← Behind the Bastards
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
B
A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught, the answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zieman and this is Monster Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer. The investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the Son of Sam. Available now listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:36]
A
Cool Zone Media. Happy New Year everybody. Welcome to behind the Bastards. I'll be leading this episode. I am your executive producer, Sophie Lichterman. I'm going to ask Robert some of your questions. Robert, how you doing, buddy?
- [00:55]
C
I'm doing, you know, it's that fun time of the year where the holidays are over, we still don't quite have to work, but also I can feel it coming. The real world, having to get back into the real world, you know, so that part's not great. The looming knowledge that the stuff that you were like, ah, the world's over, news is over. I don't have to pay attention to anything for the next period of time. Well, that period of time has come to an end and it's time to re engage with reality. I'm at that part of the year, so, you know, mixed.
- [01:30]
A
Yeah. What was a highlight for you over your semi time off?
- [01:36]
C
I don't know. Not really any particular highlight. I just didn't do much.
- [01:40]
A
Excuse me, you're.
- [01:43]
C
We had a party.
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A
Thank you. And your highlight was? It started fire with the lightsaber torch I got you.
- [01:49]
C
Yeah, you got me a lightsaber torch that I started a fire with. That was fun.
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A
It looks really cool.
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C
Got me some nice liquor. That was fun.
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A
I did.
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C
You did.
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A
You looked very cool that night.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Robert, Robert got me. Every year, Robert gets me some kind of really cool weapon. At the beginning of. Of 2025, he got me a bowie knife. After I had surgery, everybody else set flowers, not my business partner. Robert got me a really cool ax one year. Machete. What you called and Sophie, this is your purse knife, which was one of my favorite things you've ever said to me.
- [02:22]
C
And this year everyone needs a purse knife.
- [02:24]
A
Yeah, you got me this thing.
- [02:27]
C
Yeah, yeah, it's like a. It's a Moroccan like ceremonial dagger. So you know, you're supposed to. It's like, I think it's like a hundred years old. You're supposed to. It's beautiful. And weddings and kind of fancy events like that. I could stand to do some rehab on the blade for you.
- [02:43]
A
Cool.
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C
Cause it's kind of dull at the moment, but yeah, you could cut like a goat's throat with that if you had to. If you're being attacked by a goat and had to defend yourself with a knife, you, you know, it would work for that.
- [02:54]
A
It's pretty cool. You also, one year for my birthday, got me this like horseshoe knife. Like that's like for like that looks like a horseshoe, but it's for like a cheese board. I get compliments on all the time.
- [03:08]
C
And I. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that knife.
- [03:10]
A
Robert's a great gift giver, everybody.
- [03:12]
C
Anyways, it's easy if you're just getting knives.
- [03:14]
A
Yeah. But you know, nobody gives me a knife the way you give me a knife. You know what I mean?
- [03:19]
C
Thank you.
- [03:20]
A
We got 481 comments on the thread asking for questions for this Q and A as of time of recording, which is New Year's Day. Everyone, I'm going to ask as many as we have time for. You ready?
- [03:37]
C
Let's do it. Let me get a slug of my Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
- [03:42]
A
Shut the fuck up. That's what you're drinking?
- [03:45]
C
Yeah, baby. Is it good? Yeah, sugar free Baja Blast.
- [03:47]
A
Do I need to drink that? Because I, I've got a. No, I've got a Schweppes. Is that how you say. I don't even know that's how you say it. It's that Schweppes got a Schweps.
- [03:56]
C
Yeah, that seems. That sounds right. I know what you're talking about.
- [03:58]
A
That's a good ginger. Wait, do I need to drink that?
- [04:02]
C
I wouldn't recommend it. It's not good.
- [04:05]
A
Fair enough. Unless you want to sponsor us Mountain Dew, then.
- [04:09]
C
Yeah, sure. Then it's great.
- [04:10]
A
Then we'll say whatever you want. Anyways, what are your tips and tricks for identifying false information while doing your research?
- [04:20]
C
Well, that's tough because there's such like a wide variety of false information. Right. And, and, and some. There's not really any basic tips that can help. I call this like good natured disinformation or good natured bad information. And it's. No one's trying to propagandize you. No one's trying to like fuck with you. It's just a false version of reality has spread because somebody got a story wrong and started telling it and other people have been like retelling it and adding into it. And if there's not like an agenda that's kind of hard, you just have to actually dig into what the work historians have done. I would say as a general rule, if something sounds too good to be true, like if it's exactly what you want to believe about a really complicated and difficult situation, you should take a second look at it. And if it just sounds like too cool and wacky and like something in a movie, like a lot of times that is true. A lot of times history's crazier than anything that winds up in a movie. But if there's like a specific anecdote that I'm like, I don't know, I'll just like type a description of that anecdote in and then I'll put in like ask historians Reddit or something like that to see if. And that gets rid of the low hanging fruit, right? If it's common disinformation or a common just like inaccuracy that gets spread around, someone who knows their shit will have talked about it there and will have sources. Right? So you're not just relying on a Reddit post. You can look back, you can find where the myth has been busted. You can also just like type in again, like a brief description of the anecdote, comma, myth, comma, you know, something like that, to see if like it has been discussed in that context or if there have been a lot of times, what you'll find is historians who are analyzing it and who have found, okay, these couple of parts probably aren't true. This part might be surprisingly true, but that's kind of how I go about doing that sort of thing. If you're asking about how do you tell if pictures or videos are AI generated? That's a separate set of skills and tactics that probably runs longer than we have in this episode. But when I'm just casually studying history and I come across something that I'm like, I don't know about that. It's also useful when you are reading a history book when you like especially like, if it's kind of more on the pop history side of things and you're really enjoying it. That always, if it's super entertaining and I find myself like unusually into it sometimes that's just a sign that like a really good writer got a hold of some history. But it's also sometimes a sign that like, someone's massaging the facts to make a better piece of pop history. So I will search for the book and variations of like historians analyzed response from a historian and see, are there some professionals who have better or equivalent credentials to the author who have taken issue with some of the claims that they've made. Right. These are all kind of like tactics that you can use. There's not like a one size fits all.
- [07:16]
A
And, like, how many sources are you using for different things? I feel like never just accept one source.
- [07:23]
C
You try not to accept one. Every now and then you run into something where, like, well, there's really one book about this guy, or there's like one good book about this thing. And I will at least try then to like, come across like, well, what's some, like, untrue. What are some bad books? Like, what's some bullshit that got spread? Because then at least we're broadening it from here's what's in that book to and here's some stuff that's spread that's not true or whatever. Like you try to. When I'm at least putting together the podcast, I always want to be saying, okay, there's more than is just in this one source. Like, when I was working on the Nuke episodes, I started reading that Andy Jacobson book. I realized that there's a number of people who have some good issues with that book, including some I discuss in the episode. So I read two other books and I read that John Rubell's essays and stuff, because they provided more context. And when I looked at the stuff, okay, there's people who have issues with this part of Jacobson's book, but they seem to speak highly of command and control. So why don't I use. For that segment of the history, I'll focus more on what command and control or what 15 minutes has to say. And that way, number one, you're getting a more varied. You're giving the listeners, the audience, something more varied and effortful than just here's one book and what one guy said in one book. And you're also hopefully avoiding some of, like, the most obvious pitfalls.
- [08:47]
A
Sure. And I mean, again, just. Just to say the obvious, never trust the Google AI summary.
- [08:54]
C
No, no. And you can always, when you're Googling now, if you just want to avoid that, just with whatever you're typing in, add minus AI at the end, just a space, and then minus AI. And it doesn't mean that there won't be AI generated articles or whatever in your responses. That's basically impossible to avoid. But it cuts out the AI generated summary, because that alone, sometimes it's right. And when it's right, it's like, fine. I guess. But the downside is when it's right, you'll read that instead of reading an actual source. That probably will tell you more. And it's also hard to tell when it's wrong. And there's often just kernels of wrong baked into the right. And you're really doing yourself more of a favor by trying to find a better source. So I find that just not having that little summary there can kind of like avoid you sort of casually almost acts. Cause sometimes it's accidental, sometimes you can't. Just the way your brain works, your eyes work, you're going to read part of that summary even before you scroll down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah. Even if you are scrolling down to read a real thing, you may catch something in there and not realizing it, realize that you're picking up some disinformation. So I kind of start with that. Like that's my baseline. I've also. You can do the same thing on DuckDuckGo, I think. So I've been using that more. I'm kind of experimenting. I'm hoping to find this next year, like a search engine solution that I'm happier with because nothing that we've got right now is better than Google was like 6 years ago. But I found DuckDuckGo generally better than Google Now. And doing the minus AI thing gets you better or at least reduces the odds of you getting some bad information.
- [10:32]
A
Sure. What bastard or bastards have you not done because the research will take too long or they're just too complicated.
- [10:42]
C
I mean, I haven't done the Nixon episode yet because there's so many books that I know I need to get through to do it. And that's only part of it. I had been planning to do it in 2024 and talked about doing with the Dollop guys. They were on board and my dad got sick and I just haven't gotten like, it's been a while now. I should have gotten back into it. I just kind of haven't because it's such a heavy lift.
- [11:07]
A
Sure.
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C
I haven't done Mao yet for the same reason I do those heavy lifting episodes periodically throughout the year. The Nuke one was a heavy lift. There were a number of books involved in that. Himmler was a heavy lift. A number of books involved in that. The Zizians was a heavy lift.
- [11:27]
A
Several comments on Himmler. People want more Himmler.
- [11:30]
C
People always want more Himmler. That's what everyone was saying when he died. So, like, I. I'm try. I try to do like, at least Every quarter, like a heavy lift effort, you know, longer episode. But there's a lot of those. So I just. There's not like a particular reason other than I just didn't feel confident tackling that one at that time.
- [11:49]
A
Sure. This next one says what are some unexpected commonalities between bastards other than grew up in poverty and had abusive parents slash guardians?
- [12:01]
C
Yeah, I wouldn't even say. I mean, those are commonalities between a number of bastards from specific time periods, but they're not commonalities, I think, because being poor or having like a household where, you know, you don't have both parents around is a common thing with bastards. It just was really common for kids growing up in those time periods. Like, is it. Should we see it as significant that Hitler was poor and that his dad died when he was young and his mom died tragically when he was not a whole lot older? And, and it really fucked him up where it's like. But those were really normal experiences for just kids in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sickness and disease were a lot easier to, you know, just wipe out portions of your family. And poverty of that sort was a lot more common. So it, it. I think you're kind of like a, a misnomer if you're, if you're looking at that as like a. And those are common traits of, of monsters. Because even if we're looking at the Nazis, it was more common for the big Nazis to have been comfortable and of like, what we might call at least like a middle class upbringing than it was for them to be as like, poor and downtrodden as Hitler was. He really, you know, he had a very tough childhood, but I would say that's almost the exception more than it is the rule. One of the big rules is a kind of. I mean, it's almost like too much to say, not even like a sense of megalomania, but a desperation to be somebody, to be someone who matters in your society is like, you see it. And this kind of desperate need to be attached to whatever group is in power. Right. It's this yearning to be close to power that I think often predicts a lot of the worst people, like the, the folks who will do anything for their career to like, improve the perception of their place in society. That's like the biggest warning sign, I think, that you see that somebody's going to do some really bad.
- [14:08]
A
Let's go to a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more questions. We're back. Um, all right, so Robert, what made you initially want to become a journalist? Was there a specific journalist or publication that inspired you to take that path?
- [14:31]
C
I mean, I remember as a kid during the, the, the Yugoslav civil war and the, you know, the genocide in Bosnia, catching some news, like live news footage from Sarajevo and thinking that like, wow, like, what a, like what a, what an important, serious job. Maybe I'll do something like that as an adult. Like, you know, the reporters on the ground that were talking about like, what was happening in the city. I remember thinking that, like, that's like something adults do. That's a serious job for serious people. And so I definitely, like, that's the first time I can remember thinking that, like something in line with the career I wound up picking out sounded intriguing. And then, I don't know, as an 18, 19 year old reading Trans Metropolitan for the first time. It's a comic book series with a journalist as a protagonist that's set in the far future. It's very good. It's one of the best illustrated graphic novel series I think I've ever seen. And I still revisit it every couple of years. That definitely jazzed me up as an adolescent, as a young adult. And then I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street. I was there at Zuccotti park for a couple of days. I saw little bits of some of the regional ones. And I just was never happy with the coverage that was going on, either the mainstream media coverage or the stuff that was really celebrated at the time, which was a lot of the people who were within the movement and kind of doing movement coverage of what was happening. I mean, that's kind of where Tim came out of, right? So I think maybe I was. Maybe I just could see that a problem was coming. But I was not happy with what I was seeing. And I was becoming, as I became more in my early 20s, more acquainted with history, and particularly the political history of Latin America and US interactions in the Middle East. I grew more and more frustrated with the news, with what I still saw as this like, really important job that I thought was being like kind of systemically done badly. I took. When I was in college, I took courses on the Holocaust and remembrance. That was about how the Holocaust has been covered in like movies and fiction, but also how the Holocaust was reported on at the time and afterwards. A lot of that stuff, by the way, made it into the episodes about how like the liberal media helped fascism get a foothold the last time. So really, since I was in kind of like 2021, I've been thinking about the shortcomings of our media and how disastrous those shortcomings are. And I still kind of fundamentally believe what I did as a kid, that it's like a really important job reporting on conflict, especially for serious people. And there's just not a lot of them doing. Doing it. You know, there are. There are some great reporters, obviously much better than me out there reporting on conflict. But I think the bulk of what gets written about war and genocide and conflict around the world, including, you know, in the United States, protests and the like, is bad. And I guess I became aware of that at a pretty young age.
- [17:53]
A
Just made me think about when I was in college. I took early on in college, I got approval to take a class. I was a freshman. Everyone else was a senior in the class, but the professor, for some reason, let me take it. And it was a Psychology of Ethics class. And I had to do this report that was like, most of what I worked on in that semester. And it was all about, you know, the ethics of the insanity defense for mass shooters. And it was right after the Aurora shooting, the movie theater Batman shooting. And I think a lot of that really shaped the way that I thought about people, which I think impacts a lot of our work. So, I don't know, it just kind of takes like, one class. I feel like sometimes it's just one. One or one assignment, really, to, like, influence you creatively.
- [18:48]
C
Yeah. Yeah, it is. Because when I think back on my time in school, I can think I can only really remember one teacher, two teachers by name that I had in the whole 12 years. But I remember moments more than one, three or four. But there are some moments, and really, for the most part, they were singular moments, three or four of them that were absolutely foundational to who I became. Which is always interesting to me. The degree to which, like, both school is just a complete blur. Like, I barely remember it. And also I can point out, like, three or four moments where I'm like, well, that changed everything, you know? Yeah, I guess that's how it is sometimes.
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A
It's definitely how it was for me.
- [19:32]
C
Yeah.
- [19:34]
A
There's several different questions that basically sum up to the same. Same question from folks that they're asking, who's the oldest bastard in history?
- [19:43]
C
The oldest bastard. Like, I'm assuming they mean, like, chronologically, like the first bastard.
- [19:48]
A
Linear. Yeah. That was asked several different times.
- [19:53]
C
I mean, we certainly don't know his name, right? Like. Cause here's the thing, and this is. Cause I've talked a lot, you know, about, like, Something that gets that anarchists bring up quite frequently, which is how you had a lot of, in prehistory among these hunter gatherer tribes, a lot of extremely egalitarian communities, right? Particularly compared to, like, a lot of the settled cultures that followed them, right, where there was significantly more equality between men and women, there were significantly flatter hierarchies, you know, a lot less power being invested in single individuals. And I talked about in the manifesto episodes about, like, the. That ikong ritual, like the shaming of the meat to, like, try and stop young men who are hunters from getting too big an ego because they think that hunting is all that matters. Because it's like the cool, sexy job to have, right? And if you're focusing on that, you're ignoring how well most of our calories come from people like gathering nuts. And a lot of that work gets done by women. And also people need clothes, people need tools, all of these things that are just as important as going out and killing a deer. And in fact, necessary precursors that are a lot less sexy. So if you let, like, the young hunter boys get, you know, a ego about them because, like, well, I'm the one who brought home the meat, then you're ignoring everyone else's contributions. That makes your whole community weaker, right? And it creates the opportunity, at least, that one of those young men is going to lose their shit and bring terrible, terrible suffering onto the rest of the community, right? But I think when we talk about that, we talk about all of these different sort of, like, rituals and like, like ceremonies and rules that different, like, societies adopted to deal with the problem of power to ensure that they had flatter hierarchies, right? There's a tendency then to kind of forget something, which is that those were not part of those societies because they were more enlightened than modern people or at least than the people that followed them. It was not like, oh, we used to understand how to be good as a society, right? Or as human beings. We used to have better cultures, we used to be more ethical, we used to treat each other better, and we stopped. I think it's more accurate to say, well, all of those different rules and practices are evidence of the fact that there's always been a problem with power in human cultures and that individual people taking too much power for themselves has always been a danger. And our ancestors recognize that and have throughout the entire history of human events and some of cultures developed methods of dealing with it. But ultimately we have to assume all of those methods hit points of failure, right? Because Those cultures didn't last. Right. And they didn't beat out in a lot of cases, the more stratified and hierarchical cultures that followed them. And so while I think it's really valuable to look at here are solutions. Different cultures have proposed the problem of power. The fact that those they had to come up with so many different solutions is evidence of the fact that that problem is kind of universal. Right. And that hints at a long history of bastards of individual and cadres of assholes that have sought in every kind of society, including ancient hunter gatherer societies, to try and take much more than their fair share from everybody else. Right. And so there's certainly a long prehistory of nameless bastards out there. And I think it behooves us to remember that both because I am one of those people who says we should be looking at what other older, different cultures developed as ways to deal with the problem of power without pretending that they definitely had it figured out. Because again, none of that stuff lasted forever. Right?
- [23:46]
A
Right. Let's take another quick break and be back with a couple more questions. We're back. Robert, do you listen to music while you write scripts for the pod?
- [24:02]
C
Yeah, sometimes. I used to do more. I used to listen to more music while I was writing. The last, like, year or so I haven't done it as much. I don't know why.
- [24:11]
A
Do you have like a. They always ask NBA players, like, what, what's the song you listen to before game time? Do you have a song you listen to before POD time?
- [24:19]
C
I mean, not before recording a podcast. I have like, different bands that I listen to while I'm writing more often than others or different. Like, one place I used to go a lot is the White Light Mixes. If you just type like White Light Mixes in, it's like a set of like hour, hour and a half long, like, mixes that are meant for people to, like, drive to. I think that was the initial idea, is that these are great for, like, road trips and stuff. And so different DJs will do like an hour, hour and a half long stuff that you can kind of zone out to while you're driving. I found them useful over the years for writing a lot. And yeah, that's, that's. I mean, I listen to. I do. I listen to a lot of, like, live bluegrass shows for whatever reason. I find that helps me concentrate. Last night, as I was working on what'll be some of the first episodes of 2025, I was listening to Green Sky Bluegrass at Red Rocks. I'll listen to my ska streetlight while I'm writing. But again, a lot of the last year, I haven't really been listening to much while writing, and I don't really know why. It comes and goes in waves.
- [25:26]
A
Have you ever started an episode on someone commonly known to be a bastard only to realize you actually agreed with them or decided they weren't worthy of being a bastard?
- [25:36]
C
I mean, like the Beau Brummel episodes. I started thinking like, oh, this is the guy who, like, ruined men's fashion and did a lot of damage to the psyches of men for generations by locking people into these, like. Cause that's how he gets portrayed a lot as he invented the suit and made men's fashion boring and made men scared to express themselves through clothing. I don't actually think that's a fair summary of what Beau Brummel did in his life. It certainly was not fair to his intent. I think he was a much more sympathetic person than that. But I also thought there's a lot of bastardry in that story because, I mean, just English culture during the period of time that he was alive was a fucking nightmare. So I decided, like, well, this is still good for an episode. Sure, I have. There's been a couple of, like, times not really worth diving into, where I've heard like, one story about someone that sucks like a celebrity or whatever. And I've looked into like, okay, can I get Lang an episode? Or is this just. Somebody did something shitty once.
- [26:35]
A
Katy Perry. We talked about doing Katy Perry once.
- [26:39]
C
That happened with the Katy Perry episode where I thought the whole thing with her and the nuns, there was this controversy over this house she was buying. It's not as bad as it seems. I'm not saying I go into bat for her as a good person, but I don't think she's an interesting subject for an episode. Right.
- [26:57]
A
For sure.
- [26:57]
C
Yeah. It's less that I don't think I've ever had it where, oh, no, this person's a hero. Although I do find some things about Beau Brummel to be kind of admirable. But it's more that like, ah, this person just is like a person who did some shitty stuff and that's not really a bastard. Right. Like, we're not. We're not declaring someone a bastard just because they, like, had flaws and did bad. We've all done bad things. We're not all interesting to hear about for two hours.
- [27:23]
A
Yeah. Which bastard Pastor present would be the best podcast guest to cover a different horrible person?
- [27:31]
C
Oh, man. I mean, Honestly, I feel like if he was alive, I would make fucking $50 million doing a podcast with L. Ron Hubbard where I just explain different cults to L. Ron Hubbard and he critiques them. Like he explains, Ah, now this is where you fucked up. This is where you rent a classic. It would be the least responsible podcast of all time. I would deserve to go to prison for making that show. Cause it would just create a new generation of hyper competent cult leaders. But it would be super interesting just getting LRH on the record, critiquing other cult leaders because they're all worse than him. He was the best at that.
- [28:09]
A
Yeah, 100%. All right, guys, we'll be back on Thursday to answer more of your questions. Any final thoughts? Robert?
- [28:18]
C
You know, in the new year. Fuck it. I don't know. Whatever it is to you, fuck it.
- [28:26]
A
Cool. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastard.
- [28:55]
B
A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zieman, and this is Monster Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the Son of Sam. Available now listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts, this is an iHeart podcast.
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A
Guaranteed Human.