehicle.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
Richard's partner is driving. He pulls them alongside the car they think is hauling liquor, a big, beautiful Buick. Richard leans out and tells the bootlegger to pull over, but he doesn't. So Richard ups the ante.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
Now the chase is really on. And the Buick, unlike Buicks of today, is fast. Like, really fast. It starts to pull away. Frustrated, Richard stops firing warning shots in the air and levels his gun directly at the car. He shoots. His partner, with one hand on the wheel, leans out the driver's side window and starts shooting too.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E5: Double Barrel
Richard shoots and hits the Buick. The shot doesn't hit the tire. It goes through the back window and hits the driver.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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As Richard and his partner learned about the man they had killed, they were mortified. Not only was he not the bootlegger they were hunting, he didn't have any liquor on him at all. Sure, he was there, probably to buy a drink, but there was no actual evidence that he was taking part in a crime.
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And that led to something new for Richard, because in the man's hometown, Sioux City, Iowa, there was a righteous uproar against Richard.
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Led by the murdered man's grieving widow, a crowd of thousands gathered in downtown Sioux City in protest. Some in the crowd were even muttering that they should kill Richard in return.
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And that cleared the scene for another batch of foot soldiers, even more willing to enforce prohibition, not with handcuffs, but with handguns. Remember, it was no secret at this point that the prohibition enforcement effort was a complete debacle.
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In Washington, Mabel was burning with white-hot rage, the gall of George Remus, the king of bootleggers doing time for tax evasion by playing poker with his pals and dining on filet mignon on Millionaire's Row.
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The treachery of that slimeball Jess Smith, Mabel's DOJ office mate, whose pockets were lined by the country's biggest bootleggers, they were proof that playing by the rules got you nowhere. The dry warriors in Mabel's DOJ and the Prohibition agents in the Treasury came to a startling conclusion. Due process? Not working. They're done with it.
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In order to uphold the Prohibition laws, they were ready to dispense with all the other pesky laws. And so they saddled up with the Ku Klux Klan. Mobile, Alabama, one of the South's oldest port cities where the Gulf of Mexico laps gently at white sand beaches, and the spinach dip comes with crawfish.
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Last time on Snafu, Mabel Walker-Willibrandt's wet opponents were scary powerful, especially in court.
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We'll get to the Klan in a minute, but before we do, you got to understand that as a gateway to the Caribbean in 1923, Mobile was home to a whole economy of rum runners and bootleggers. And you know who hated that? Good old Mabel Walker Willebrandt. She was determined to cast a net into those waters and drag them out, gasping and flopping. But she had a problem.
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As always, her man on the ground was supposed to be the U.S. attorney, a federal government lawyer who could lead the charge to organize the prosecution, get the legal ducks in a row, you know, all that stuff. But the U.S. attorney in Alabama was in way over his head.
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After a good run, and we're talking 117 indictments against big-timers in Mobile, the liquor cabal flipped the script and arrested him. That UNO reverse card really does come in handy sometimes, doesn't it? Local TAs, local judges didn't want to prosecute prohibition cases.
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And in 1923, when Mabel wanted to sweep the liquor out of Alabama, this was exactly what she faced. So she set up what she called a flying squad. She put together a hand-picked crew of officers and lawyers in Washington who could travel south and leave the corrupt local officials out of the legal proceedings.
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All on their own, they would plan a raid, scoop up the perps, collect the evidence, and slam the wets into jail cells. This is where the Klan comes in, actually. The Klan? Those fucking guys? Seriously? Well, yeah. See, in the fall of 1923, while Richard Hart was shooting at fleeing cars, Mabel was picking the new head coach for her liquor-busting team in Alabama.
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She needed someone beyond the reach of the Mobile Good Ol' Boys Network, and she landed on a lawyer named Hugo Black. Hugo made his bones as a defense lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan. One Klansman, a Methodist minister, had gunned down a Catholic priest. Hugo Black argued it was done in self-defense, since the two men had scuffled the day before. So what did Mabel take from all this?
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Well, in the War of the Wets against the Dries, the Catholic communities generally held on to their drinking traditions. They were wets. In classic, the enemy of my enemy is my friend logic, Hugo was on her side. And the Klan, well, they were only too eager to help.
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But even when Mabel won her cases, it felt like she was always just one step behind the sprawling bootleg business.
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Who did the Klan target? Pretty much anyone who wasn't white and Protestant. Anyone who wasn't already cut in the mold of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. We're talking immigrants, black Americans, Jews, Catholics. Everyone the dry movement was trying to squeeze. The Klan was like, hey, you're giving us an excuse to just beat up all the people we don't like? Right on.
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So when Mabel sees a lawyer ready to dive into the culture war by stretching the meaning of self-defense to an unbelievable breaking point, all to defend murderous Klansmen, she sees the kind of conviction she's been looking for. One reporter asked her how she justified working with the Klan, and Mabel said, I have no objection to people dressing up in sheets if they enjoy that sort of thing.
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So this is crazy, right? I mean, yeah, Mabel's been the ice queen and all that, but there's a difference between cold and cutthroat. There's a difference between coordinating with the Coast Guard to stop rum runners and teaming up with the nation's most powerful cabal of racist murderers. Mabel was at the end of her rope. She decided she was ready and willing to cross that line.
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Since Mabel recruited actual official prosecutors from the KKK, well, it sent a signal to the Klan across the nation. So Klan members from Illinois made a trip to the Treasury offices in Washington, and they found the doors wide open to them. They told the Treasury officials that they had plenty of foot soldiers ready and willing to rain hell on bootleggers back at home.
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The Prohibition Commissioner liked the offer. He sent a few of his division chiefs and gave them the order. Deputize the Klansmen and unleash them on southern Illinois. And that brings us to Two-Gun. No, not Richard Hart. There was actually a different guy with that nickname too. Two-Gun Glenn Young. Another Two-Gun in the 1920s? What can I say? This is America.
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There's at least two guns for every guy that wants them. Here's where both two guns line up. By 1923, two-gun Glenn Young had already been on trial for murdering bootleggers across southern Illinois. In fact, he added Mankiller to his nickname. So in 1923, the Klan in Southern Illinois asked guys like Two-Gun Mankiller to come on down to the city of Heron and crush a pesky problem for them.
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Immigrant Italian mine workers had been fighting with the mine company that ran the place. Those fights had gotten bloody. Workers had already been killed. So the Klan figured that putting a couple more guns to work was exactly what they needed. So in December of 1923, over 500 Klan raiders deputized as prohibition agents swept down through the Italian immigrant homes.
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But what they did was the opposite of law enforcement. It was straight up terrorism. One Italian recalled the scene when a gang of armed Klansmen broke into his home. They smashed up his kitchen. They even drank his wine, mocking him before they dragged him to jail.
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After two major raids by the Klan, now turned into federal agents, Two Gun Man Killer took up residence as the de facto military dictator of the county. The violence continued. Home invasions, beatings, shootings. Kidnapped locals were paraded downtown by Klan gunmen. But if they thought this was going to win support for their cause, they miscalculated. Badly.
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As the violence escalated, the Klan mounted machine guns on downtown buildings. Attacks in hospitals left the walls riddled with bullet holes. Desperate cries went out for the Army and the National Guard to step in and stop the violence. Military forces swept in to take control. Papers across the nation, from Fresno to Baltimore, carried stories of the fighting.
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The blood spilled by two-gun man-killer Glenn Young and others like him stained the Dry cause. Many Prohibition supporters didn't think it had to come at such a violent price. Some supporters of the law started to waver. If this is what it took to enforce Prohibition, was it really worth it? But the most hardcore dries, well, they thought the fight hadn't gone far enough.
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And they made that clear in their defense of Richard Two-Gun Hart.
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There's a storm rolling in over the little town of Homer, Nebraska. In the creek bottoms and river beds that crisscross the eastern border of the state, the water starts to rise. And it all runs downhill towards Homer. It's 1919, and one of Homer's newest residents, a man named Richard Hart, is riding home with some neighbors. He didn't grow up in Nebraska.
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The violence in Illinois shocked the nation, but in spite of that, Richard 2 Gunhart still had allies.
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This lawyer hired by the WCTU wasn't just going to defend Richard in the court of law. He was also going to defend him in the court of public opinion.
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All right, I want to spend a minute here because this is key. This guy, the defense lawyer for Richard Hart, is saying that whether or not Richard shot this guy doesn't really matter. Because in his view, that's what it takes to enforce the law. He's saying prohibition officers should not get in trouble for gunning down suspects. But that's not all.
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He's also saying that it's a damn shame most officers are too scared to do what Richard had done. Think about it. He's saying this in the context of everything we've talked about. Violence was already rampant. Prohibition agents had been killing people for years. And that's what he's saying was too timid? I mean, holy shit.
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And remember, it was the Women's Christian Temperance Union who paid for this lawyer to defend Richard with this argument. In fact, throughout the 1920s, the WCTU had made it clear they were pretty much okay with violence against bootleggers. In their way of thinking, the only way to hold back the tide of liquor flooding the country was to unleash a hail of bullets.
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To them, Richard Hart's guns weren't only justified... They were sanctified.
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He was the kind of kid who fell in love with the Wild West. When he was a teenager, he ran off to be a cowboy. A bit of a thrill seeker, his journey took him from the ranch to the circus to the life of a soldier in the Great War. When he came back from the war, he took a train west, and Homer is where he landed. A few of his new German-American neighbors, the Winch family, open their doors to him.
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But there was one person in this moment who was wavering. You might be surprised to hear it was Mabel Walker Willebrandt. She wanted prohibition enforced, and in principle she was okay with the violent tactics. I mean, heck, she was running cover in the papers as the Klan did the dirty work. But as the face of prohibition, she could tell the bad press was undermining her cause.
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She welcomed citizen vigilantes taking up arms on behalf of Prohibition. But from the nerve center in the Department of Justice, she could see how crowds across the country were growing more and more angry with the bloodshed. Mabel launched an inquiry into the shooting.
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So when Mabel realized how badly it was backfiring to have cowboys and Klan cops shooting their way through liquor busts, she and the Women's Christian Temperance Union parted ways. The WCTU had been powerful in previous years, but they won their battles by getting into the papers. To Mabel's eyes, it was bad press. I imagine that made her, you know, pretty annoyed.
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Prohibition's already unpopular. Now, a backlash against too much violence was only going to make her job harder. So she tried to get out ahead of it.
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Did you catch that? She said she condemns some of the killings. Some. That is so telling to me. How about all the killing, Mabel? Does killing someone for bootlegging really feel like a punishment that fits the crime? And what about that old right to trial by jury? What about innocent until proven guilty? What about, you know, the rest of the law?
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Well, none of that was what Mabel was worried about. Nope, she's only worried about some of the killings. Apparently, just the ones that lead to bad press. Like Richard Hartz. She wrote directly to the US Attorney handling his case, calling Richard, guilty of carelessness and indifference to consequences.
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Before Richard stood trial, the coroner's jury of Nebraska decided not to pursue the manslaughter case against him. But the damage to the dry cause was done, by Richard and by other reckless, violent, or downright vicious enforcers. If the judge was lenient in Richard's case, Mabel was more harsh.
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Car chases, gunfights, massacres. It was time for the circus to end. If Prohibition was going to win, killing bootleggers in the open, where the blood was practically splattering on bystanders, kind of worked against the cause. Mabel needed to shut that down. Enforcing prohibition with arrests and court cases, that wasn't enough.
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Enforcing prohibition with guns in the street, well, that was backfiring. The Ice Queen needed something different, something that would scare the bootleggers and speakeasy drinkers so bad they would stop on their own. All the better if this could all be done quietly. Which brings us back behind the scenes, out of the public eye where lawyers like Mabel were arguing over murder.
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Back into James Duran's lab. Back to chemistry. Because deep in the bowels of the Treasury Department, the prohibition enforcers led by Duran were also taking aim at drinkers. It was in their beakers and test tubes that the next assault on Americans began to take shape. That's next time on Snafu.
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Their car doors, at least. They're giving him a lift. He's crammed in the car with Mama Winch and a few of her kids, including the oldest daughter, 20-year-old Kathleen. They're on the road winding along the Missouri River when the oncoming storm overtakes them.
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Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
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This episode was written by Albert Chen, Carl Nellis, and Nevin Kalapalli, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter.
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Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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This is Richard's great-grandson, Corey Hart. And no, it's not the 80s rock star Corey Hart who wears sunglasses at night, much to the disappointment of my inner 10-year-old. So families in Homer, Nebraska know all too well how the area is prone to flooding. And this one is really bad. Water rises up and crashes into the little town.
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Dozens of houses are destroyed and some are even completely washed away. For Richard and the Winch family in the car, the situation gets dire.
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The storm pounds on the hood of the car, but through the rain, they see a girl walking on the side of the road. They pull over to let her in and tell her it's not safe outside. But before they can get the car moving again, they're caught in a surge of water. It rises up under them, lifting the car and sweeping the whole thing into the current.
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The little girl is terrified and in a moment of panic, she jumps out of the car and she's instantly flushed downstream. So Richard saw what was happening and jumped in to save the girl. He swims hard and stays in control despite the raging flood around him. When he catches up to her, He finds she's caught on a tangle of barbed wire fence invisible under the murky brown surface.
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Working quickly, Richard untangles her and swims on. He drags her to the far bank, then he turns back to the river.
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Richard fights the river yet again to save Kathleen's life and drag the Winch family car back to dry land. Yes, you heard that right. He pulls a car from a raging flood. One of those superhuman adrenaline rushes, I guess.
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Maybe a little bit of transference going on here, but I'm kind of falling in love with this guy right now. I mean, who wouldn't? As the flood cleared and the story spread, the town of Homer decided Richard Hart was just the kind of hero they needed. He may have still been an outsider, but they made this rugged 20-something their town marshal.
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And just in the nick of time, because there was another flood coming. The flood of illegal liquor that Alexander Gettler warned about. It wasn't just in the big cities like New York. It was coast to coast. When Mabel Walker Willebrandt and the Bureau Boys looked west for agents to fight the alcohol flood in Nebraska, Richard volunteered.
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As a lawman, he was known for toting not one, but two guns, which gave him the Wild West nickname of every little cowpoke's dreams, Richard Two-Gun Hart. He became a soldier in the dry army. As the leaders of the dry cause grew more and more desperate to fight the influx of booze, it would put Richard shoulder to shoulder with some of the most vicious forces in America.
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I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3, the story of Formula 6, how prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people.
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Today, we're leaving Norris and Gettler in New York and James Duran and Mabel Walker-Willibrandt in D.C., and we're taking a trip out west to see how things are going with prohibition agents far afield, a place where classic Yahoo gunslinging methods were used, methods that would shock the public and eventually stain the dry cause. So this two-gun nickname.
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In the years before World War I, Richard had ridden and ranched across the West. His childhood dream was to be a cowboy, and gosh darn it, he pulled it off. He crisscrossed the American plains on cattle drives and even in traveling circuses. He was used to long, lonely days on horseback, broken up by shows where his trick shooting and skills as a wrestler brought cheering crowds to their feet.
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As his great-grandson Corey says, a little of the circus showman stuck with him throughout his life. He even bought himself two pearl-handled Colt 45s.
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Richard Two-Gun Hart. It's pretty good, you got to admit. I've been workshopping Eddie Nearsighted Helms for a while, but the focus group around my kitchen table is not a fan for some reason. Richard, though, was living out his childhood dream, the hero of the story he'd always imagined.
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When World War I took Richard, George Cassidy, and a couple of million others over to France, the Great War made Richard an honest-to-goodness soldier.
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Now, by this point, there weren't a ton of Old West cowboys still bopping around out there. Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, all the old Bills, that's an older generation. It's the stories that kept them alive. You know the wave of legacy sequels to classic 90s flicks? Twister, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Jumanji. It was kind of like that.
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Richard loved the Wild West shows when he was a kid, and he was determined to live out the sequel. Western Lawman, still shooting. When national prohibition came to Nebraska, town marshal Richard Two-Gun Hart had his chance.
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Toting a gun into the hills to face down enemies of the law, it was a dream come true for Richard. But once he had his prohibition badge pinned to his chest, he found he was facing a lot worse than circus clowns.
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Damn, Mother Nature's got it out for this guy, huh? In any case, Richard hits the highway with a prisoner in tow, a man he had scooped up in a recent raid on a moonshine still.
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Now, when he pulled into the little town of Spencer, Richard could have, you know, realized he went the wrong way and turned around. But not our two-gun. He was like double or nothing. So he started asking around for some white mule. The locals, proud of the kick in their neighborhood moonshine, knew exactly what he meant and helpfully pointed him to the best distillery in town.
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When the owner offered him a drink, Richard arrested him. Then he went back and also arrested the guy who gave him directions. Maybe a little too thorough for a spur-of-the-moment operation, but that's just me. Two-gun? He was always in for double or nothing. So Richard crams all three guys in his car and hauls them off to the local jail.
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Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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And that's because the guy he had just arrested for trying to sell him alcohol... Yeah, one of them's a town marshal. He's the town marshal of Spencer, the tiny town they're in. So instead of accepting his arrest, this Spencer Marshall and another officer played a little Uno reverse card and put Richard under arrest for disturbing the peace. They squared off and tried to shout each other down.
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And the guy who had the best seat in the house? The original prisoner Richard had dragged along for the ride. Apparently that guy found the entire thing hilarious.
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But like Mabel, Richard had decided that prohibition was his law. It was in the Constitution now, which meant Tugun was free to have a rootin' tootin' time smackin' down all manner of miscreants, scofflaws, and ne'er-do-wells. Just because a flood of Americans had decided to break the law was no reason to hold back on enforcing it.
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Richard had beaten floods before, but if there was one burr under two guns' saddle, it was Kathleen's family, his in-laws. You see, the Winches owned a grocery store, and they also did a little brewing on the side. Or, you know, maybe kind of a lot.
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When the winches got to drinking, I could just see Richard pulling his hat down over his eyes like, seriously, right in front of me? Come on, you're putting me on the spot here. I mean, if you're pouring a beer under the prohibition agent's nose, that's going to make Christmas a little tense.
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But Richard was doing his best to keep some tinsel on the tannenbaum because there was one line he didn't cross. He never actually arrested the winches for their home brewing. Always seems weird to me when people just roll with so much hypocrisy. But then again, it was his in-laws. And as much as we all want to arrest our in-laws, it's probably better we don't. But Richard justified it to himself.
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And besides, it's not like there was a shortage of cases for him to take on. And in 1923, he would take a case that would put Richard in over his head.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So after spending this season unraveling prohibition, I wanted to talk to someone who knows this era inside and out. Someone who could give us a whole new layer of historical context, color and detail. So who better than the guy who actually built it or at least rebuilt it on TV? Enter Terrence Winter, the brilliant creator of HBO's Boardwalk Empire.
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Well, that's a pretty good transition point for us because you had a kind of exposure to that criminal element in Brooklyn. Is that what made you such a perfect candidate for one of your biggest staff jobs at the Sopranos there?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So the real life... Mob life was not for you. It was not something that that even attracted you from a sort of like romantic or exotic sense, which I think is draws a lot of people into that space. But the fictional mob space was right where you felt at home.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
All right. I could go on for hours. I love hearing about your career and all the machinations and steps you took. It's my favorite thing is just learning about how people got where they wanted to be. And you have an incredible story. But let's turn the page and get into kind of where you and I actually have this interesting overlap. which is in our shared fascination with the prohibition era.
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I think most people assume they know what prohibition is. Liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake. There was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns. And then it got repealed. You made this incredible show, Boardwalk Empire, which What drew you to Prohibition in the first place? I mean, I could make an obvious leap from the Sopranos to Prohibition era gangsters being the overlap.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
But was there anything about that era in particular that felt so ripe for storytelling? Yeah.
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He joins me for a fascinating deep dive into prohibitions, gangsters, corrupt officials, and of course, it's completely bonkers policies. We talk about his unlikely journey from Brooklyn to Hollywood, including the wild story of how he invented a fake talent agency to get his foot in the door and how he stumbled upon the real life Nucky Johnson.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
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the inspiration for his lead character, Nucky Thompson. I also ask him whether Formula 6 was ever on his radar and dig into some of the not entirely coincidental parallels between his fictionalized characters and the real people we covered this season.
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If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
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It is truly a wild moment in American history. The sort of moral panic on one hand, and then there's the anti-German sentiment kind of like flaring up. And then that gives the teetotalers ammunition to... Go after the brewers. Yeah, to go after all these German brewers.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So Nucky Thompson is a character that that was played by Steve Buscemi. How close to the real Nucky Johnson was he?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So I feel like Steve Buscemi's casting was such a stroke of genius for Boardwalk Empire because it is against type and in a way that. You know, can this guy who's who's sort of a slight build, not an intimidating presence and whose face to me just has a sort of kind of warmth and sadness and a sort of tenderness? Can this guy carry a mob show?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
And honestly, just as a fellow showbiz guy, I had a blast nerding out with him because who doesn't love a peek behind the curtain of a great TV show? So settle in, grab a stiff drink, preferably non-poisoned, and enjoy my conversation with Terrence Winter. Hey, it's so good to meet you, man. You too. It's so, so great to meet you. Honestly, I didn't know you were a history guy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Tell me a little bit about why Steve Buscemi was so perfect for Boardwalk Empire.
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Yeah, he is. I would imagine, you know, your collaboration as a showrunner with the wardrobe department and the production design department and the props department was so fun on a project like this and so cool. And then, of course, your music career. team, both the score and your needle drops throughout the episodes.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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What are some things that stood out to you in that research process that were either surprising or especially exciting or fun to think about and write about? And were there things that came up in that process that inspired moments in the show?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
I love that. And it just informs all the the actors on the set. It gives them all these these kind of anchors and reference points to latch on to. So most prohibition crime stories center around the male bootleggers, but Boardwalk features a lot of extremely unique and morally gray and enterprising female characters. Margaret Thompson, Gillian Darmody being a couple of standouts.
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What was the inspiration for those incredible characters?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
You know, there's such a cool overlap of this season of Snafu, which is all about Prohibition. And we'll get into some of the really surprising things that I learned and researched for this season that might even be surprising to you as an expert on Prohibition because of your incredible series, Boardwalk Empire.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
There's another formidable female character in Boardwalk Empire, Assistant Attorney General Esther Randolph, who attempts to prosecute Nucky. Now, she's presumably based on the real world Mabel Walker Willibrant.
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Yeah. So we talk a lot about her in Snafu. I'm just curious kind of what your research brought to light. What excited you about her as a character? She's such a mess of contradictions. Yeah.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
And George Cassidy is a character that is a real life bootlegger who actually had an office in the Capitol building where he was distributing liquors to Congress people. Right. That's very similar to your character, Gaston Means in Boardwalk Empire, who is kind of a supplier to high level folks. Right.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
A little more broadly, so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better, where are you from originally? What was your sort of path to Hollywood writer?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
It's so cool to hear you touch on these things that we also dig into in Snafu and some of these strange and more obscure connections.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
And Willebrand prosecuted him. And he's part of what led to the federal government taxing illegal liquor. Right, right, right. Which is just another insane layer to all of this.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
I just was going to kind of bring it back to this overarching theme throughout that era of hypocrisy. Sometimes it's kind of buried and sometimes it's just outrageous and flagrant, like we discussed George Cassidy and these bootleggers supplying the lawmakers who are passing the laws of prohibition with alcohol. I'm curious if you hit on, in your research, are you familiar with Formula 6?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
I am not. Yeah, so one of the things we get into in this season of Snafu is this really staggering... realization that for a long time the government was putting additives into industrial alcohol to prevent people from drinking it. And these were things that made industrial alcohol, this process was called denaturing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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And it made alcohol incredibly yucky to imbibe, but it also made people a bit sick. just enough to keep people from drinking it. And that was going on for decades before Prohibition. Industrial alcohol had a lot of uses, obviously. Then during Prohibition, Formula 6 emerges. And in order to try to dissuade people from drinking alcohol,
SNAFU with Ed Helms
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they start adding real poison to alcohol in levels sufficient to kill people. We get into the really remarkable story of the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, who kind of pieced this together by examining the corpses of a lot of people dying and starting to see patterns of different chemicals and poisonings. And also, at the same time, revolutionizing
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chemistry in the service of toxicology and medical examination as a practice. These were relatively new at the time. And Alexander Gettler is credited with really kind of inventing a lot of processes to figure out what chemicals were in dead bodies or in human tissue. Anyway, it's just wild what they start to piece together.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
There was a drink called D-Rail because it was an alcohol that was used in the industrial railroad industry. And it was making people terribly sick. That was basically bootleggers. just using industrial alcohol to enhance their product.
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That's no different than you calling up Paramount, pretending to be your own agent. Not at all.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
I had a similar thing. And growing up in Georgia, I harbored these deep aspirations from a very young age, but I knew I could never tell anyone. Yeah, you get your ass kicked. Yeah, you either get beat up or they would just crush your dreams. Absolutely. Which is what friends are for. Can I curse on this? Hell yes. Or fuck yes.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
We're running low on Manischewitz. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
It's almost like the scale of the stupidity of prohibition as a law is commensurate with the scale of how much organized crime then penetrated American society. In other words, the fallout of prohibition is commensurate with the stupidity of it. Absolutely.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Well, I can't help thinking that there is a really cool prequel to Boardwalk Empire in the story of of the New York City medical examiners who uncovered some of this insane thing. You know, because they're they're right at the interface of law and crime, basically. Right. Because they're examining the the coroner's job was just to rubber stamp all of the police misconduct.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
And, you know, the police were just, you know, they kill somebody that they didn't like or because they were in some crime lord's pocket. This was a suicide, even though he's got like six gunshots to the back of his head. But then Charles Norris came in, really turned things around. And Alexander Gettler turned out to be quite a genius of chemistry and put it to good use.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
It is an incredible story. We're recording this interview before season three of Snafu actually comes out. So I really can't wait for you to hear it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Well, Terrence Winter, this has been an absolutely delightful, very enlightening conversation. Thank you so much for jumping on. Absolutely.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canney, and Kelsey Albright.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapalli and Ekemeny Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Our associate producer, Tori Smith, edited this episode. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Our amazing theme music is by Dan Rosato. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So growing up in Brooklyn and then heading off to law school, did you then become a lawyer in Brooklyn?
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Good thing you didn't submit that letter to the law school.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
90, 1990. 1990. Wow. What a great time in those clubs.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So you stopped doing stand up and then dove in. That's so interesting that that that crucible of stand up was your sort of testing ground. And it was I had a similar similar path. I knew that I wanted to work in comedy. And to me, stand up was sort of like, all right, if you're serious, you know, get into it. And I I got right into that same circuit you were in.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
But like the next sort of time frame. So I started in about ninety seven, ninety eight. And and I love I still relish my years in the New York City stand up. It's.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Let's say you're like a string quartet or or like even a great professor at a university giving a lecture. Most performers will get up in front of an audience and the audience actually wants them to succeed. Right. Not true in comedy clubs. A lot of audience members in a comedy club want you to buy. mom, they want they want to feel the train wreck. They're there to see the just car crash.
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But wow, that's that's awesome. OK, so then then Hollywood and you just moved out and I just moved out.
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So you were your own agent. He was just the sort of like nominal agent.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Hey there, I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6. How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. Welcome to another bonus episode. You may recall in these bonus episodes, I bring in a guest. And just have a great interview.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
Yeah. Incredible story. There's a thread here, which is amazing. Grit and moxie and a sort of never seeing an obstacle as an obstacle, but it's just something to work around. Yeah, especially with this.
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BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter
So where do you think that came from? Were you a scrappy kid in Brooklyn?
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If she can prove they've been doing business and not paying taxes on the income, she can lock them up without ever having to enter a keg into evidence. Boom! And even though Remus had just gotten off the hook, he was bound to keep bootlegging, and he probably wasn't going to just start paying taxes. So, it wouldn't be long until Mabel would see him in court again.
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Mabel can feel the tide beginning to turn. I can picture Mabel now, striding out of that Capitol with a bounce in her step, bursting with pride. Which is sadly ironic because somewhere across town, a man is strolling along carrying a suitcase with a smile. He tips his green hat to the people he passes. He's on his way to make a delivery and casually undermine everything she's fighting for.
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So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 3, Formula 6.
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This green-hatted fella would be George Cassidy, merrily strolling through the halls of Congress. Because business is good. George is averaging two dozen deliveries a day. A bottle of sweet red vermouth to a congressman. Two bottles of red star gin to a junior senator. A case of Duncan Harwood's Canadian whiskey for the House Speaker.
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Yep, those are some big-ass suitcases that George hauls around. His delivery's done, he now takes the stairs down to the basement and finally arrives at an unassuming door. George takes out his keys, unlocks the door, steps in, and flips on the lights. The windowless room has a mahogany poker table, swivel chairs, and lots and lots of bottles of booze. Welcome to George's office.
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You see, a few months ago, one of George's clients, a congressman, hooked George up with an office, which quickly became the warehouse for some of the best liquor in town. Not that his clients could tell the difference between a Macallan 1878 and a George's bathtub 1922.
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These politicians may have considered themselves connoisseurs, but they had no idea they were just drinking a cheap blend with some food coloring. At the time only George himself knew just how much water he was using to cut the imported alcohol. The congressmen start marching in. One of these men of high taste is one of George's most loyal customers.
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When he walks into George's tavern, hopefully in a straight line, his colleagues joke, get out the corn and put up the rye. He's known around the Capitol as a bottle-a-day man. George serves him a tall glass of his special elixir all the way to the brim. And the crazy thing? Rumor had it that he was one of the most eloquent speakers on the House floor.
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John Nance Garner. He would later become Speaker of the House and then Vice President of the United States under FDR. Add this guy to the list of lushes that surrounded Mabel Walker Willebrand as she tried to do her job. Back in George's office, the boys are getting comfortable. This fully operational speakeasy is home to a secret congressional drinking club.
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They even have a name for themselves, the Barflies Association, or BFA for short. Washington sure loves a three-letter bureau.
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At George's office, the nights are late. Sometimes George comes home, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the party continues elsewhere, outside the Capitol. Like on this particular night, as we follow George from the House Office building to a Victorian townhouse on a tree-lined street, just blocks from the White House.
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Previously on Snafu. The head of Prohibition Enforcement cracked down on bootleggers.
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This is K Street, and the house is made of green limestone, with one big magnolia tree out front. It has a nickname, the Little Green House. Every night, the Little Green House is full of men smoking, playing poker, and you guessed it, drinking. There's always plenty of liquor on hand, the best stuff thanks to cases streaming in on Wells Fargo wagons driven by armed guards.
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The regulars were men in high places. George's lawmaking pals, sure, but also the Prohibition Commissioner, the Attorney General, and even on occasion, the President himself. George didn't supply the little greenhouse, but he was a welcome guest, along with several of his bootlegging compatriots, including the most notorious bootlegger of all, the bald guy in the resplendent suit, George Remus.
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The little greenhouse was where guys like George Remus could ask for favors, like for a big stack of permits that gave them access to some booze. You see, under prohibition law, there were still allowances made for a few kinds of alcohol. It was permitted for sale for religious ceremonies and medical purposes, as long as you had a permit.
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And there was one regular at the little greenhouse who had bags stuffed with those permits and could fix it up for bootleggers. He was, in fact, one of George Remus's pals. He was the man with black wire glasses and a bushy mustache standing in a corner of the room. It was a face that Mabel Walker Willebrandt would have known well because he was a DOJ man named Jess Smith.
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See, Jess was the right-hand man of the Attorney General, a fixer for the entire Department of Justice. And his office was literally next door to Mabel's. And Jess was always happy to oblige the fellows he met in the little greenhouse. It seemed like Jess almost relished undermining Mabel's work.
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World War I soldier George Cassidy became the top bootlegger to Congress.
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He was happy to give out permits and even make promises of immunity to loads of bootleggers like Remus, happily handing him wads of cash in return. But all this wheeling and dealing was about to catch up with Jess Smith. And it was only a matter of time before Mabel caught wind of all his shenanigans.
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And as deaths from alcohol began to rise, American drinkers kept right on drinking.
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In May of 1923, a few months after her big legal win, Mabel Walker Willebrand had big plans. She was going to take a vacation. And she deserved it. Mabel was still on cloud nine over her Supreme Court win. She wrote to her parents.
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And months after the Supreme Court decision, Mabel actually went after George Remus again. And this time, she nailed him on the tax evasion charges. This case had been a simple one. Conviction in no time flat. Yep, George was headed to the slammer. And not only him. Willie Haar had been convicted of breaking tax law too. Willie was also going to prison.
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It had taken some careful maneuvering and some patience. But Mabel had lined him up and knocked him down. So she was in a mood to celebrate. Her bags were packed. She was headed west for a few days of R&R. You know, a little me time in those ice baths. Mabel was just about out the door when... Her phone rang. The Attorney General on the line with news. About her colleague, Jess Smith.
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Oh yeah, that guy at the office with the weird mustache. What about him could possibly warrant a call from the Attorney General? Well, she recalls that the Attorney General and Jess are pretty buddy-buddy. They even share an apartment at the Wardman Park Inn. It's the swankiest place in town, with its white-gloved bellhops, chandeliers the size of merry-go-rounds, and gold-plated atrium.
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It was a hotel, hotspot, and home to D.C. 's upper crust, a place where meetings and soirees would go on into the night. He tells her that in the wee hours of last night, May 19, 1923, a gunshot rang out across the hotel's sixth floor. It came from a corner suite, the Attorney General's own apartment, the very one he shares with Jess Smith.
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On a November afternoon in 1922, Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt takes a trip to the Capitol building. I imagine her with a bulging briefcase, maybe a couple of clerks scrambling along behind her, trying to keep up. They're carrying everything she needs for the case she's about to argue. She climbs the stone steps and crosses into the shade of white stone columns.
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As fate would have it, directly below Daugherty's sixth floor suite lives the director of the Fed's brand spanking new Bureau of Investigation, which is the predecessor to the FBI. Moments after the gunshot, the director of the bureau is on the scene with, I'm assuming, a very bad case of bedhead. The bureau director enters the suite to find a body twisted on the floor.
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The man on the floor is wearing black-rimmed glasses and a bushy mustache. It's not Attorney General Daugherty. The guy is in his pajamas, lying on the blood-soaked carpet. There's a hole shot through his right temple, and his head is in a garbage can atop ashes of burned papers. The man isn't famous. He isn't even a politician. And his death is quickly ruled by the bureau director as a suicide.
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But things don't really add up. Like how on earth could a man shoot himself and have his head end up inside a wastebasket? Why was the weapon, a gun, missing from the scene when the cops arrived? And why was Jess carrying around his will in his pocket to be magically discovered by police hours later, like a gift on Christmas morning?
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To an analytical mind like Mabel's, the pieces weren't adding up. Until, as the cops dig deeper into Smith's stuff, they discover evidence that Jess Smith may have been at the center of something quite criminal. Turns out Smith was carrying a long list of bootleggers from across the country. George Remus? Yep, he was on there.
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Also, Jess Smith had something that was a little unusual for an employee of the Department of Justice. Wads and wads of cash. Back at the DOJ, rumors are flying around the office about what exactly was behind Smith's quote-unquote suicide. Maybe Smith and someone at the Department of Justice had a falling out.
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And maybe Smith threatened to expose the corruption that was going on behind closed doors. Maybe George Remus was getting back at Smith after his arrest. A hit job by a big bootlegger wouldn't be out of the question. Now, Mabel and Jess, they weren't tight, even though Jess's office was right next to hers at the DOJ.
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She knew that Jess pushed papers and dealt with permits, but she didn't know what Jess did with those permits. And Mabel certainly didn't know that Jess was chummy with George Remus. Her mind was reeling. After the phone call, Attorney General Daugherty summoned Mabel to his office. He was probably smelling a bit suspicious himself after a late night at the little greenhouse.
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Was that a hint of oak-aged corn whiskey under the reek of cigar smoke? I imagine him dramatically spinning around in his chair to pass along some unfortunate news. Yes, it was true Jess was in the pockets of every big-time bootlegger in America, running his operations from out of his DOJ office right next to Mabel's.
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Not only that, Jess was involved in another, totally different but equally massive bribery scandal for completely different crimes. Turns out there was a lot of corruption under that mustache. Yep, Daugherty admitted to Mabel that the DOJ was one big ol' shitshow. Which is why, he said, he would totally understand if Mabel wanted to hand in her resignation.
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And as you can probably imagine, Mabel went bananas. Vacation totally canceled. Basically, while she had been fighting Remus in court, her office neighbor had apparently been at Remus' beck and call. And now Daugherty was asking her if she wanted to step down? Mabel had no intention of quitting, and she told her boss exactly that. Her war was just beginning.
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She had her Supreme Court win, and she had this too. George Remus was headed to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. So was Willie Haar. The country's biggest bootleggers were going down. And Mabel was going to make sure both were going to do hard time, like any other criminal.
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As Remus was making furious attempts to get his conviction overturned, Mabel went straight to President Coolidge to smash Remus's hopes, writing...
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then enters a red-carpeted two-story chamber with a domed ceiling. It's the old Senate chamber, which in 1922 was home to the Supreme Court. And today, Mabel is presenting her case before the nine Supreme Court justices. It's her big moment. The gallery is packed for a court case that's made national news. The United States v. George Remus. So far, prohibition enforcement wasn't going so well.
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She got her wish. Remus was locked away behind bars in Atlanta, Georgia. But then, one morning a few months later, Mabel got a call from an agent down south. He had a little update on how her pal Remus was doing down there in Atlanta. Turns out old Georgie Remus was doing pretty good.
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Sure, George Remus was technically in prison, just in the part of the prison that was more like, I don't know, Versailles? Thanks to his connections, George was living like Marie Antoinette. He had his own quarters, his own kitchen, his own private bath. He dined separate from the rest of the inmates, except for one guy. To add insult to injury, his dining mate was Willie Haar.
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Remus and Haar were dining each night on linen tablecloths with fresh floral centerpieces and playing games of high-limit poker with a minimum bet set at $50. Their section of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary would soon have its own nickname, Millionaire's Row. And within two years, both men would be out to pick up right where they left off. Now, as Mabel sank into her ice-cold bath in her D.C.
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apartment, she couldn't help but think of George Remus dining on steak, chomping on a cigar, having the last laugh. No matter how hard she was trying, she was really losing her fight with the bootleggers. Not only were her colleagues at the Justice Department worthless in supporting her, they were actively undermining her at every turn. And that's when the Ice Queen finally cracked.
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Doing things by the book at the Department of Justice wasn't getting the job done. Arrests, convictions, not only were they hard as hell to get, they hardly meant anything when the consequences were, well, luxurious. The Ice Queen's head was cold. But it was also clear. If she was ever going to get American bootleggers and drinkers to respect the law, she was going to have to take new measures.
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More extreme measures. The consequences for breaking prohibition law would have to hurt. That's next time on Snafu.
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Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino.
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This episode was written by Albert Chin and Carl Nellis with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Akimany Ekpo. Fact-checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
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Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Willibrandt was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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It wasn't going well in the liquor capital of America, New York City, where the bodies were piling up at Alexander Gettler's lab. And it wasn't going well in the nation's actual capital, Washington, D.C., where speakeasies were popping up on every corner and business was booming for the bootleggers. And no bootlegger was making a bigger profit than George Remus.
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Remus wasn't just a bootlegger, he was a lawyer and a pharmacist too, a trifecta that made him one of the richest men in America. Since the start of Prohibition, Remus had been building an illegal alcohol empire that rivaled Al Capone's, which made him the target of Mabel Walker Willebrand. When she faced George Remus in court, Mabel was determined that this would be a turning point in her war.
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Remus was a big fish, and Mabel was gonna gut him with the whole nation watching. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This season, a dark tale from the heart of the Prohibition era, Formula 6. How Prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people.
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Today, we'll follow Mabel Walker-Willibrandt in Washington, D.C., as she faces one formidable challenge after another. Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, and she's about to realize that across the government, and even within her own Department of Justice, she can't trust anyone.
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That's historian and author Dan Okrent. And she really had an uphill battle for a bunch of reasons. As you may remember, Mabel was surrounded at her job by straight-up drunks, starting with the president.
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And again, like we said before, the guy leading the Treasury Department and supervising the Prohibition Bureau owned a whiskey company. So when it came time for Mabel to do some basic stuff like hire clerks for legal research, well, she hit a wall.
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She didn't have anywhere near the manpower she needed to stop the alcohol coming across two borders and 60,000 miles of open coastline.
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And as for that army of agents, even that manpower was quickly dwindling. Hundreds of agents were being dismissed around the country for brazen corruption, and even the ones who weren't corrupt were pretty much useless. Sure, they were given guns and cars, but little or no training to do the actual job.
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So what could Mabel actually do from behind her barge-sized mahogany desk in room 501 at the Department of Justice?
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And as you may remember, her job was to work with the bespectacled accountants at the IRS, a group of agents supremely qualified to crack down on inflated tax deductions, but maybe not so much collecting the evidence of illicit bootlegging.
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But Mabel was undeterred, and in the fall of 1922, she decided to get creative. She came up with a plan to round up every last bootlegger, and she was going to start by going after the biggest bootlegger of all.
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You ever watch Boardwalk Empire? When the show's writer-creator Terry Winter began researching George Remus, he couldn't believe what he found. Here's Terry.
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In the show, Remus is a large, bald, rich weirdo who, yes, you heard it right, refers to himself in the third person.
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Yeah, all of that's true, including the third-person thing. His parties were so over-the-top that people think he may have been the inspiration for the Great Gatsby.
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In 1922, no one in America owned more of the illegal alcohol trade than Remus. At one point, he controlled 30% of the liquor making its way into America.
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That's historian Garrett Peck. Remus's warehouse stored $25 million worth of alcohol, which he sold and distributed using a prohibition loophole for medicinal alcohol.
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Since Remus did all the illegal selling without paying taxes, obviously, Mabel saw an opportunity. Maybe she could actually use tax law in her favor. He could exploit loopholes in prohibition law, but maybe she could finally bust Remus through the unforgiving tax code. And this wasn't just about Remus. She wanted to send a message to all of the bootleggers across the country.
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One way or another, she was coming for them. With those black-robed justices staring down from their tufted leather thrones, the room can be an intimidating place. But for Mabel, nah, she's unflappable. So cool in the courtroom that people joke she has ice in her veins. All that is to say, Mabel is tough. And it was a good thing, too. The New York papers lined up against her.
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In their coverage of a Supreme Court hearing, one newspaper reported that Mabel wasn't, quote, exactly pretty because her features were, quote, too large and too serious for that. And she suffered from a, quote, suggestion of plumpness, which is what I might call a suggestion of shitty, misogynistic journalism. And to top it all off, they couldn't even get her job title right.
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One paper called her the woman assistant of the attorney general. But she's actually assistant attorney general. These things matter. Just ask Dwight Schrute.
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Mabel wasn't shy about her disdain for how she and other women in the working world had to deal with what she called girly, girly stuff. She once sat down for an interview with a literary magazine called The Smart Set, basically the 1920s version of an Instagram Live.
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Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And you can pre-order it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
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So when Mabel faces down bootleggers like George Remus in court, she knows the guy in front of her isn't her only opponent. But she's undaunted. She's got to get shit done. And now, before the Supreme Court, she makes a stirring case. Where other prosecutors might have overlooked tax law as a hammer, I mean, let's be honest, it's pretty boring, obscure stuff, Mabel saw nothing but potential.
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George Remus, he was making a fortune because he was selling liquor without paying taxes on it. This was bold. No one had the audacity or imagination to prosecute any major crime figures for income tax evasion. But Mabel, determined, unflinching Mabel, decided that if it was going to take tax law to enforce prohibition, then so be it.
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After arguments concluded and the justices began deliberations, Mabel was on edge because this trial clearly wasn't just about Remus. This was about all the fat cat bootleggers in America, including a fella named Willie Haar. Remember him?
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Leader of the massive bootlegging operation, the Savannah Four down in Georgia, and also captain of the vaunted and audaciously meta recreational baseball squad, the Bootlegger Team. Well, Haar and his whole gang were anxiously following Remus's trial from Savannah, knowing that their fate was tied to Remus's.
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This is because Mabel had also charged Haar with the same crime, having determined the Savannah Four owed $2 million in unpaid taxes from their illegal bootlegging. If the Supreme Court ruled in Mabel's favor and decided bootleggers had to pay taxes, well, that could be the ballgame for Haar. And the bootlegger team, of course.
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A few days later, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes renders the court's decision. First, some bad news for Mabel. Remus's arrest in this case had occurred a year earlier, in October 1921. The tax statutes that Mabel was resting her entire case on, they had passed a month later, in November. So Remus is exempt. The law Mabel was trying to slap onto him didn't even apply.
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She missed her shot by a month. For now, Remus was still a free man. That might seem like a setback for Mabel, but she's a creature of the law. She knows that hidden under the surface of a defeat, victories can be won piece by piece. And in this case, there was a surprise twist. Even though Remus got out on a technicality, the justices decided that Mabel was actually right.
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In addition to all their other crimes, bootleggers also owed taxes on their ill-gotten revenue. And if they didn't pay up, it was another mark against them, one that came with serious jail time. And that decision reverberated all the way down to Savannah. And that is a win for Mabel because she sees the potential of this ruling to dramatically change prohibition enforcement.
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It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming to New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
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So even though George Remus is acquitted, Mabel emerges from the old Senate chamber ecstatic. Think about this. She's having trouble locking up bootleggers because it's virtually impossible to catch them red-handed. But this gives her a whole new angle of attack.
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I just imagine that these kinds of conversations between spies where they're trying to sort of suss each other out and and figure out if am I giving like, is he giving me a signal? And is he giving me an opening? Should I be? I would just I picture those conversations as super interesting.
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tense and like lots of like overt winking and kind of like wild gesturing and like fake laughing but with like weird intense eyes it would be crazy if I liked McDonald's
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But Oleg is really – he's a really fascinating double agent ultimately because he's an idealist and he's not a – like a lot of double agents are – In it for the money or – They're either in it for the money or they're psychotic and they just want the thrill of it or because they – They've been slighted or they've been – Or because they hate their homeland and they want to sort of like –
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doom their homeland for some reason. But like there are Americans who wound up hating America and becoming double agents for the Soviets at the time. But what's fascinating about Oleg is that he never didn't love Russia or the Soviet Union or what Russia kind of represented historically. And he never stopped hoping for the best for Russia. And he felt that by helping the West,
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he was helping Russia's future. Yeah, 100%. Or the Soviet future.
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Okay, 1974. So I'm, I'm like about one years old. I would think just like a good, I would just think like a bottle of milk would have done it for me.
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There was no gay pornography, which at that point for him, again, not a turn-on. It just was something that had become like a comfort for him.
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It was a comfort blanket for him. Just wants to know it's there.
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Well, no, it is true that the KGB, if you had a rocky relationship... With a spouse, then you're a risky agent. Which makes sense, right?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was like more openings for, you know, to get in trouble or blackmailed or whatever.
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No, but it really was a fascinating system that the Soviets set up where they were basically telling their spies, like, give us intel so that we can try to figure out if an attack is getting planned. And it was things like, you know, how many lights are on at the Pentagon? That's exactly it. And and and you're like, well, I don't know. There's 100 lights on tonight at the Pentagon.
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OK, but usually there's 200. So what's going on? They're planning something. Yeah. And there were some things that you could point to that were more practical. Like, are you seeing troop movements? Are you seeing. Right. Like hospitals building up supplies or, you know, things that might indicate they expect to have lots of casualties. Yeah.
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Those might be reasonable indicators of potential war conflict, but so much of it was not reasonable that it became this insane, crazy, arbitrary algorithm.
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Right. It just it's like if you're convinced something's going to happen. And a lot of historians believe that the Soviets really did think that NATO was going to attack them. And so if you think that everything you see is going to be through that prism and you're going to be like, what's the reason that all of this extra cow slaughtering indicates a pending nuclear attack?
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And you just sort of fill in the blanks and all of a sudden you have all these reasons.
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I would be like, OK, so I'm going to go back. I'm in London. I'm happy as a clam. My family's all happy. I'm about to go back to Russia to find out if they know I'm a spy. If they do know I'm a spy, then you stick me in a trunk and try to get me back. And by the way, I'm also claustrophobic, so... I'm not down with any of this.
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Because I think it's you're getting into the psychology of spies at this point, which I can never wrap my head around. Like the amount of information and the amount of kind of like ruses and and lies that you have to kind of maintain to be a spy, let alone a double agent. Right. It's incredible. It's mind blowing. And what's more insane about these guys, people like. Gordievsky.
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And I got to interview a KGB spy. Yeah, he did.
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Yeah. And what's crazy about these guys is that they're so confident. If you were like, OK, Moscow wants you to come home and check in. And if you don't come home, then they're going to know you're a double agent. Right. And so you better go home. But so in my mind, you're like,
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Well, maybe I should just take my chances and stay here, because if I do go back and then they then they interrogate me, am I more screwed? Well, a guy like Gordievsky is so confident that he's been playing his cards perfectly the whole time that he's like, yeah, I'll just go back. I know they don't have anything on me. I know that they might suspect I'm a double agent, but they can't prove it.
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And I know they can't prove it. Now, what? That's an insane level of confidence. Like to me, I would be like, I think I covered all my bases, but I'm not sure.
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And we're looking at this from the standpoint of like we're just average schmoes. Who, if we got put in these situations, we would melt down and sing like a canary and just be like, I'm guilty. Right. At this point, Oleg Gordievsky is I think he's been a double agent for over 10 years. Right. He has an incredible set of skills, set of kind of like mind games and like I said, confidence.
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And this is just part of it. You go back and you play the game and he just feels like he'll get away with it and he'll get sent right back.
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Hey, everybody. So glad to be here. It's an honor to be here.
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Yeah, I've never heard the appeal of folk music described quite that way. But I do love the bearded white dudes harmonizing.
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Come on. They just got out of the lumber trade. It either makes your skin crawl or it just soothes you.
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What's so insane is it's like... We give these spies so much credit for being, like, masterminds and coming up with these elaborate schemes. And you can just imagine Oleg talking to his MI6 handlers, and he's like, okay, so what's the plan, guys? And they're like, you're going to stand there with a grocery bag. If it's a Safeway grocery bag, you're going to jump in the trunk. Wait, what?
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Okay, but is there more to— And then what? Oh, well, then we just drive. Okay. Okay. And you just go, we go to like a safe house somewhere and then get in a hot air balloon or something. No, no, no. We just, we just go, we drive to, to, to Europe. And we hope for the best.
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And I honestly go back and forth sometimes. It drives me nuts. But yeah, my two buddies from college, Jacob Tylove and Ian Riggs, we went to Oberlin College together. And I had a banjo background from high school. And we just became this trio. Then after college, we all moved to New York City to kind of pursue different things, but kept the music going. And the Lonesome Trio lives on to this day.
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And yes, I forgot. There's a lot of positive energy around this whole operation. We've been doing a lot of, like, you know. Soul searching. Yeah, a lot of meditation. We're getting real psyched about it.
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So I just come and stand there with a bag, and then I just jump in the trunk of a car, and that's it? Yep. Aren't we fucking spies?
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Aren't we fucking spies? Aren't we supposed to come up with cool shit? That doesn't sound good enough.
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That's what I just can't imagine. I can't carry a lot, like, any kind of lie around. I just, I can't pull it off. I'm too, I'm just too much of a nervous Nelly, let alone, like, these grand life or death, you know, things.
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It's hard to look sort of serious and like a spy guy chewing on a chocolate bar.
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What should you do? What should you do in this situation, Arturo?
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You stand there and you fucking wait. Or you hide in the bushes, Arturo. He was like four hours early, right? That's it. It wasn't that long. It's not even like a day early, man.
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By the way, it's 18 miles. It's not just like around the corner. It's like, it's far.
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I guess that is a good way to just sort of be like, hey, we're in the middle of nowhere, but I need to get out of your truck. Like what could you get?
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I'm a botanist and there's like a really rare plant over here. What is that called? The fucking Audubon Society.
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There's some aspect to a lot of these guys that's somewhat psychopathic.
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This is also a fascinating moment. Yeah. in the Able Archer story, because in the run-up to the Able Archer conflict, Oleg Gordievsky was trying to tell his Soviet handlers that, guys, there's crazy tension between the East and the West, but they're not trying to nuke you. They're not planning to nuke you.
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When he went to talk to Reagan, he actually was also trying to take credit for avoiding nuclear conflict to some extent. By saying, look, I helped avoid a nuclear holocaust during Abel Archer because I was telling both sides the right thing. And that's another reason why you should really think about helping me. Right, right. And it was pretty good leverage.
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Like, it was a good story that he told. But what's fascinating from a historical standpoint is, like, you know, a lot of historians relied on his account of Abel Archer. Oh, the information came from him?
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Of what the Russians – Well, just – his narrative of what was happening at that time was sort of an important part of the historical record. But it's also – you can now understand the deep conflict of interest in like – of course it behooves him to bolster his own role in the Able Archer crisis because – Now it's a reason to help get his family out of, out of Russia.
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He can like put, you know, he can tell foreign leaders like, look, I helped save the world. Now you need to help me get my family out.
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No, you know what? There is a funny story. It's just sort of a silly thing that happened in college. I was really into this band Fishbone. Do you remember this band?
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Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
I want to talk about Snafu for a second, too, if you don't mind. So season one is the story of Able Archer 83, which was an event in 1983. It was the height of the Cold War.
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And there was so much tension between the United States or NATO and the Soviet Union that this Able Archer exercise, which by any other measure was just a normal military exercise, was suddenly getting interpreted by the Soviets as a possible staging for a real nuclear attack.
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And basically there was this kind of like domino reciprocating spiral of fear and outrage and misunderstandings and miscommunications.
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Listeners should go to it because it gives such rich context while also being quite funny and entertaining and fucking scary.
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Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
It's such a cool story. Thank you for having me on to talk about this.
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They were like kind of a heavy ska band way back in the day.
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Well, what's funny is that they were best friends with and toured with another band called Biohazard, which was like real metal, like, you know, death metal kind of. Right. A ska band and a metal band.
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And they were really, and they toured together. a lot and they were very different acts, but everyone would just go to these concerts and go bananas. And so I was in college in Ohio and some friends and I went to go see them in Cleveland. And which is, you know, it's a rock and roll town.
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And I don't, I certainly didn't refer to myself as a fish boner at the time, but had I thought of that, I think I would have.
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I would have made a lot of t-shirts and made a lot of money. So you were in Ohio. So we go to the we go to the I think it's called the Apollo Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, to see Biohazard and Fishbone. I was like really more into Fishbone, excited to see them. And they were like kind of joyful, crazy ska. But Biohazard was first. And I was like, love these guys, too.
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I mean, they're just super committed. And but I but I didn't know. I kind of didn't know, like death metal concert etiquette. So I just was like, whatever is going to go down. I want to be in the middle of it. I want to be right up front. And so, you know, it's before the show and everybody's kind of like mingling around and I'm looking around. I'm like. These guys look intense.
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Like there's a lot of there's like skinhead energy in this crowd. It's like this is kind of a weird vibe. And but like I'm I love just, you know, some human experience. Like what's going to what's this going to be like? So it's alive. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm right down in front, and they start playing that song, Carmina Burana. Do you know that? No.
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It's this famous classical music that sounds like it's from The Omen. Okay. It's like that. Do-hoo-ho-ho. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that they start playing that and it's getting louder and louder. And the tension in the room is just getting more and more intense. And and the lights are going out. And I'm in sort of the pit area and it's really crowded, like super dense. Right.
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And people are starting to like jump up and down and get like starting to get a little bit, I don't know, the energy's changing. Right. And then all of a sudden a hole, like a vacuum forms in the middle of the pit. Right. Which is to say, like, everyone kind of realized at the same moment that they didn't want to be in the middle of the pit. And it just started to open up.
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I don't know what's going to happen. And there's a lot of scary looking dudes around getting real intense and fired up and excited. And then sure enough, the lights come on and biohazard just starts to... And everyone rushes into this void and crushes up against the front of the stage with, like, really intense mosh pit rage and anger. And, like, everyone's just throwing punches for—but for fun.
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Like, it's just a—it's like— At first, I'm absolutely terrified. How do I get out of this? I don't want to get killed. I don't want to fall down and get trampled or something. But the music is also kind of awesome. And I start seeing people stage diving. And I was like, OK, the people that are stage diving are landing on top of the crowd and getting passed back. So I was like, this is it.
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This is my escape. And so I managed to climb up on the sort of stanchion or whatever in front of the stage. There was like a little row where these big burly security dudes were guarding the stage. But in front of that, you could climb onto the railing and jump into the crowd. And so I did. I climbed up and was just like, landed on top. And I was passed all the way to the back.
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Directly to the concession stand. Directly to a guy handing me a congratulatory beer. He was like, congratulations, you're still alive. But yeah, so I did escape with my life.
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Pretty much if you're if you're a Russian in the 60s and 70s, like in another country, you're probably a spy.
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Like, what are you going to spy on? Like, what do we have to hide? Yeah, what are you going to spy on? All this happiness and beautiful people? Like, go ahead, man.
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Yeah. Well, is it honeypot or honeytrap?
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Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
Honeypot, I believe, is the term. Honeypot, okay.
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Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
Well, you have to have a honeypot to have to set a honey trap. You have to have it. You gotta have it. Thank you, overlords. All right. But no, Oleg, I think we touched on this before, but he was a critical character in the whole Abel Archer 83 story that my podcast is about. And I'm so psyched we're talking about him because I have...
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Just the tiniest bit of knowledge about Oleg, enough to maybe sound like a smarty pants, but not enough to really contribute anything meaningful. But where were we with Oleg?
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Literally, he's excited by the gay pornography, not because it is erotic to him, but because it is such, he's like, can you believe that they are allowed to do this?
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And they put him in pictures and they send them and they put the red lights. It's fantastic. This would get everyone, this would get you so quickly shot in Soviet Union at the time. 100%.
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I just want to comment just that this story could never happen today. Like if somebody showed you pornography and, In an excited way. And they were like, can you believe this is so, look at how exuberantly free and happy these people in this pornographic magazine are. Right.
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Except for this one guy. He's got a mask on. Okay, so the Danes go to his apartment, they find this gay pornography, and they're like, oh, obviously he's gay, so we're going to set a honey trap. There you go. And we're going to try to blackmail him to be a... An informant because we know he's KGB and we want to flip him. So then they get a guy to hit on him at a party, right? That's right.
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And Oleg's just like, oh, what a nice guy. What a friendly guy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
They just get nowhere with it. Like there's just no traction because that's not Oleg's persuasion. That's right. It's just a failed honey trap.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro
Like, what is wrong with Sikella? Sikella's beautiful. I was specifically chosen as a honey trap. I am the hottest agent. I am so sexy.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
When a Canadian nuclear plant suffered a meltdown, Carter and his team were called in to save the day by literally lowering themselves into the reactor to clean up the mess. Now, the radiation was so intense they could only spend 90 seconds down there at a time, which... Let's be honest.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
I mean, that isn't much time for a deep clean, but it must have worked out OK because he still managed to become president of the United States, right? OK, so here's another one. A gem from the 80s. Pepsi, yes, the soda company, Pepsi, briefly owned the sixth largest Navy fleet in the world. You heard that right. It is completely true.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
It all started when Pepsi pulled off a brilliant publicity stunt, becoming the first American product sold and distributed in the USSR. Now, Soviet teens went wild for the fizzy syrupy goodness and demand skyrocketed. There was just one problem. Soviet rubles weren't considered a legitimate global currency. So the Soviet Union paid for its Pepsi orders with actual battleships and submarines.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
Yes, I swear it's true. Now, Coca-Cola, you better watch your back. All right. Finally, here's one from the 2000s. International tensions cranked up when an American spy plane carrying top secret data made an unscheduled pit stop in Chinese territory. Spoiler alert, the welcome committee wasn't exactly rolling out the red carpet. So they had to make an emergency landing.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
Hey there, Snafu listeners. I wanted to jump into our feed here with some big news. Well, huge news, actually. I am beyond thrilled to finally share with you that this coming April, my very first book is coming out. That's right. And it is based on this very podcast. The book is called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. And I am insanely proud of it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
And in this emergency descent, the flight crew had less than 20 minutes to shred, smash and otherwise obliterate as much classified info as humanly possible. What followed? Well, a full blown diplomatic soap opera with the flight crew stuck in the world's most awkward layover and the U.S. and China exchanging icy glares and pointing fingers. That is just a little teaser for you.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
But trust me, the details of those stories are even more insane. And I can't wait to share them with you, along with so many more great stories when the snafu book comes out on April 29th of next year. Here's the most exciting news of all. You can pre-order a copy right now. That's right. Just go to snafu-book.com. That's snafu-book.com. There's also a link in our show notes, too.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
And just a quick word about pre-ordering. It's really important. I know it might seem like, oh, why should I buy this book now if it's not going to show up for four months? And I get it. Believe me, I do. But here's the thing. Pre-ordering is basically the equivalent of leaving a rating slash review in podcast land.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
Pre-orders show bookstores and booksellers that our podcast fans, you, are already super excited for the book to come out. And it helps them give it more attention and support. And if the book does well, well, that also helps the podcast. And really, all I want to do is keep making seasons of this show that bring to light these crazy messed up stories from history.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
And of course, to keep giving you guys all something fun to listen to while you're doing chores or commuting to work or whatever it is you like to do while listening to Snafu. So once again, this is my shameless but very heartfelt plug. Please stop by snafu-book.com and pre-order yourself a book or two or a hundred, you know, maybe even a thousand.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
This glorious compendium is packed with the same delightful chaos and jaw dropping mishaps you've come to love from the podcast. But here's the kicker. Every single chapter is a brand new story we've never told you before. Yep, we're diving headfirst into history's greatest snafus, covering everything from post-World War II era right up to today.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
Just keep them in the closet whenever you need to give out a cheeky, sophisticated gift. Trust me, these snafus are an absolute thrill ride packed with jaw-dropping moments and tons of laughs. Oh, and before I sign off, one last quick teaser. I'm going to be back right here with Season 3 of Snafu very soon. And when I say soon, I mean very soon. Like, keep your podcast feed refreshed.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
So that's it. Thanks so much for tuning in. Wishing you a New Year's filled with joy, laughter, and, well, far fewer snafus than American history. Take care.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
Listen to the American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
You'll meet the larger-than-life characters behind these wild tales, unpack the social and political mayhem that set the stage, and of course, laugh at all the lessons learned and or blissfully ignored. And because I'm just way too excited to keep all this stuff to myself, I wanted to treat you, dear listener, to a little sneak peek and a moose boosh, if you will, of some of my favorite chapters.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Announcing the SNAFU Book!
First off, back in 1952, a future president got up close and personal with, wait for it, nuclear radiation. Who, you ask? None other than number 39 himself, Jimmy Carter. Before his days in the Oval Office, Carter was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy specializing as a nuclear engineering officer.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And he's what, 22, I think.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Well, Jimmy was buds with the Allman Brothers, which is a great detail. Jimmy's from, what, Americus, Georgia, and the Allman Brothers are from Macon, Georgia. It's just, it's Georgia. We all love peanuts. I'm from Atlanta. It's like we just, we all stick together. Georgia folks, you know, we have each other's back. How about one more from you, Ed?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
my snafu book coming out very soon, which I'm so, so excited about. So to do that, I have roped in one of our incredible, brilliant, unbelievable, talented, hilarious, and did I say brilliant? I think I did. Snafu producers, Carl Nellis. Carl, thanks for joining us today. Hey, thanks for bringing me onto the mic. It's a little wild to be here. You're on camera. You're in the hot seat today, Carl.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Is there another chapter that you'd like to talk about? We get into the fabulous Suez Canal disaster, which most people know because it was so recent. The giant tanker or container ship that just got wedged in the Suez Canal and suddenly –
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
made the world realize how dependent we are on this teeny tiny little stretch of water that is actually a corridor for the biggest supply chains in the world for everything. And they wind up dredging and digging and digging and digging. But the great detail is that it's actually this –
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
full moon occurrence that allows the tide to rise high enough to just barely nudge it off the bank and get it free. But it's just a wild story. And there's so many fun details.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
The book tour will feel similar to like a movie promotional tour in that I'll be doing talk shows and I'll be doing appearances and all kinds of stuff. The big difference is that I expect to be having much more in-depth conversations with interviewers on the book tour, talking more about the content of the book. Typically on a movie tour, you're just kind of staying pretty superficial about...
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
How fun it was to make the movie and what's in the movie. In this case, I'm excited to really kind of like play a bit of more intellectual ping pong with people and just get into some of the ideas and ramifications of these snafus and how they've resonated or what meaning they've had throughout history.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
So exciting. I get to nerd out in such a fun way. And I truly can't wait.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
I'm feeling it. Feel the heat. Yeah, you feel the heat because whenever we're recording a snafu episode, Carl is here. Carl is with me. He's helping me with the spontaneous rewrites and edits. He's reflecting with me. And he's just one of the great sort of guideposts in this whole process. And also just a genuine history fiend like myself, which is why it's so fun to collaborate with you, Carl.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Fabulous question. Well, I'm also doing live in-person appearances in lots and lots of cities all around. Just off the top of my head, I'm going to probably forget some, but New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown where I grew up, Chicago, South San Francisco, and Los Angeles, my current hometown where I live now. And... Ding, ding, ding, ding. You got it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
That's all of them. Yeah. So I'll be having events in all those cities where people can buy tickets and come see. Go to snafu-book.com for all the details about where you can both pre-order the book and there's links to buy tickets to these events in all the different cities.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
But if you had to be in one of these screw-ups, who do you want to be? I mean, listen, I've made a career of playing people screwing up on camera, so I could really probably slot into any of these. But I think that... I think actually it would be pretty cool to play Jimmy Carter where he's basically saving the planet. It's the first nuclear reactor meltdown in history. And that's the snafu.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
But Jimmy Carter is the hero. Like he comes in and saves the day. So that would be a cool one. Of course, I'm not in my 20s anymore. So that might be a little bit of a stretch. Yeah. The other one that I think would actually be really funny to do is to be like a crew member or the captain of the Ever Given, the ship that was lodged in the Suez Canal.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
I feel like that's a very Armando Iannucci kind of like veep. Or even like The Office. Like if you imagine the wheelhouse of this giant container ship is kind of like Dunder Mifflin with just people like milling about doing their mundane jobs. And then all of a sudden the biggest disaster in logistics history is upon you. That feels like a ton of fun. That's great. All right.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
I'm going to retake control of this interview, Carl. You did a stupendous job. And I got to watch my back here. You're going to like take my job. You're a great interviewer. No danger.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
But thank you so much, Carl, for picking my brain and just having a fun little breakdown, both of our podcast process and a little bit of backstory on this book, which I'm so proud of. Enjoy the rest of season three, Formula Six, and check out snafu-book.com and come see me live in person. Let's talk snafu. I'll sign your books. It's going to be great.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Here's another little Easter egg for you. Carl is in season three also. Carl voices some of the characters throughout the season. Do you want to fill us in on any of those? Well, I would never tell who it is.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Yeah, we roped in the whole gang in lots of little pieces here and there, which always makes it fun. Let's talk a little bit about where these snafus come from. Like you mentioned, we have a great team between Gilded Audio and Film Nation and my company, Pacific Electric. We just have a lot of really smart, wonderful people contributing to the show.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And let's talk a little bit about how we find these snafus, Carl.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And let's be honest. There are too many. There are too many snafus to choose from. We do dumb things. We've done dumb things throughout history. It is one of the great consistencies of human behavior throughout the centuries. We're just very, very dumb. And so there's so much to choose from.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And as we dig through everything and decide what to put on the podcast, we have stumbled on such a treasure trove that this is what fueled the book. So I'm going to turn the tables on you, Carl. I'm usually the one interviewing on this show. I want you to interview me a little bit about the book so I can help listeners understand what to expect and why this book is going to be so fun and cool.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Well, I love the audio medium because there are so many opportunities to be playful. And it's obviously very adjacent to the film and television mediums I'm so used to. But there were a lot of snafus that didn't have the depth that we require to dive into them on this show. And so it started to gel that maybe these are like – maybe these would just make good book chapters. A book allows you to –
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Be visual, right, with illustrations and historical documents and so forth. We brought in an amazing illustrator, Mark Harris, and had him sort of interpret some of these snafus into his particular work. form of artistic expression, which is these really cool kind of collage style pieces. And they're peppered throughout the book. That's something you can't do in a podcast, right?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
You can't rope in a Mark Harris to throw in some jazzy visuals. In so doing, I feel like we've like we got this really cool collection of art. Like I want to hang this stuff in my house. It's a new and different kind of collaboration for the team and one that that's been really, really fun.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Great question. Book feelings. Like you said, never written a book before. I usually only look at books with pictures, cartoon books. I don't – I'm scared of long stretches of text. No. I will say that – It's such a different approach. And the process is so much more isolating and kind of individual that there's some beauty to that. I think it just hit me like how much work it is to make a book.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And there's just so many steps to the process, the editing, the revising, the notes, and getting so much incredible feedback from the team. It's a lot.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
I'm also really proud of the comedic tone that I think we as a team on the podcast have worked so hard to dial in over these three seasons. And that I can tell you just it's it's informed so much of the book as well. Like it's always echoing. In my head, like, how would we say this in the podcast?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
What's the funny thing or what's the appropriate joke here versus like what's the easy joke or the maybe this joke is too crude. Maybe this is not a place for a joke. It's a constant analysis, but really, really a fun part of the process and something I'm really proud of.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
The book is structured in six parts, which are roughly decades, starting in the 50s and through to the present. And within each of those chunks is a bunch of like a handful of snafus. It's really, I think, instructive and meaningful to group these snafus by decade because it gives us a little bit of a cultural lens for context. And it's a fun way to look at things.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
We all have associations with the 60s. We have associations with the 70s and the 80s and so on. And so we bring those associations to these stories that happen in these time periods. But also, like, they're meaningful, like the things that are happening culturally are are really affecting even what we think of as a snafu, right? Yes, yes. It helps us.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
Hey, everyone. This is Snafu, the podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. I am your host, Ed Helms. And today, before we wrap up Season 3 next Wednesday, I thought I'd insert a little special bonus episode here. I'm really excited to take you behind the scenes of Snafu a little bit and also share with you a bit more about Snafu.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
So it's hard to pick, but there are a few that jump to mind. One I love because it has a little bit of a Hollywood razzmatazz. There was a CIA operation called Project Azorian. And basically, a Soviet sub sank in the Pacific Ocean. The Soviets didn't know where it was, but we did. We knew exactly where it was. And not only that, we wanted it. for serious intel, right?
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
It would have lots of technology in it. It's a nuclear sub. It would have all this Soviet technology that we were trying to decipher and code breaking manuals and all kinds of stuff. So we wanted this sub, but it's like two miles deep in the middle of the North Pacific. You can't just like go and get that without causing a huge hubbub.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
So the CIA approaches Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, Hollywood producer and weird businessman who's like literally living in a penthouse of a Las Vegas casino at this point. And they say, hey, Howard, will you pretend like you're – going to get into deep sea mineral mining and that you're going to build this ship for your mining operations.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
But actually, it's our plan to build a ship to lower a claw down into the ocean to grab this nuclear sub. But the cover story is that you are doing deep sea mining. And Howard Hughes, of course, who's insane, is like, yeah, sure, that sounds awesome. I love to lie about deep sea mining. Yeah. Exactly. So they do this. They build this crazy ship with a giant claw, just like the arcade claw games.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
And they head out into the middle of the Pacific. They lower the claw. It's two miles deep. And they get the sub. But, of course, it takes forever. It takes like two days just to winch it back up. And then once they get to the top – It breaks – it's just a wild, hilarious, and insane story. And I just – I love how much hubris is baked into it. But then also, like, it's weirdly successful.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
It's a funny thing to include as a snafu because a lot of people, a lot of CIA people – We're saying, I know that we didn't get all the intel we wanted, but we still pulled off this insane thing. So it's still like we want to call it a success. But at the end of the day, it hardly justified the hundreds of millions of dollars it cost to do what they did.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
Behind the SNAFU Book – plus, your chance to meet Ed on tour (or virtually)!
So I think it rests firmly in the snafu category. But it's just an awesome and wild, wild story. What's one of your favorites from the book?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Drop Bears
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Drop Bears
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Are you kidding me? Didn't you get a key to the city or something?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World
Prohibition. It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World
In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula 6. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor. And all along, an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World
So how did prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How the Flu Works
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How the Flu Works
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How the Flu Works
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How the Flu Works
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How Ice Cream Works
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How Ice Cream Works
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How Ice Cream Works
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How Ice Cream Works
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Okay. I took two years of Spanish. Okay. To attract tourists, the town has relaxed some of its more excessive rules. Among the changes, opening more beaches for kayaking, adding a five-minute grace period at parking meters, and then there's this.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Cape May has lifted its 30-year ban on men in skin-tight bathing suits, commonly referred to as Speedos. Atlantic City has gambling. Wildwood has broken bottle fights. Cape May has Speedos.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Might it be a huge package? Despite the obvious appeal to tourists, some local merchants think that Speedos have no place in Cape May.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Well, who died and made you the nut police?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Unattractive? Are we talking about the same thing? Because I'm talking about the little... I'm having trouble picturing a Speedo that is not attractive.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Bob, have you ever had a problem with someone, for lack of a better term, popping a steenrod in one of these things? Wow. Haven't seen that. Even those who oppose throngs of thong-wearing Europeans on their beaches seem more than willing to cash in. Does your store sell Speedos?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
If by panty you mean Speedo, then yes, I agree with you. Lily was clearly in denial. Speedos are everywhere, sometimes where you least expect them. What if I told you that I'm wearing a Speedo right now? See? There's nothing to be afraid of.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
That kind of attitude is a startling reminder of yesteryear, when Cape May's beaches were segregated. Since then, Cape May has come a long way. But has it come far enough? To find out if attitudes around Cape May have really changed, I equipped myself with a hidden camera. underneath my ball sack. Let's put it to the test, shall we?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
While the locals appeared to be friendly, Nut Cam told a different story. But after a little while, people seemed to open up to me. I even caught up on some of my favorite periodicals at the local library. Although my fellow sunbathers oddly chose not to wear Speedos, they supported me and my choice. The sensation was liberating, so much so that my enthusiasm for Speedos overwhelmed me.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Overall, it seemed Kate May was embracing speedos, perhaps some members of the community a little too much. George Andrews, a student at the University of California, Davis, had a secret, something known only to a few special friends who shared his orientation. I am a conservative.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
In a classy display of solidarity and mutual understanding, George and his friends scheduled conservative coming out day during UC Davis Gay Pride Week. But that didn't spare conservatives the wrath of campus bullies. Bullies like Aldrich Tan.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Ouch! It's venom like that George has to deal with every day. Let's do a role play. Sure thing. I'm just your average... UC Davis student, and I come up to you in the lunchroom, and I'm like, hey, George, you asshole, what's with the attitude that you're spreading all over this campus, you asshole?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
You're not, you're still being like third person. Okay, so let's try this again. Okay. F*** you. Shut the f*** up.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Maybe George can't role play because the pain is just too strong. Do you ever get sad just because of the way people treat you?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Let me get this bad boy out here. Polly Pops. Thank you. Hopefully, one day, more people like George will come out of the closet, enough that conservatives will be able to say without fear, we're here. We control the entire government, most major corporations, and many media outlets. Get used to it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
and welcome to another edition of Digital Watch. Today, we're going to talk about the camera cell phone. How many times has this happened to you? Okay, everybody, say cheese. Ready? Oh. All right, wait. Wait, say cheese. Oh, God.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Well, if you're like me, that's never happened. And thanks to the latest and hottest gadget in America, it will still never happen. The camera cell phone, a revolutionary advance in our drive to put multiple things into one thing, is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of digital technology.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
It combines the rapid battery depletion of a high-powered digital camera with the image production capability of a phone. Already, this device is used by an estimated 80 million people worldwide, and it's no wonder. With these portable, easily concealed dynamos, violating someone's privacy has never been easier or more fun. So turn off that sorority house shower webcam, Grandpa.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
In fact, the makers of these phones actually make invasion of privacy the principal selling point in their ads. Gina, check this out. I'm sitting next to your new boyfriend.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Busted! Oh, yeah! I bet now you're all gonna think twice about eating. Now, for those of you who are new to this technology, it's worth sharing a few tips. First of all, know your technology. You don't want to confuse the phone function with the camera function, otherwise you may end up with a memory chip filled with these. And number two, always get releases from your subjects.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
A release is a simple legal form indemnifying you from any legal action should a picture you've taken end up in a major national publication, such as Leg Show or Shaved Asian. I cannot stress enough, verbal permission will not hold up in court, as I learned to my dismay in the case of Helms v. Wong. So there you have it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
Kate May, New Jersey. A charming little beach town that set the standard for taste and sophistication we've come to associate with the Jersey Shore. But in recent years, tourists have taken their fanny packs elsewhere. To bring visitors back, town leaders developed the Cool Cape May campaign.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms Pt. 2
The camera cell phone, another example of technology's amazing power to improve your quality of life at the expense of everyone else's. For Digital Watch, I'm Ed Helms.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
John, I'm outside the hospital where it has been reported that, that's right, John, Jacko had an attack-o in his back-o.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
Yes, yes. I understand he's filled his hospital room with his personal bric-a-braco. Took it too far. Ed, it was very clever. How was Mr. Jackson hurt? There was a collision, John, specifically the collision between the innocent, eternal 10-year-old boy Jackson thought he was and the disturbing 46-year-old semi-Caucasian adult male he just found out he actually is.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
That's one of those where you're reading the court transcripts, really gonna get you right there.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
No, John. Jackson's back pain is real. It's his life that's been imaginary. Until now, Mr. Jackson had believed himself to be Captain EO, the planetary defender of childhood wonder, piggyback rides, and wishing trees. Imagine the trauma to his system upon learning he has no actual military rank whatsoever.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
And that Neverland is not the domain of the Lost Boys, but is in fact under the jurisdiction of the Santa Barbara District Attorney's Office.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
Sadness, John, but also anger. I'm sure somewhere Jackson is thinking, hey, OJ killed two people and went free. Now they're going to put me away just for a couple of teenage reach-arounds? Where's the justice, John?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Celebrity Trials
Well, ultimately, John, if Jacko wants to avoid further flacko from the media packo, he's simply going to have to stop having young boys in the sacko. And also make sure there's no touching of his balls. John?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Tax Day
Just get out and let your face be seen. Should I start begging for people to come? I invite you to be a part of one of them. Bring your kids. Experience history.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Tax Day
What I don't use to pay a bill will probably I just put in the bank and save.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms
For me, it's relatively simple. For many years, I had to interpret the rules of golf. And the rules of golf book is 65 pages or so long. We've got our constitution here. I read that as my newest rule book.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms
And I don't see why that right should be abridged while you're doing just about anything. So he proposed a bill that would close a bizarre loophole in Arizona law. Senate Bill 1210 is a very simple measure that would change our Arizona statutes and allow the carry of weapons into establishments that serve alcohol.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Best of Ed Helms
I guess what would be more terrifying would be a room full of people not allowed to have guns. I just got chills.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Not exactly, John. I do have a conclave simulation program. The Simstein Accu-Chapel 6000. Now this gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on. As you can see, the College of Cardinals files into the chapel. Then they move past this guy here, kind of a downer, Then the world's top Catholics take their seats and prepare. The voting begins. The Cardinals write their choice on official ballots.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
The votes are then tallied and burned in a furnace to produce smoke. Then afterwards, everyone takes part in a violent shooting spree. Woo! Bang, bang!
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Ed, that was Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto, Vatican City, John. Ed, thank you. It's really very nice here. Thanks for joining us. Slow down, John. With this recreation, even you can be part of the action. Check this out. Okay, now watch this. I'm totally conclaving. You got that? John, if I press the A button, I can vote for my favorite Cardinal. And if I push the B button, this is awesome.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
I'm sorry. I'm totally working on a combo move. A-B-B-A puts Francis Cardinal Lorenze in a headline. All right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
That's correct, John. Like countless others from around the globe, I am waiting on line here in Rome. I've just started hour 16. Don't know if I'm going to make it. We're not all going to get there.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
It's terrific, John. No problems at all. As you know, the Italians are famous for their organizational skills. They're handling this sudden influx of three million pilgrims like a Fiat handles on the autostrada. So you would mean terribly. It's not good, John. But they have done some things well.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Officials are handing out bottled water, setting up porta-potties, and perhaps even more important, porta-confessionals. As it turns out, 99% of all sins happen on pilgrimages.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Yeah, absolutely. John, there's nothing like death to bring people together. Oh, hey, looks like I'm up. Arigato. This stuff is awesome.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Dude, you can't get this stuff in the United States. This is like triple delicious ice cream. It's better than sex. Reminds me, I gotta hit one of those confessionals. All right, well, thank you very much.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
John, the security here is tight. The Sistine Chapel is locked down. The place has been swept for bugs, surrounded by Swiss guards. Frescoes are rigged with explosives. Cyborg armies patrol the roof and, of course, the Sloman's Shield.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I can see that. It's very funny that this happened to me right before this interview when I was eating at Sugarfish, which is one of my favorite sushi places in L.A. It's right near the studio. And I zoned out staring at the waitress and the bar because I wanted something. And then she walked away and I just kept staring in that direction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And then I noticed this guy who had like a really bright shirt on started staring back at me awkwardly. And I was like, oh gosh, that guy thinks I'm looking at him. This is embarrassing. Now I have to look away. And then I looked away and I went, The guy looked familiar, and I looked over, and he was still looking at me, and it was Adam Sandler.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And I was like, crap, he just thinks I'm going to do some weird thing when I was looking for a Diet Coke refill. So the whole rest of the meal, I have to awkwardly, deliberately not look at Adam Sandler. Don't you dare look back, blue shirt. And I was like, should I say something? I was like, no, that's the opposite of what's supposed to happen here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
So I just end up paying my bill and leaving, and I'm like... No matter how much you try to not be weird around something like that, it's not you guys who are changing when you become famous. It's everyone around you changing instead.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, like, hey, you didn't ask me for money before the hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, that's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I don't know. That would be kind of unpleasant, right? Because there's this unspoken, are you being weird? Am I being weird? Is it weird at all? Do you feel that? Because I think I feel that, but am I sure I feel that? And then you're like, ah, can we just play golf? I thought we were just going to hang out like we did for the last... 40 years of my life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Because you've changed. Exactly. That's a good, yeah, why am I so uncomfortable? There's this funny moment where, I guess it was daily show days, where you weren't able to get into a convention because you forgot your ID or something like that. But then you had to use the billboard to get in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And I thought that was so ironic because you're famous enough that you had a billboard facing the parking lot to get in. And you just went, is this enough of an identification? And then I was like, sure thing. But you weren't famous enough for that guy to be like, oh, it's you. So you're like in that little midway point where it's okay, fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You're the guy on the billboard, but I don't recognize you. That was the daily show. Yeah. It's really funny that there's that between level. I wonder if at that point where you like, One day, I won't need to point to the billboard. You'll just remember your idea at that point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, the one and only Ed Helms. You know him from The Office as the Nardog and as Stu from The Hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
What's something you used to believe about success or fulfillment that you've let go of?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
My friend got on Saturday Night Live. And then one season later, he was like. That was it, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
But once we hit our 30s, our natural supply starts to dip, and yeah, you might start feeling a little creaky. Notice your skin and hair just aren't what they used to be. Daily collagen supplementation can help with skin, joints, hair, nails. Vital Proteins is the number one collagen peptides brand in the US, so they know what they're doing. It's super easy to take.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
That helped you though, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
We talk about, of course, The Office and The Hangover, his new book, Snafu, which is some of history's greatest screw-ups, having a super successful career as a creative, and a whole lot more. It's just a fun conversation, as you might expect from somebody like Ed Helms. He was an open book, really cool, really laid back, especially since we got to do it in person.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Ed Helms. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Acorns Early. They learn fast that work equals money, so you finally get to retire as the family ATM. Kids can set savings goals, turn on auto-saves, spend what they earn with their own debit card, picking from 35 pretty cool designs for kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You get instant spend notifications, and if they lose the card, because of course they will, you can freeze it with a tap. Plus, Acorns Early sneaks in fun, interactive money lessons to build real financial smarts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Most people who join Revero start seeing results and reducing their medications within weeks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
If you're ready to actually feel good again, this could be the thing that gets you there. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at 6minutenetworking.com.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
This course is about improving your relationship skills, inspiring other people to develop a relationship with you. It is non-cringy, no awkward strategies, just very practical, very simple, and very fast. Six minutes a day is all it takes. And many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I just thought it was a hell of a lot of fun, and I think you will too. All right, here we go with Ed Helms. By the way, I heard you love RC cars. Oh, yeah. I still have a shitload of Traxxas cars in my garage. Are you serious?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You can find the course at 6minutenetworking.com. All right, now back to Ed Helms. The hangover takes off, right? I assume you get scripts for other comedies, but do you get like, here's a serious role and your agent's like, hey man, do you want to be more like a serious actor in this one? Like Bradley Cooper, right? It's like, you got Limitless, that's not a comedy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Do you get those and go, do I stick with comedy or go serious in this one? And how do you make those decisions? It's got to be hard. I wasn't getting like the serious offers. I'm surprised. I thought everybody would come after you for everything or your agent just threw those in the trash maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Let's be realistic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, I can understand that. You joined The Office after it already built some momentum. What was the biggest challenge in stepping into that dynamic? Because speaking of pressure, right? Like you're getting in there and it's, all right, don't screw this up because this show's already funny. If it's not funny when you're there, that one's on you, pal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
They're already checked out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Play with us. Oh, that's great. The best. I love, from an acting standpoint, I think one of the funniest parts for me is a disconnect from how you're really feeling. Your appearance on the outside is always almost trying, not quite in sync with your emotional status, your real emotional status. Does this make sense at all? Sure, the characters? Yeah. Yeah, of course. That's fun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It finds its way into these different bits, like where you punch the wall and says, was it overreactione? Yeah. Yeah. Like, all right, he's fine. Nope, he just smashed the wall. And it's just like, there's this tension inside your character from that. I think it's really funny.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Did you ever disagree, might be a strong word, but disagree with the writers or the producers about where Andy's character was headed? Is there ever any like, oh, really, that's going to happen? Or do you not even have the sort of green light to do that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I can imagine that. I get what you mean about being possessive over your character. I can see why you would be like, this is sort of a part of my identity. And on the show, it is my identity. It's like if you built a really nice... radio-controlled car, and someone's like, cool, I'm going to drive this as fast as I can into that wall over there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And you're like, no, no, no, that's not what it's for. The paint job is immaculate. You're supposed to show this thing off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It's going to be cool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Which Ypsi, for those who don't know, is if you're in Ann Arbor going to college, Ypsi is the dangerous part near Ann Arbor where you only go there for one reason. Do you know that reason? The hobby shop? I don't know. There's a deja vu strip club that might still be there. Oh, okay, great. You don't know anything about that. Of course. That's all anybody does there. Deja vu.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, I can believe it. Is there any sort of behind the scenes moment from The Office that's never made it into an interview before? As you can tell, my YouTube team told me to ask you that one. Yeah. Get a viral moment, Jordan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It's got to be a good way to blow off steam.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. It had to be a fun set to be on. In The Hangover, I heard that tooth really came out or comes out. How was that possible? I guess it's probably common and I just don't know that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
If you don't, you fly RC helicopters. There you go. Yeah. So what is this about you flying one around the lobby of the hotel, though?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You meant like a little arm that waves around. That's freaking weird.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Now you have something else. Correct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It's so funny. Yeah. The scenes with this tiger, that was real, right? The tiger's real. Yeah. How do you do that safely?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
This is when it's like,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And he's really doing it. Yeah. I would be very nervous around something like that, because even if there's a guy with like a giant cannon nearby to sedate, the tiger doesn't really understand that. Tiger's just like, I'm hungry. These guys look like they are tasty. I can smell them. and they're right in front of me. You can't train cats. Siegfried and Roy have taught us this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
They lived with that tiger and then that was the end. Yes, sadly, yes. You also got super sick during the shooting of one of the hangovers, yeah? Oh, yeah. I remember Bradley Cooper said, we all ate at the same place. I don't understand why you're the one that got sick.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And I was like, yes. That's the hardest I've ever acted. I bet. Meanwhile, there's B-roll of you just on this blanket on the dirtiest street in Bangkok being petted by Bradley Cooper and fed like a tiger out of a bottle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I really like them. If you're serious about dropping a few pounds, Factor's keto plan helped people lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks in a clinical trial. Way better odds than just hoping for the best. And actually, that's a safe amount of weight loss. One pound a week. That's pretty normal. Plus, they've got smoothies, breakfasts, and grab-and-go snacks that'll help keep you covered.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I've tried all that stuff, too. It's actually pretty solid. Bottom line, Factor makes it ridiculously easy to eat healthy, even when you are tired, slammed, or just a danger to yourself when you're hungry, like I am.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
This episode is sponsored in part by The Defender. Are you a trailblazer, a risk taker, somebody with countless tales of epic adventure? Well, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. Even the boldest among us started off small, daring themselves to reach greater goals each day. If you're looking to take on a challenge like that, The Defender is too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Adventure seekers don't want to miss Destination Defender, an epic weekend festival designed for Defender owners and enthusiasts taking place in Port Jervis, New York from May 16th through 18th. To learn more, visit DestinationDefenderUSA.com. This episode is also sponsored by Progressive. You choose to hit play on this podcast today? Smart choice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and you can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode, of course, at Progressive.com.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code, email us. The team is happy to service codes for you. It is that important, since people are getting on me for saying important. It's that important that you support those who support the show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It's a joy that look. Yes. The look is unadulterated joy, right? Where you're just transported back to kid mode and you're like, this is cool as hell.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
All right, now for the rest of my conversation with Ed Helms. The set had so much craziness in it. I think it was you who told the story in some ancient article where there's Mercedes cars and one of them got stolen. Oh my God, I forgot about that. What was that all about? This is actually ridiculous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I didn't know that. Why can't they just damage one car?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. Otherwise, you end up with that Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones where they're like, that's not supposed to be like that. Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
However, the bad news is we got to clean it. It's going to be a while. The second bit of good news is it was already supposed to look like the beater. So once we get the crack out of it and the used needles, it's back in action. We'd have to worry about the dents. When you guys get like a new script for it, let's say the hangover of the office.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Are you as excited almost as the fans to see what happens next with your character? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, to serving to your coffee, smoothie, even water. It doesn't taste like anything, so it just blends right in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
What have they been doing there?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I can imagine you're like, I've got to text Bradley Cooper and Zach and be like, holy shit, have you seen this joke? This is going to be ridiculous. Yeah, absolutely. And then they're like, oh, I haven't gotten there yet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I'm in Bermuda. Don't spoil it. Has your definition of good work changed over time? What matters to you now that didn't before?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
There's a guy in a park near my house, and he flies this plane, this RC plane, around and around and around and around. And... My wife goes, he's there for hours. He must be so bored with his life. And I was like, no, that guy, this is his happy place, man. He's not thinking about his bills. He's not thinking about his bum leg.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
How old are they?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. I've got a three-year-old and a five-year-old. When they're young like that, when I'm going for one night, this trip, my son was like, oh, why is it such a long time? And I'm like, oh, it's not a long time. My wife's not going to miss me. I'm gone for one day. But my son's like, but I wanted to build Legos tonight and I can't wait. And I'm like, I remember what those feelings are like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And they're not going to be that way forever, right? They're 13. They're going to be like, yeah, you're going to Antarctica. Oh, only five months. Yeah. Yeah. Get out of here. Stay for six. Right. Leave the car keys on the kitchen island on your way out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Everybody who is, let's say, in their 50s or 60s or something like that, when I say, oh, my agent wants me to write a book or this huge potential project came up, but it's going to be this and it's a lot of time away from the kids, all the guys with kids are like, you can work later. You can work later. Work's always going to be there. Your kids are not always going to be there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And with few exceptions, no one has said just do it and they'll understand. The guys that have said that, a lot of them are divorced, can't help but think that there's a correlation there. Or I say, really? Or is that like a lie you're telling yourself to justify working too much and being away from your kids? And often like the next day they'll go, dude, couldn't sleep at all last night.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Totally think you're right about that. And I'm like, yeah, that's the verdict, man. Work will always be there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
He's not thinking about his, I don't know, prostate enlargement issue or whatever. He's not thinking about all the crap that he's been through. And this is because he's an older guy. He's like all the losses. No, this is where he just is for four hours a day in the sun, not giving a crap about the melanoma developing. I get it. Bald head.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Jeez, that has to be gray hair, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
The wife is always the sneak preview of the, is this gonna work? Because if she's like, so I see you a few times a month, is it always gonna be like this? And you're like, oh, this is when I find out she doesn't like being alone for three weeks a month. Maybe should I do something about this? And she's like, you want me to have your kids with you. And are you going to help with that at all?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I'm starting to take the hint.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. You can't afford to put that cost onto your kids. It just doesn't work. We got to do the book stuff. Otherwise the publicist is going to be like, yeah, Jordan, never again. But thanks for having us. This is why I'm here. Yeah. Come on. So this book, I read it. I did the audio book. And it was great because you read it and that makes it even more fun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
There are a lot of uncomfortably close calls where, for example, the nuclear bomb that got dropped on. Can you tell us about this? Because like that seems like a thing that shouldn't have happened. Yep.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
eh, it's not new. COVID seems new because it's new for you, but this guy over here had a deactivated or disarmed nuclear bomb dropped on his house. He's fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Unless you bought one of those kids' toys that had uranium in it, in which case you might be down for the count. That was shocking. One of the earlier snafus, some kid toy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It sounds awesome.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Generally not. And it's, oh, it's safe if you don't open this forbidden container. Every kid's like, get the hammer. I want to see this glowing stuff. Of course. It's like when your parents go, yeah, we used to break thermometers and dump the mercury around our hand and put it in our mouth and spit it at each other. Yes. Probably shouldn't have done that. Probably shouldn't have.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Probably dealing with some consequences still. Oh, yeah. No wonder you have dementia and you're 45, Jordan. Yeah. The CIA wanted to wire cats for surveillance. Scientology infiltrated the U.S. government and the IRS, which is that story was nuts. A lot of close Cold War calls in the book as well. I really enjoy these snafus. Did you have a wait, this one can't be real moment in this book?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It seems like there's at least more than maybe a handful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
The guy's doing that. When you're explaining this in the book and you're like, yeah, there's a guy behind the wall and there's a sex worker and she's drugging the guy and then they're banging. That guy was probably just, I don't know if this is working, but it's working for me. Exactly. Come on, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And the end result is, hey, guys that have an orgasm like to talk afterwards, like science or like to fall asleep afterwards. God, what a ridiculous era the whole thing was. I know you have to run. Do you have a favorite joke? My buddy's been sending me jokes recently and I'm like, oh, I bet Ed Helms has a joke off the top.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
They're going to get to the point at some point in this show, right? Yeah. I read that you had some career clarity really early. You said, I went back to Oberlin and they showed me my application. And there's a question on it that says, what are your career goals? And I wrote TV, film actor, producer. I was 17 years old.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. Now it's something you got to meditate on when you get home. Oh, yeah. Ed Helms, thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me. Super fun. Cheers. Appreciate it. Dive into the intense world of bare-knuckle boxing with undefeated champion Bobby Gunn and his biographer, Staten Bonner, as they reveal the gritty realities and rich history of the sport.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Raised in the raw and resilient world of the traveler community, Bobby's journey began in parking lots fighting for cash at the age of 11 under his father's watchful eye.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
My God, fellow, you can do it. Tune in to uncover the untold stories behind the scars and successes of bare-knuckle legend Bobby Gunn on episode 981 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. All things Zed Helms, well, many things will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
It seems like a huge advantage to have that kind of clarity at 17, because I don't even think I had clarity about what I wanted to do. I used to be a lawyer before this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Please consider supporting those who support the show. By the way, our newsletter, you guys love this thing. I love writing it. You love reading it. I love the feedback on it. jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. It's a practical bit from an episode. It's a two-minute read. I invite you to come check it out. Again, jordanharbinger.com slash news.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. In this show, it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who loves The Office, loves The Hangover, loves Ed Helms, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And we'll see you next time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I did love radio, and I wanted to talk on the radio, and my mom was like, they don't make any money, and it's an impossible job to get, forget about it. And I was like, okay. But I was probably eight then, because I built an FM radio transmitter that would go around the neighborhood. Whoa. Which is illegal, by the way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
But who cares? You're a little Marconi in the attic building your radio. That's so cool. I thought that was cool. And there's something magical about other people being able to hear you. Podcasting really scratched that itch for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
But it seems like it wasn't just I want to be on TV because you said producer, which is not something you say when you're like, I want people to adore me unquestioningly and Get lots of girls. It seems like it's deeper than that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, I agree, man. I started this podcast when I was probably 26 and I'm 45 now. Maybe I was 27. I have to do the math on this, but... That was early. It was early for podcasts, but it was early in my life. You had yours at 17.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Most people, I don't think, either ever get that clarity or they get it when they're like 38 and they go, that's going to be a hobby because I've been a lawyer for 15 years and this is my career and this is what pays the bills and I'm not going to start over to go do improv shows on weekends when I'm making three or four or 500 grand.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
That's irresponsible at that point if you have a family to do that. If you're single, I guess go for it. You only live once. But it seems like that clarity, like you said, yeah, it's a gift. You just get it early and you have a massive head start.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah, it's important that we recognize that. I agree with you. I think it's real easy for people like us to sit up there and go like, man, just go for it and follow your dreams. So let me ask you this. What was going to happen to you if your dream failed? Oh, I'd go back and live in my in-law unit and then probably work for my uncle's car dealership or whatever people say.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
And it's, oh, I was going to be homeless because I don't know where my father is and my mother lives in public housing and I can't leave. And you're like, oh, yeah, that's a worse alternative. I understand why you took the safer route.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
That fell into place. Yeah, fell into place. Exactly. There's a book I read a long time ago. I can't remember the title, unfortunately, but it was about luck and how most people don't want to acknowledge the role that luck plays in their life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
But then they went over certain characters like Bill Gates or something and how it might be like a Malcolm Gladwell outliers. Yeah. And they go over the luck factor and it's Bill Gates did this and he saw this coming, but he also went to a school where there was a computer and it was like the only one that side of the Mississippi and they got the keys and they could go in there at night.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
So they spent a thousand times more computer hours than their peers did. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Right. Lean into his interests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
That's an interesting point. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You've been in some massive franchises, The Hangover, The Office. They have these intense fan cultures, I'm sure you've noticed. What's the most surreal moment you've had when you realized maybe how much public perception had shifted around you? Because it happens, I won't say overnight, but you build up to it. But you talk about this on Conan, there's these different levels of fame, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
You're celebrating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Did the second bite taste better?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. That's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Yeah. The classic one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, music mogul, or special operator.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I see. So the stinky person just follows you from one part of the baggage claim to the other.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
I think a lot of us are going, what's the hard part about being famous? Come on. Most people don't see the flip side of it. They only see the upside of it. They think Oh, man, you get free cream cheese on your bagel. You probably get seated preferentially. You can pre-board on an airplane. You can do all kinds of stuff. You can get a table at this restaurant without waiting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
They're not going to make you wait 45 minutes. They're going to let you come and sit down. You're going to look cool for every girl that you're with or whatever at any time. Those days are gone for both of us probably. But there's a downside, I assume, too, like you said, where you can't get away from the farter at the baggage claim. There's a farter on the other side waiting to bother you.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on Season 3 of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
What Happened to Talina Zar
Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
What Happened to Talina Zar
Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
What Happened to Talina Zar
Alone Time —Talina Zar E1
This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
What Happened to Talina Zar
Alone Time —Talina Zar E1
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
What Happened to Talina Zar
Alone Time —Talina Zar E1
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.