Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book

Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Hosts: Robert Evans & Cody Johnston
Date: October 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Robert Evans and guest Cody Johnston begin their multi-part dissection of Ben Shapiro’s latest nonfiction polemic, Lions and the True Story of America and Her Critics. With their trademark sardonic and deeply informed style, they critique the book’s shoddy logic, questionable animal metaphors, and right-wing revisionist history. Along the way, they explore Shapiro’s grandiose ambitions, his misapplication of literary references (notably CS Lewis and Tolkien), and his deeply personal animus against the cultural mainstream.

The episode is as much a critique of Ben Shapiro’s book as it is a satirical take-down of the broader culture-war mindset that animates it.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Why Ben Shapiro Writes Like This

• Shapiro’s Insecurity: Robert and Cody quickly zero in on Shapiro’s personal resentment, especially his failed aspirations in Hollywood, as the animating force behind his work.
  • "His hatred of the left, its origin in a lot of ways... is because he sees Hollywood as a fundamentally leftist institution that refused to give him the respect he deserves, that didn't recognize his brilliance." – Robert (57:52)
• Dissection of Book’s Purpose: Ben wants to position himself as a serious intellectual—aspiring to join the likes of CS Lewis—but lacks the substance and skills.

2. The Lion-Scavenger Analogy Eviscerated

• Shapiro divides society into “lions” (creators, defenders) and “scavengers” (lazy destroyers), suggesting conservatives are the former and liberals the latter.

• Robert dismantles the analogy:

  • Lions are major scavengers in actual biology—up to 50% of their diet comes from stealing kills. (07:39)
  • "The reality is that, like, well, lions, not only do they scavenge, but most of their scavenging is them stealing kills from animals that did the actual hunting... Robbing them and then taking credit for it. Yeah, Interesting, interesting." – Robert (08:53)

• Cody chimes in on the analogy's laziness:

  • "He couldn't stretch his like, analogy past the end. No, because if you're going to say lions, that's a specific animal. And then you're zooming out to say scavengers, say vultures, like, pick a scavenger to, like, Lay like lions and vultures, whatever. But, like, it's just you're. You're being specific with the first one and then vague..." – Cody (09:34)

3. Ben’s Framing and the Problem of “Scavengers”

• The hosts break down how Ben sees leftist protestors as “scavengers”—especially in the context of pro-Palestinian protests in London.
• Robert exposes the self-contradictory, ahistorical nature of this framing, pointing out the imperial, scavenger-like history of Britain and the West.
  • "London was only the center of Western civilization due to a vast, centuries long program of what can only be described as scavenging theft on a grand scale against an impossibly vast chunk of the globe." – Robert (16:19)
• Cody notes the double standard: Ben and his allies want to crush political enemies with state power, even as they decry “scavenger behavior” in others.

4. Weaponizing Twitter & The Culture War

• Ben’s use of single inflammatory Tweets or statements as proof of societal rot is ridiculed.
  • "Classic conservatism. Not just Ben Shapiro of like, this person made a dumb post that's obviously the same as tens of thousands of people getting murdered from airstrikes and starve to death. These are equivalent 100,000 likes to a bad post. Equal to the murder of thousands..." – Robert (15:09)
• The hosts highlight the selective outrage and hypocrisy regarding whom violence and cruelty are deemed acceptable or outrageous.

5. Misusing Literary Giants: JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis

• Ben tries to use Tolkien and Lewis as ideological pillars, casting the “hordes of Mordor” as leftist protestors or Nazis.

• Robert and Cody stress the actual, nuanced, and often anti-authoritarian politics of both writers:

  • Tolkien was an anarchist-leaning critic of power, not a defender of imperial authority. (32:29)
  • Tolkien "loved England, but not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth... He hated the flattening of cultures around the globe under burgeoning capitalism." – Robert (34:09)
  • Lewis, while more conservative, was disgusted by political hacks and theocracy; he loathed unchecked power.

  "Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor..."
  — C.S. Lewis, quoted by Robert (41:23)

• Meme-able Moment: Robert muses Tolkien would cast “Sauron” with a Californian accent today, given his anti-Americanism. (35:14)

6. The Problem With Ben’s “Lions”: False Virtues

• Ben attributes to “lions” traits like creativity, bravery, and refusal to complain; Robert and Cody call BS:
  • Conservatives, especially culture warriors like Ben, are notorious for “complaining about the unfairness of life” and resisting change, not for bold innovation.
  • "If we're just talking about conservatives, the opposite of what you do is find new solutions to problems or forge new paths. You're violently offended by the idea of forging new paths and new solutions." – Robert (37:22)
  • "That's every conservative's job." – Cody (37:54)

7. Ben’s Projection and Hypocrisy

• The hosts identify multiple points at which Ben openly projects his own personal failings (envy, resentment, conspiratorial thinking) onto his enemies.
  • "The spirit of envy is the primary... That's the center of Ben Shapiro's soul." – Robert (58:39)
  • Ben’s description of “scavenger” psychology (“believes there is a great conspiracy against him... only path to success lies in tearing away at that great conspiracy”) is a self-own, summarizing his own career. (61:16)

8. History According to Ben: Selective Amnesia

• Shapiro blames the post-war British welfare state for the empire’s demise—ignoring the devastation of World War I, which bankrupted and bled the Empire dry.
  • "The British Empire didn't get sick and failed because of welfare. It began its slow deathslide during the First World War in which it lit its treasury on fire and annihilated a generation of young men." – Robert (66:14)
• Kipling’s personal tragedy (the death of his son in WWI) and subsequent regrets are lost on Ben, who cherry-picks Kipling’s imperial lines with no sense of the author’s later disillusionment.

9. Poetic Climax: Kipling’s “A Picked Song”

• As a counter to Ben’s worldview, Robert reads Kipling’s anti-imperialist poem, celebrating the subversive, collective resistance of the “little folk.” (71:30)
  • A moment that encapsulates the podcast's blend of historical literacy and dark humor.

10. Final Recap and Body Count

• Robert and Cody agree: The book is intellectually shallow, poorly argued, and—ironically—full of the vices it accuses its enemies of.
• They preview future episodes, promising they'll keep mining Ben’s book for further egregious examples.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"The whole root of his ideological argument here is that you've got lions, which are conservatives...they're creators...and then they're scavengers who just want to tear everything down...the reality is that, like, well, lions...most of their scavenging is them stealing kills from animals that did the actual hunting. Like hyenas and cheetahs...rob and then taking credit for it."
— Robert Evans (08:53)

"He couldn't stretch his, like, analogy past the end. No, because if you're going to say lions, that's a specific animal. And then you're zooming out to say scavengers, say vultures...It's just you're being specific with the first one and then vague, like you're using a category for the second. And this is sloppy."
— Cody Johnston (09:34)

"CS Lewis would fucking like, pile drive him in frustration at how badly this is written."
— Robert Evans (15:57)

"He wants to use...the fundamental premise of this is just based on a complete misunderstanding of wildlife. Beyond that, his attempt to apply a moral line to something fundamentally amoral—which is how different creatures take in their calories—shows a very conservative ignorance towards basic biological reality..."
— Robert Evans (11:51)

"Tolkien...would have been disgusted by them [Shapiro's politics]. Tolkien was a firm anti-Nazi. He was also very anti-Stalin. But he was regularly critical of conservative icon Winston Churchill..."
— Robert Evans (32:29)

"Theocracy is the worst of all governments..."
— C.S. Lewis (quoted by Robert Evans, 41:23)

"The spirit of envy is the primary...That's the center of Ben Shapiro's soul."
— Robert Evans (58:39)

"The scavenger does not believe in an understandable universe in which success is the result of performance of duty...The scavenger, in his perverse projection, believes that there is a great conspiracy against him and that the only path to success lies in tearing away at that great conspiracy with tooth and claw."
— Ben Shapiro (mocked by Robert and Cody, 61:16)

"Rome never looks where she treads...We are as busy as they, working our works out of view. Watch, and you'll see it someday. No, indeed, we are not strong. But we know peoples that are. Yes. And will guide them along to smash and destroy you in war...And then we shall dance on your graves."
— Rudyard Kipling, "A Picked Song" (read by Robert Evans, 71:30)

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Segment Timestamps

• [02:13] – Episode begins post-advertisements; introductions and tone-setting
• [04:44] – Robert announces the focus: Ben Shapiro's new book
• [07:39] – Dismantling the lion/scavenger metaphor (lion facts)
• [13:12] – Ben’s impression of London/anti-genocide protests
• [21:03] – Leftist protest motives, refuting Ben’s logic on “Queers for Palestine”
• [29:30] – Ben misappropriates Tolkien & Lord of the Rings
• [32:29] – Tolkien’s actual politics
• [41:23] – C.S. Lewis’ warning on theocracy, Lewis' real views
• [53:03] – Lewis on democracy and the problem of unchecked power
• [58:39] – Dissecting Shapiro’s envy and Hollywood resentment
• [66:11] – Kipling, British Empire decline, and WWI consequences
• [71:30] – Closing with Kipling’s anti-imperialist poem

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• This episode is a masterclass in debunking shallow political analogies and exposing the hypocrisy of "culture war" narratives.
• It demonstrates how poor writing and misunderstanding of history and literature can serve ideological propaganda.
• The dynamic between Robert and Cody blends biting humor with genuine expertise, making nuanced points highly accessible and entertaining.
• Even if you haven’t read (or haven't the patience for) Ben Shapiro’s work, this episode offers a much more coherent and insightful literary and historical analysis.

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Final Thoughts

A cutting—but thoughtful—critique that skewers not only Ben Shapiro's latest book but the very worldview that undergirds it. For listeners, it's both a satisfying roast and a primer on how not to do cultural commentary (and how to dissect it when it's done badly).

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

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[Robert Evans]

Cool Zone Media oh my goodness, it's behind the Behind Bastards. Podcasters Robert Evans show that you're listening to this was not a good introduction. Sophie Lichterman Producer Show Is that what we're doing? Guess you making fun of me? Sophie? Are you making fun of me? Laughing at me? Well, here to laugh at me more. Cody Johnston welcome to Never Laugh at me.

[Cody Johnston]

Thank you so much.

[Robert Evans]

Guest Cody, you are the host of News, comma, some more, a podcast about news, and also a YouTube show about news. Indeed. How you doing?

[Cody Johnston]

I'm great.

[Robert Evans]

Are you?

[Cody Johnston]

Ah, no, no, Everyone.

[Robert Evans]

No one's doing great. Come on.

[Cody Johnston]

But you gotta be pleasant, right?

[Robert Evans]

I was at a friend's wedding the other week. He's like, how you doing? I mean, right now, fine.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

In general, bad.

[Cody Johnston]

Open bar, good. Yeah. Outside, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I'm fine. Oh, we're all doing our best. Things are weird and happening, and they're happening quickly and suddenly. In many ways, they are.

[Robert Evans]

They're happening here. You could say the things that are happening.

[Cody Johnston]

I don't know. I could do that.

[Robert Evans]

And one of the people who's happening here is a friend of ours. You and me, Cody. A friend of the pods, a friend of our mutual friend who we all miss right now, Katie Stoll. Hi, Katie. Ben Shapiro, our buddy, our good comrade and colleague.

[Cody Johnston]

He's my bandmate. He's in my band.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. You and Bennifer rocking out, Katie. And you and I, and also Sophie did a long series of podcast episodes. We went through the entirety of Ben Shapiro's unbelievably shoddy fiction novel. I mean, just some of the absolute worst prose I think either of us has ever encountered.

[Cody Johnston]

Real bad.

[Robert Evans]

It was bad enough that Ben has not written another fiction novel since, to the best of my knowledge.

[Cody Johnston]

Here's the thing. I'm really upset. He announced he's had this new book out, but I remember, like, a year or two ago, a few years ago, he said he was working on a science fiction book.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I want to read that, fucker.

[Cody Johnston]

I want that. Like, don't do that. I don't need your, like, weird.

[Robert Evans]

That's like a year of free content for me, Ben. Get it out.

[Cody Johnston]

Give me the juice, man.

[Robert Evans]

I know I'm late on my novel, Ben, but come on.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You don't have a real job.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, just do it.

[Robert Evans]

Take your time off.

[Cody Johnston]

Take time off.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, my God. But we are doing a Ben Shapiro book episode because on September 2nd of this year, he published his latest nonfiction novel, Lions and the True Story of America and Her Critics. That's in.

[Cody Johnston]

And her critics.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, of course.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Parentheses at the very bottom and tiny deck.

[Cody Johnston]

This is a fascinating choice for him, it seems like. So, you know, like the abundance book. We don't need to talk about abundance or whatever, but, mm. Firestorm on the Internet seemed to be sort of written in a way that was intending for, like, well, and then Kamala Harris will be the president, and then this book will come out. That didn't happen. And so it's a. The reaction was different. It's a whole other conversation sort of happening.

[Robert Evans]

It's like sitting down with a friend to, like, tell them that you're worried about, like, dental health while they're actively bleeding out from an arterial wound. And you're like, yes, I just really think you need to floss more. And. Oh, sorry, you spurted a little bit of that arterial blood right on my neck here.

[Cody Johnston]

But, yeah, maybe rip the pages out of that book and use them to, like, stop the bleeding or something. And this book seems very, like, 2019, 2018 coded. It's like, what are you doing? Like, doing this history stuff again? Like, what did the Trump administration do the first time with their, like, projects about, like, what the real history is, like, how slavery didn't happen or whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

This is a weird book, I guess, to come out now, in my opinion, but I haven't read it, so maybe it's actually perfect for this exact moment.

[Robert Evans]

You know what it is? I'll tell you right now. We'll talk about this more. Ben Shapiro desperately wishes he were C.S. lewis. And, you know, C.S. lewis talked about politics, but in, like, a broader kind of philosophical sense. And he was, like, a good writer, you know, And Ben is not. And Ben is also obsessed with, like, petty culture war grievances and shit.

[Cody Johnston]

Ben Shapiro.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Okay. This is him trying to, like, really establish himself as a CS Lewis type thinker. And it's not good. That's my short. But we'll go through it because I have actually quite a lot to say about most of the introduction to this book is part one. So, Cody, you and I may be back repeatedly talking more about this.

[Cody Johnston]

Fair enough. So five hours on the intro.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not even getting through all of that. But I think you will also get the gist of his argument from this, because Ben being Ben, most of this book is him just kind of repeating himself, right? Yeah. It opens with an inscription. This is like the dedication to the book. To the lions, the Ellis capitalized. The hunters, warriors, and weavers. Each of those words is capitalized. Who build, defend, and maintain the greatest civilization in the history of mankind against the scavengers. The S is capitalized who would destroy that civilization from within. Right. And that's essentially the thesis of the book. Right? Is that you've got lions and scavengers. That's all of society.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, that's his whole thing. I can't wait to find out what he thinks is a lion, what he thinks is a scavenger.

[Robert Evans]

And what's funny here is, first off, I know this is petty, but I can't get over it, is that we're just this whole book. The basic premise of this, and he's trying to be kind of artistic by framing it as lions and scavengers. You know, like he's trying to be kind of philosophical, but his entire underpinning of that attempt is based on a wild, factual inaccuracy about lions. Thank you. Like, out the gate. None of this is right because lions and scavengers aren't separate things. And I'm going to quote very quickly from an article on Kruger park, which is a wildlife national park in South Africa. Another lion fact not commonly appreciated is that lions are not just hunters, but scavengers as well, often chasing smaller predators like cheetah off their kills. In some instances, up to 50% of a lion's diet can come from scavenging rather than hunting live prey. Lions are scavengers as much as they are hunters. Sometimes more.

[Cody Johnston]

Sometimes more. I mean, you imagine he gets most of his information from the Lion King, right?

[Robert Evans]

Right, yes. This is all of his knowledge about lions is from what he remembers of the Lion King and the fact that lions look impressive.

[Cody Johnston]

Yes, exactly.

[Robert Evans]

But there is something deeply meaningful about the whole root of his ideological argument here is that you've got lions, which are conservatives, right. Which are the people who build culture and the people who, like, make everything good. Right. And they're creators. You know, they do the hard work of forging civilization, and then they're scavengers who just want to tear everything down, and they're just mooching and stealing and critting, attacking from within this thing that they didn't make. And of course, the reality is that, like, well, lions, not only do they scavenge, but most of their scavenging is them stealing kills from animals that did the actual hunting. Like hyenas and cheetahs. Right. Like robbing them and then taking credit for it. Yeah, Interesting, interesting.

[Cody Johnston]

He's just a path writer.

[Robert Evans]

Like, he's a bad writer. He's a bad thinker.

[Cody Johnston]

He couldn't stretch his, like, analogy past the end. No, because if you're going to say lions, that's a specific animal. And then you're zooming out to say scavengers, say vultures, like, pick a scavenger to, like, Lay like lions and vultures, whatever. But, like, it's just you're. You're being specific with the first one and then vague, like you're using a category for the second. And this is sloppy.

[Robert Evans]

It's also evidence of, like, this thing that you see a lot with Bin and with other conservatives, where it's like, well, you've never done anything in the world, right? Like, you don't know anything about survival in the wilderness. If you did, you'd know that, like, hunting is a bad way to survive. Very few animals live just by hunting. Cause it's hard and it burns a lot of calories. Like, the person who taught me how to hunt is a great outdoors person, right. Extremely skilled. And they will admit, like, if they had to survive on their own, 90% of their calories would be foraging and trapping. Because hunting is wildly inefficient. And if you can take a kill that someone else made or find something dead, that just works a lot better. It's what almost every animal prefers to do. Right.

[Cody Johnston]

Gotta survive.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It just keeps you alive better. Anyway, the introduction chapter opens, and it's just titled London, England. And this is how it starts.

[Cody Johnston]

Cool.

[Robert Evans]

A tension lies at the core of our being. It roils us. It churns our guts. It boils our brains. The tension lies between two opposing forces. Those forces beat within every man's breast. They fight for supremacy within every civilization. One must triumph and one must fall. The spirit of the lion. The spirit of the scavenger. Again, lions are scavengers.

[Cody Johnston]

Lions are scavengers. The scavengers. There are specific animals you can choose.

[Robert Evans]

Fine. Lion being lion, it's actually very efficient.

[Cody Johnston]

It's smart, like, also, brain's boiling.

[Robert Evans]

I say that as a hunter and a scavenger. I pick up roadkill and I hunt. I also raise and slaughter animals. All of these things are ways to get calories. Beyond that, beyond him getting lion facts.

[Cody Johnston]

Beyond, like, the premise of the analogy.

[Robert Evans]

He wants to use. Right. The fundamental premise of this is just based on a complete misunderstanding of wildlife. Beyond that, his attempt to apply a moral line to something fundamentally immoral, which is how different creatures take in their calories, shows a very conservative ignorance towards basic biological reality, which is what they're supposed to stand up for. You know, scavenging for food is not in any way worse than hunting for it. And every great predator like the Tyrannosaurus rex, paleontologists generally agree we're scavengers, at least in equal measure to hunters. Right. Because it's just not a great way to survive just hunting.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, you get what you can.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. You get what you can.

[Cody Johnston]

Unless you're like a society.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, right. And then you could just go to a grocery store.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Like Ben does. Pay someone to do your shopping for you, you know, because you soft little hands, you're not going to go skin an animal. You're not going to do that. Ben Shapiro.

[Cody Johnston]

Hey, we don't know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, well, the cowboy hat chafes your head when you try to wear it outside.

[Cody Johnston]

Got a bunch of splinters when he held up that two by four outside.

[Robert Evans]

Two by four. You know, he's still tired from that. He's still getting the splinters out of his hands from that one day he went to Home Depot to buy a single piece of wood.

[Cody Johnston]

Got to go scavenge for more calories to get back to zero.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Anyway, after this we get a dramatic opening about how Ben is writing this introduction in London, which, quote, has been conquered by the scavengers. Who is he defining as scavengers, you ask Cody, theoretically?

[Cody Johnston]

I don't ask that because I know the answer to that, but you can go ahead.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It was pro Palestine, anti genocide protesters who were marching through the city. Ben writes, quote, hundreds of thousands strong marching, their banners unfurled, the banners of terrorist groups and communists and of transgender activists gathered together to revolt against the civilization that has given them their rights and their prosperity and their power. And, you know, he's writing about protests against the Israeli government's actions in Gaza, which he defines as protests supporting hamas and the October 7th attacks. And obviously you can find people who had Hamas flags. There were people cheering on the October 7th attacks. That's a thing that happened. But that's not the primary reason there are protests. The primary reason there are protests and what most people is the genocide is all the deaths.

[Cody Johnston]

That's what the UN just admitted it was.

[Robert Evans]

It's what the UN just admitted.

[Cody Johnston]

Like, it's just that is so kind. Of course he's doing that. But also like, actually, Ben, they're not trying to like rail against or like destroy the society that like built everything. They're trying to participate in that society.

[Robert Evans]

They're participating in it by speaking and by trying to speak to power and make their voices heard. Also, the civilization didn't give them their rights. They had to take their rights or their predecessors did via protest and violence sometimes, because societies don't just give people rights because they're nice. Those rights are fought for.

[Cody Johnston]

Well, yeah, Like a lion. Unlike these people who are fighting for it like scavengers right now.

[Robert Evans]

Obviously, in standard Shapiro fashion, he ignores the critiques these marchers have of the mass slaughter of civilians by a modern first world military in favor of raging at people who march around with flags and post on social media. He cites one commentator from Twitter who wrote, After October 7th, what did y' all think decolonization meant in response to those attacks by Hamas? Quote, her comment received nearly 100,000 likes. Wow. And it spoke to the very core of the scavengers. All inhumanity against the lions is justified. And this is just classic conservatism. Not just Ben Shapiro of like, this person made a dumb post that's obviously the same as tens of thousands of people getting murdered from airstrikes and starve to death. These are equivalent 100,000 likes to a bad post. Equal to the murder of thousands of. Equal to fucking babies being incinerated. All equivalent, yes.

[Cody Johnston]

Think of the likes. I, I'm. I'm actually, I need to hold a moment of silence for the likes. Real quick.

[Robert Evans]

For the likes. Yeah. Really, that's. Thank you, Cody. We sometimes forget the real victims here.

[Cody Johnston]

I think we do. I think we do. I also, I am dreading how many fucking times he's going to use the words lions and scavengers.

[Robert Evans]

It's so much. It's such bad writing already.

[Cody Johnston]

I'm just like, God, stop saying it.

[Robert Evans]

CS Lewis would fucking like, pile drive him in frustration at how badly this is written.

[Cody Johnston]

At least name the lion, like.

[Robert Evans]

And I'm not particularly a CS Lewis, Stan, but the man knew how to put together a sentence, right? Like. And he understood how to, like, not make my head hurt while reading a book repeatedly.

[Cody Johnston]

Or in Ben's words, your boiling brain.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly, thank you.

[Cody Johnston]

Boiling your brain in London.

[Robert Evans]

But we do see here kind of the ultimate reason for the framing of this book. Israelis are lions. Palestinians and people angry at their murder are scavengers. There's a particular irony in his horror at this scavenger gathering and the beating heart of what was once the center of Western civilization. Because London was only the center of Western civilization due to a vast, centuries long program of what can only be described as scavenging theft on a grand scale against an impossibly vast chunk of the globe. They stole from the rest of the world. That's what imperialism is. They stole from India. They stole from India everywhere they could.

[Cody Johnston]

They built it to themselves.

[Robert Evans]

They did genocide. They starved 30 million people in Bengal. They wiped out entire Ethnic groups, you know, to get spices. Like it's. It.

[Cody Johnston]

Okay, you're making it really hard for me to say this is building.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

But I'm going to try. Okay, yes.

[Robert Evans]

The Amritsar massacre, clear example of building.

[Cody Johnston]

They're built. They build. Okay, impossible. No, you're made a good point. I mean, it's all like this whole framing just goes back to that fucking Tweet from like 25 or 15 years ago. Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.

[Robert Evans]

Precisely.

[Cody Johnston]

It's just that. Which he apologized for, by the way, and said it was stupid. He said it was a stupid tweet.

[Robert Evans]

We'll talk about another thing that he apologized for in a little bit here, Cody. But yes, thank you for. And then.

[Cody Johnston]

Did you write a whole book about it?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So Ben expresses disbelief in the existence of groups like Queers for Palestine, which he says was formed, quote, in solidarity with people who would throw queers off buildings at the first available opportunity if given half a chance. Meanwhile, his colleague Matt Walsh, in the immediate wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, was posted this. This was left wing LGBT terrorism. There was never much doubt. Now there is none at all. All left wing terror networks must be crushed. All of the terrorists and their helpers and funders must be arrested, prosecuted and put to death. Yeah, these Palestinians want to kill queer people. Unlike Ben Shapiro and his allies at the Daily Wire, who want Matt, Hamas, Walsh, who. LGBT terrorists, to death, which I'm sure doesn't include everyone who's lgbt. Just, you know, whoever Matt Walsh thinks is terrorists.

[Cody Johnston]

Very clear. I mean, now it. Associating with anybody if.

[Robert Evans]

Right, right. And people who associate with them, of course, and who fund them, you know.

[Cody Johnston]

Maybe in ways that we still don't know. We still. But. But surely they do.

[Robert Evans]

It's not important to have that all ironed out right now.

[Cody Johnston]

There are other tweets from Matt Walsh, obviously. That's horrific. What a horrible, fucking terrible person.

[Robert Evans]

He's a bad guy.

[Cody Johnston]

He specifically has also been basically calling for unity amongst all the factions on the right in order to carry out what he's talking about crushing the left and like rounding up people and all the stuff he's. And public executions, I believe he's talking about as well.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, Charlie Kirk had talked about public executions too. Like his belief that that's something we need to bring.

[Cody Johnston]

Age 12, I think is the appropriate age for watching that, according to them. So he's calling for uniting all the right wing factions in order to do this. So. Which, I mean, I guess a good phrase instead would be to unite the right. So, sure, maybe he's actually calling to unite with people who actually would want to do the same thing to Ben. Like, if you're calling to unite the right in order to do this, then you're calling to unite very, very far right, sorry to say, like, neo Nazis who would want to kill the Jewish people who are in the coalition, much like Ben is saying that Hamas wants to do to gay people. Just seems like I don't think they understand what they're saying or they recognize these inconsistencies or consistencies. To them, who knows?

[Robert Evans]

And they don't care. Of course, none of that. It doesn't matter. Like, to them, what matters is crushing their enemies, right? Like, the fact that they aren't logically consistent. It's about power. It always has been. You know, and there's. There is a lot that's disingenuous about this framing, though, and it's worth getting into that. One thing is that as of May 2025, per UNICEF Regional Director Edward Beigbetter, more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured by Israel in the Gaza Strip. These kids had no power or frankly, desire to throw anyone off of buildings. Right?

[Cody Johnston]

Like, but they might one day.

[Robert Evans]

You know, you can find people who are delusional in any group, but I know a lot of queers who are angry about what's being done in Palestine. They're not laboring under a misapprehension that Hamas is woke. They're angry that kids and women and children have nothing to do with Hamas or any other armed group are being murdered. That's what they're angry about. Because it's bad.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's very obvious that that's the situation. But again, they don't care if there's.

[Robert Evans]

A mass shooting at a church that believes things I don't. Like, I'm not. Not gonna be angry about the mass shooting because the pastor of the church said something shitty and like, like, that doesn't make it okay that kids got shot. Do you. Do you understand that?

[Cody Johnston]

Like, yeah, those kids were massacred. Like, it's. It's horrific.

[Robert Evans]

The queers for Palestinian people aren't marching in the street because they. They aspire to make their civilization identical to how the Gaz run. They're marching because they're angry that civilians are being killed. Right? And they understand, rightfully, that the average person in the Gaza Strip has absolutely no control over what fucking Hamas does.

[Cody Johnston]

You can call those things horrific crimes against humanity and not have to be like, but also, I don't want to do Hamas stuff here because they would. They have like.

[Robert Evans]

It's like, are you bummed out when you read about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes, I can be bummed out about that. I fucking talked to a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. She was like seven when it happened. She's not responsible for the empire. Like, me being bummed about us nuking Japan doesn't mean I'm pretending the empire of Japan was a good society. It wasn't like, it's just bad to kill kids.

[Cody Johnston]

Their crime was being born in a certain place at a certain time. And that's actually not a crime.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. It certainly shouldn't be treated like one. Right. Again, are there assholes in any mass movement who try to hijack the momentum of a larger number of people to push their own fucked up bullshit, including, like, uncritical worship of violence used by a group? Sure. And Ben Shapiro knows full well what it's like to uncritically endorse violence against civilians. In 2002, he wrote an article stating that he wasn't the least bit concerned about civilian casualties in Afghanistan or the West Bank. And the insinuation was that this extended generally to the War on terror. He expressed a belief that the life of a single American soldier mattered more than the life of any number of Afghan civilians. And while he apologized for this article being badly written, later the next year he wrote an article for Town hall in which he argued in favor of allowing Israel to, quote, transfer Palestinians and Israeli Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. That's just an ethnic cleansing.

[Cody Johnston]

Like, transfer is not a dirty word. I think is the title of that piece. That's ethnic cleansing.

[Robert Evans]

Fuck it. Israeli Arab. They're like citizens. You realize that, right? Like, it doesn't matter because they're not Jewish.

[Cody Johnston]

I guess I feel like he only really apologized for, like. Like you're saying it being poorly written, which. Ben apologize for everything you've ever written. Everything he does, but not the actual argument. I don't think. I don't think he's actually. He ever actually said like, and I don't think we should be doing this. Or he did and then changed his mind back.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, I think both of those things have happened. Now during this rant, Ben first starts referring to. And again going, sorry, because we've, we've gone off on a tangent. This rant is about the protests last year in London against the genocide in Gaza. During this rant, Ben first starts referring to the lions collectively as the Pride with a capital P in order to differentiate from the so called scavengers as a group. He accuses scavengers of being willing to do anything to tear down the pride. This is not mere antisemitism. Antisemitism is an age old hatred rooted in a conspiracy theory. It takes many forms and has countless victims. This is something different. It is a united coalitional hatred of the West. Now this is actually where I come closest to agreeing with Shapiro in a certain sense, because the primary motivating factor of these protests is not antisemitism. There, Ben and I agree. One factor at play within many people protesting against Israel's actions here is a coalitional hatred of what Ben defines as the West. But while he tries to describe this as an unreasoning hatred of Western civilization, it's very clearly a hatred of what Western governments do to specific groups of people.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, exactly right.

[Robert Evans]

Like the decades of support for Israel's continuing actions that have been genocidal and quasi genocidal for quite some time.

[Cody Johnston]

He constantly does this, I mean, with many different topics and issues. But he's conflating, I mean basic criticism of actions. Like it's not, it's not saying like these values that you pretend to have are evil. It's not about like Western values or anything like that. It's about specific actions being taken that should be able to be criticized without you saying like, so you hate everything we've ever done and everything we believe in. Well, if it's this, then yeah, I guess that's not what is actually being said or claimed.

[Robert Evans]

Right? And we will continue and get to Ben talking about JRR Tolkien, which I am excited to chat with you about, Cody. But first let's have some ads.

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[Robert Evans]

Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast. You better listen. That's literally the definition of being an Aries Moon.

[Cody Johnston]

Just one little spicy off comment, that's all it takes.

[Robert Evans]

Everyone loves me at the Cancer and then the Aries comes out and they said who the is that? No you're gonna come for me being an Aries and you have a sag Moon. Get out of here. But I'm a Capricorn rising so that honestly balances it out and makes me more likable. Okay, that is your Capricorn talking. Listen to High key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast podcasts. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Who do you go to when you've got a problem in your life that you need to solve? Group chat full of friends? Your family? Or do you just overshare with strangers on the bus? All of that can be helpful, but it's also helpful sometimes to go to a clinically trained and credentialed therapist. And if you think that's something you need in your life. BetterHelp has been helping people find a therapist for over 10 years. BetterHelp counselors meet localized standards for counselor vetting and care delivery. BetterHelp is high trust certified and complies with GDPR standards. They do the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and their 10 plus years of experience and industry leading. Match fulfillment rate means they often get it right the first time. But if you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different counselor at any time with no additional charge. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. So find the one with better help. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] behind that's betterhelp.com behind new school.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So after introducing this protest and starting his scavengers and the pride, you know, discourse, Ben pivots to discussing the Lord of the Rings. And it becomes clear here that that opening sort of vignette about hundreds of thousands strong marching, their banners unfurled, this was him pulling from Tolkien describing it's.

[Cody Johnston]

Hordes, barbarians at the gates, the armies.

[Robert Evans]

Of war marching on. Ministerial, right? Yes.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, he's not like sly, it's obvious what he's doing.

[Robert Evans]

And he gets very direct here. He literally calls the quote, hordes of Mordor stand ins for the Nazis and their allies. Now, Tolkien himself would have rejected Ben claiming this wholeheartedly. He always rejected. He hated it when people like, accused the Lord of the Rings of being rooted in real history and his World War I experiences. And I do tend to be in the camp of like, well, obviously they were kind of Both World War I and World War II influenced what you were writing about. Like, I'm sorry, JRR experiences have influenced.

[Cody Johnston]

Your art in many ways. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now that said, Lord of the Rings, in case you, you didn't know, was written mostly between 1937 and 1949. Trilogy. That was like the bulk of the writing. It wasn't published until the 50s, but that's when he was like doing most of his and editing. And I would agree with Ben that like, there's clearly some World War II in the Lord of the Rings, but it's also not accurate to say the hordes of Mordor are just stand ins for the Nazis and their allies. That's not really true. And I think it's worth discussing J.R.R. tolkien's personal politics here because like most peoples, they are complex and not entirely consistent and sometimes incoherent. For an example, Tolkien on a number of occasions described himself as an anarchist and described himself as an anarchist in ways that are like, relatively like recognizable to modern day anarchists. He talked about his hatred of power. He expressed a disgust for industrialism. That is very much in line with how some anarcho primitivists Talk today. Right. Not entirely so, but his fundamental dissection of, like, why he was an anarchist is very much, like, relevant to modern day anarchists. He thought people were not fit to hold power over people. Right. This is an important belief. The ring of power. Right. Never heard of it. That is effectively an object in which all of, like, political power, all power of the state is craving source sold into it. Right. Like, that's not, it's not super subtle. Right? Yeah. There's certainly a reading of the Lord of the Rings that's very much anarchist. And at the same time, Tolkien was, for example, not an uncritical, but a supporter of the Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War, largely because he was horrified at the killings and what he saw as the unjustified murders of nuns and priests and whatnot by, in some cases, anarchists. Right. And so again, this is not like most people. JRR Tolkien's political beliefs were not entirely coherent or consistent.

[Cody Johnston]

Ezenflow is a little bit, yes, contextual.

[Robert Evans]

However, what I can say is that JRR Tolkien was not at all in alignment with Ben Shapiro's politics and would have been disgusted by them. Tolkien was a firm anti Nazi. He was also very anti Stalin. But he was regularly critical of conservative icon Winston Churchill, who he described as looking like the biggest ruffian. And photographs from the Tehran Conference. Right. So he said, basically, standing next to fucking Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill looks like a scumbag. Like, which is not something Ben Shapiro would ever say. I found a summary of a letter that Tolkien sent his son Christopher in December of 1943. That gives you an idea of how little Tolkien's personal politics graph on the Ben's ideological schema. Tolkien lamented that the globe was getting smaller, duller and flatter, foreseeing American sanitation, moral pep, feminism and mass production introduced everywhere, which would at least cut down travel. Colonel Knox said that one eighth of the world spoke English, which Tolkien called a damn shame. He called for the Curse of Babel to strike all tongues and considered refusing to speak anything but Old Mercian seriously. Tolkien found Amero cosmopolitanism terrifying. He was unsure if victory would be much better for the world as a whole. This was the sentiment of a lot of folks, but it indicated no lack of patriotism. Tolkien loved England, but not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth. But were he younger, Tolkien figured he would be grousing in the military, willing to go to the bitter end and hoping that things might turn out better for England again. You know, you can find Tolkien had some issues with, like, feminism, like or what he saw as feminism. But he also. He hated, like, American capitalism. He was disgusted by, like, advertisements. He was disgusted by the culture of consumption, and he was disgusted by the flattening of culture, by the idea that everyone would need to speak, you know, English, by the idea that American culture would flatten the world. Right. He found this personally horrifying and disgusting, which is like the opposite of Ben's politics. And he was not pro the British Empire. He was, in fact, deeply critical of the British Empire for the reasons established in the letter above. He hated the flattening of cultures around the globe under burgeoning capitalism and was disgusted by the domination of peoples around the world by foreign powers. The beliefs he most consistently expressed throughout his adult life were sort of anti capitalist, anti industrial sentiment based around a hatred of pollution and the destruction of the natural world. But he was clear in his letters to his son and others that he saw America and Americanism as the central culprits in this.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, that's what Mordor was basically modeled after, right?

[Robert Evans]

Like, and, like, yeah, like, there's Germany in there too. Yeah, yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

But like, the orcs, like, sprouting up from the ground and, like, destroying the planet and all that stuff that. That we apparently love now.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Like, there's some Germany in Mordor, but there's more than a little of the United States there, too. And quite frankly, more than a little Great Britain. You know, he was not. Cause he was looking at the industrialization that had happened in his own country, too. This is something that horrified him. Right. If Tolkien were somehow to have survived to the present day and gotten involved in, like, a film version of the Lord of the Rings and had any choice in casting a voice actor for Sauron, I wouldn't be surprised if he wound up sounding like a Californian. Right? That's a little bit. I'd be a little bit of a dickhead. But, like, he expresses feelings in line with that, right? Like, yeah. I can tell you one thing that conservatives are on about in this country that he would have hated is the idea that, like, everyone needs to speak English. What the fuck are you talking about? Like, yes. Anyway, after quoting a passage from Return of the King describing the armies of Mordor marching on Minas Tirith, Ben Shapiro writes, so it goes. Today in London, the lions are gone. And without the spirit of the lion, our civilization collapses. What is the spirit of the lion? The spirit of success, of responsibility, of duty. Now, I should note here, Cody lions sleep up to 18 hours a day. They have intensely matrilineal family group, the women run and like, are in charge as a general rule in lion society. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, they steal and scavenge food regularly from kills made by better but physically weaker predators like hyenas. I know it's probably silly for me to keep returning to the build as and know a goddamn thing about lions. Well, but paragraphs like this drive me fucking crazy. Cody the lion is a hunter, creative, audacious, innovative. He bends the world to his will. He forges new paths and crafts new solutions. When faced with a problem, the lion does not complain about the unfairness of life. He seeks an answer. The lion is bold and persistent. Failure does not unnerve him. It teaches him. The lion knows that boldness of purpose and willingness to understand, undergo risk are the driving forces of any successful civilization. He believes in the words of proverbs, where there is no vision, the people perish.

[Cody Johnston]

He's really stretching this really, really, really far.

[Robert Evans]

Let's avoid the biological critiques here. If we're just talking about conservatives, the opposite of what you do is find new solutions to problems or forge new paths. You're violently offended by the idea of forging new paths and new solutions. Novelty discussion. Ben Shapiro. Yorick, Arch conservative.

[Cody Johnston]

Conservative. What's the. There's one bit also about, like, they don't whine. I know that's not what the thing is.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, no, he's saying that they don't complain. The line does not complain about the unfairness of life. That's literally your job bit, buddy.

[Cody Johnston]

That's every conservative's job.

[Robert Evans]

That is the only way you've ever made money.

[Cody Johnston]

He's constantly talking about how everything is unfair to him specifically.

[Robert Evans]

Well, and it's just you've got rich complaining bin. That's what you do for a living.

[Cody Johnston]

Business model. Yeah, complain and then sell leftist tears mugs, right? What are you talking about? Lyin? It's absurd.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Cody Johnston]

I think there's also Ezra Klein did an interview with Ben.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, e. Crazy. Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

Not, you know, whatever, but like, Ben's like, talking about, like, lions and he's like, yeah, and then, you know, they build the social fabric and all this kind of stuff. Pump's entire project is to tear down the social fabric. That's not the line that you're talking about. Literally, in 2019, Ben was on, like, Bill Maher or something, and he's like, yeah, I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 because I didn't want him to break the social fabric. But he did. So now I'm going to vote for him because he's already broken the social fabric. Like a scavenger, maybe.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, right.

[Cody Johnston]

It's just the whole thing is just, like, not. It's just a mess.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's a mess. And it's like, ultimately, Ben, I know you believe in things to be entirely fair. I can think of one time in his life where Ben took a principled moral stand when he got really angry at.

[Cody Johnston]

When he left Breitbart.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

For what? Was it Lewandowski who had.

[Robert Evans]

His colleague was physically aggressive towards, like, a female employee? Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

No, he left. It was. I. I've mentioned that exact thing before. So he does.

[Robert Evans]

Unlike a lot of these guys, Ben does believe in some things, but his beliefs are very fluid. Right. And his morality is very fluid.

[Cody Johnston]

You know, I mean, it's so inconsistent. He became a political pundit when he's 17. Like, he's got it. He's got to do that. He wasn't ready for that, and he decided to do it. And he's just constantly inconsistent. Everything he purports to, like, believe in socially, in the conservative sphere is not something like, he lives. He's like a theater guy with a doctor wife. He stays home and, like, does podcasting and takes care of the kids. Like, that's not what he purports that people should be doing.

[Robert Evans]

No. Now, Ben goes on to describe the lion as, quote, a warrior who understands the spirit of the scavenger is always abroad and that only strength can defend against it. Then he. And again, the lions are the scavengers that, like, hyenas need to defend.

[Cody Johnston]

Anyway, whatever warriors are you, like, doing, like, now, they're like, people doing, like, whatever.

[Robert Evans]

And lions aren't warriors. They don't have wars. They fight because they're animals.

[Cody Johnston]

Exactly. Like, why are you saying the lions are warriors? What are you talking about?

[Robert Evans]

It's just not. Anyway, whatever. Then he brings up another much better writer, C.S. lewis, claiming the lion lives by these words. And he's quoting C.S. lewis. Right. That he, Ben says, describes how the lion lives. Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality, a chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Now, that's a very good point from C.S. lewis. I don't think Ben understands what this sentence means.

[Cody Johnston]

It's a good sentence.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Because, I mean, his whole being disgusted and horrified at Trump and then voting for him and supporting him because he won and pivoting like that's, that's him yielding to danger, a danger to his career, a danger to maybe his personal health.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, that's what the entire GOP did. We all saw it live in 2015, 2016. It happened. We saw Ted Cruz go out there and say, vote your conscience. And then like four weeks later he's sweaty on the phone being like, vote for Trump, please.

[Robert Evans]

Right, exactly. And that's. I agree with this C.S. lewis quote. It's a very well written and accurate point to make. And Ben does not understand it at all because he is incapable of living that way. Ben's entire career has been built on taking money from the mega rich to push a very specific kind of propaganda. He wouldn't know courage if it bit him in the ass. And he has never had to stand up for what's right in a way that meant taking on any meaningful personal risk. Lewis's quotation here is excoriating men like Ben Shapiro who lack any meaningful virtue because they've never had to stand up to any kind of danger. I would like to introduce Ben to another quote, one that might be more relevant to his own stated political aims and the aims of the party he supports. This is from a 1946 letter C.S. lewis sent to a professor friend of his. Collected in of Other Essays and Stories. Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated. And since he dimly knows he is doing wrong, he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of heaven will torment us indefinitely. Because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. There it is.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean that's like. It's just like now they're supporting a robber baron who is leading, who is backed by theocrats backed theocratic movement like we just talking about. He's just doing both.

[Robert Evans]

It's so CS Lewis failed to consider, you know, Porkin. No los dos. Right?

[Cody Johnston]

What if you get a robber baron to lead your theocratic movement? That's wild man.

[Robert Evans]

There we go. Speaking of robber barons, Cody, the sponsors of this podcast.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, get em.

[Robert Evans]

There we go.

[Cody Johnston]

Got em.

[Robert Evans]

So good. Hell yeah.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Robert Evans]

To High Key, a new weekly podcast. You better listen. That's literally the definition of being an Aries moon.

[Cody Johnston]

Just one little spicy off comment, that's all it takes.

[Robert Evans]

Everyone loves me at the Cancer and then the Aries comes out and they say who the is that? No you're gonna come for me being an Aries and you have a sag Moon? Get out of here. But I'm a Capricorn rising so that honestly balances it out and makes me more likable. Okay, that is your Capricorn. Listen to High key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. Snaps for Robert for the ad transition. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you. So Cody clapped.

[Cody Johnston]

I guess I just cared about it.

[Robert Evans]

I crave craze. I simply crave it. You know, it's my heroin also. Heroin. No, I don't do heroin, Robert. Anymore. No, I've never done hero.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, according to RFK Jr. It helps you focus in school.

[Robert Evans]

It does. It makes it easy to focus. Or at least the worm in his prayer focus on being on heroin.

[Cody Johnston]

Didn't know I was on heroin until I did it. Now it's all I can think about.

[Robert Evans]

To be fair, the only heroin I've ever taken, I licked off a guy's finger at a cafe and rural India.

[Cody Johnston]

That's fair.

[Robert Evans]

It was a nice afternoon. So we're talking about CS Lewis, who Ben Shapiro just brought up, not licking.

[Cody Johnston]

Heroin off of fingers.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No, we're not. Although I'd do it again. Oh, buddy. Well, maybe not in this fentanyl era. Anyway, it's worth noting that in 1951, when Winston Churchill and his Conservative Party retook the UK government, the Prime Minister's office wrote Lewis a letter offering to gift him an honorary title, Commander of the British Empire. And CS Lewis declined. Not because he wasn't conservative. He was. That's the most accurate box to put him into. But because he was worried that if he accepted, it would turn him into a political figure, which would diminish him as a writer and a thinker. Because while, again, he would talk philosophically about things that kind of were adjacent to politics, he was kind of disgusted at the idea of being like what Ben Shapiro is, you know, like. Of being a political pundit.

[Cody Johnston]

Propagandist.

[Robert Evans]

Right. He thought that was gross. Cause it is, you know, to put.

[Cody Johnston]

Those sort of thoughts in your.

[Robert Evans]

As Orwell would say, all art is propaganda. Right. But I don't think Lewis believed that.

[Cody Johnston]

You know, but there's a huge difference between doing your art and expressing yourself in that way and being like, well, I'm going to start an organization that does propaganda for the regime.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That gets literally paid by oil billionaires to write propaganda supporting oil billionaires. Yes, exactly. And again, Lewis would have. Obviously. Maybe not obviously, if you don't know him. But Lewis would have fallen on the more conservative axis of politics, certainly more conservative than progressive. But one of his most consistent stances was a sort of disgust at political hacks and politicians. Now, where Lewis would align with Ben Shapiro is he had a strong belief in natural law and in a sort of objective moral reality, which he saw as necessary to accept in order to be able to criticize groups like the Nazis. In other words, Lewis wrote that if there was no right in, like, a greater cosmic sense, by what standards could we judge the Nazis as being wrong? And I don't agree with Lewis in this. I'm just describing his beliefs here. At the same time, though, like his friend Tolkien, he expressed horror at the two occupations that he worried would doom mankind. The magician who sought power over nature and the astrologer who proclaimed nature's power over man. And I want to quote from a write up on CS Lewis.com here. The former thought led many to think man can do everything. The latter strongly suggested he can do nothing. Lewis saw modern scientists as the sons of the magician who believe every ill in the world can find a cure in science. From the astrologer came the philosophical materialist who believed man is nothing but a slave to nature, his animal instincts. And one thing we see here is that despite having a belief in absolute morality, Lewis tended to reject simple dichotomies like the one Ben presents us with in his Very Bad book. He presented readers with two archetypes in opposition, either of which would doom mankind if worshiped or followed beyond reason. Lewis isn't saying science is bad. And he's not saying that, like, belief in the natural world is bad or like kind of yielding to nature's power is bad, but making either of those, like the kind of center of your being is bad.

[Cody Johnston]

Right, because he's also not saying there are two types of people.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, he's not. One or the other going too far in either of these directions is bad. Yeah, yeah. And this is something that Ben would never do. Ben glories in presenting a false and limited choice to the reader and then describing one of those choices as inherently good and the other as inherently bad. Had Lewis was a believer in natural hierarchies and a critique of democracy, which he felt was the best system overall, but also was not a good system. And he believed that, among other things, one of the problems democracy had is that it must ultimately destroy education. Right? That, like, because of the way democracy functions, it's going to, like up the.

[Cody Johnston]

Educational system affects order, like overtaking facts in reality.

[Robert Evans]

You know, he's not entirely wrong about. Obviously, other democracies do better. So I don't agree with him. This is inherent. But it can happen, right?

[Cody Johnston]

A lot of bad things can happen in a democracy.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly, exactly. And Lewis was also. He was deeply critical about technological process and the worship of machines in a way that makes me pretty certain he'd have rejected AI violently.

[Cody Johnston]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Both he and Tolkien would have been on the bomb data center side of. They would be radicals about that. Like, if you could bring both of those guys forward and explain to them what Sam Altman is trying to do, they would try to buy a gun. Like, they would be extremists.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, even like using the AI for like, fake things like dead people have said and like the ghost AI stuff they're doing.

[Robert Evans]

All.

[Cody Johnston]

All of it is.

[Robert Evans]

If you explain to him, like, how much water and pollution are created by data centers, he would, like, fucking Tolkien especially would lose his mind. Like, he never imagined anything that awful.

[Cody Johnston]

Like, it's just not even, like taking.

[Robert Evans]

Like, what the thing is doing itself. Right, Exactly.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. What it can create or create in quotes, I guess.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah. Now, Louis did believe that you could reform bad political systems through Christian education. Like, that was his solution to the problems democracy causes for education. But he was also against mandating Christian principles in public education. Right. So what we see in Lewis is a mix of some values and stances that could very easily be mapped to things that Ben himself believes there are some. But mixed in with this is a fundamental distrust of giving humans power, one that makes me equally certain he'd have disliked the argument that Ben is making here about lions and scavengers. In his book Present Concerns, Lewis wrote, I don't deserve a share in governing a hin roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people who believe advertisements and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.

[Cody Johnston]

He would hate so much about everything.

[Robert Evans]

He'd be so unhappy.

[Cody Johnston]

Like, like the Internet memes, meme culture. Like. Like, oh, God, he would hate it.

[Robert Evans]

And again, not at all woke. Just absolutely not.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, Just disgusted with like.

[Robert Evans]

And not a theocrat. As Christian as he was. Not a theocrat.

[Cody Johnston]

Exactly. Yeah. Every single AI post that the Department of Homeland Security puts up, like, every single thing they're doing, his fucking mind despise this.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

Grotesque. Gosh, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, after quoting Lewis, Ben introduces another wrinkle to his lion scavenger dichotomy. The pride of lions is split up between three sub archetypes. The weaver, who, quote, weaves together the disparate strands of family and society and often goes unnoticed. But quote, are the true heroes of our civilization. And the hunters, the warriors, and the weavers, form a pride together. It is kind of unclear to me what separates the hunters from the wars.

[Cody Johnston]

I was gonna ask you to describe the hunters in the war.

[Robert Evans]

I think the weavers are like women. That's the place women have in the pride is they're the weavers, you know?

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. Well, the men get two groups to choose from.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. They get to hunt or war or be a warrior. Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

All right.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway. And again, also, Ben uses warrior and hunter more or less as synonyms in this book. It's just. He's a bad writer. After establishing this, the subsets of the pride, the categories inside the pride, Ben acknowledges that lions have to create a system of rules, which they absolutely don't because they each have the spirit of the scavenger in them. And so they have to always be on guard against being overtaken by that. And again, half of their calories they get from scavenging.

[Cody Johnston]

Wait a second.

[Robert Evans]

They're not on guard against it. It's how they survive.

[Cody Johnston]

The pride has a spirit of. Of scavenger.

[Robert Evans]

Every lion has the spirit of a scavenger in them. Them.

[Cody Johnston]

Then what are you talking about, Ben?

[Robert Evans]

What he's trying to say is that, like, he's describing the scavengers, liberals and leftists, as, like, people who are lazy and just want to steal from other people and also tear down what other people have built. And Ben is trying to say that, like, there's that voice in all of us that we have to be on guard against. Right. Like, that's. That's what he's trying to say. Right?

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. Because also in that same interview about this book, they bring up Vance, and Ben basically admits that, like, yeah, the current version of Vance is a bit of a scavenger. He's doing all these things. Things.

[Robert Evans]

He. Like, he's described Vance.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. Oh, 100. Like, he's like, yeah, the. The hillbilly elegy era. He was like a lion, which, like, maybe he was a scavenger the whole time. Ben, who.

[Robert Evans]

You know, how is that being a lion? He's literally just.

[Cody Johnston]

Okay, I know we don't need to talk, but, like, it's just. It's absurd. But it was interesting that he is willing to recognize that there are scavengers amidst. I don't even know if he thinks Trump's a lion or not. But that whole group of people.

[Robert Evans]

People, yeah. Next, after this, we get one of the least coherent sections of the book thus far. A pride of lions can accomplish nearly anything unless the pride falls to the pack. And pack is capitalized too, to the spirit of the scavenger. The spirit of the scavenger is the spirit of envy. He's not. He's just putting words. There's just. There's. It's just ridiculous. This means nothing. It means nothing. It's so fundamentally irrational. Because the foundation of this, the whole life. You're just wrong entirely about, like, none of this makes sense. It's like if I were to write a book about, like, fucking. I don't even know how to like, make a bad enough analogy. No, it's like really bad.

[Cody Johnston]

You can't. Because also when you say the word pack and you capitalize it, I'm thinking of wolves, which wouldn't you be able to use for your other. Like, they're so interchangeable.

[Robert Evans]

It's like if I were to write a book called the Horse and the Ant and start it with like, obviously, the horse soars high above all of us on its mighty wings.

[Cody Johnston]

Meanwhile, the ant looming over the horse.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Cody Johnston]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

So I debated whether or not to discuss the fact that Ben himself is clearly motivated by a deep spirit of envy. Right. His initial career goal, as you and I have talked about on several podcasts, Cody, was to write for Hollywood. He wanted to be a screenwriter. He wanted to write TV and movies. And he goal. Because he's not good at it. Right. And the daily wires movie like is also a massive waste of money. Horrible idea. Because none of them are good writers.

[Cody Johnston]

Hey, you wait until they do the anti woke Snow White, okay? That's gonna be really, really good.

[Robert Evans]

That's gonna really blow up. Audiences are craving the children cry out, demanding. And he woke Snow White.

[Cody Johnston]

You can hear him now. They're just not Andy Wilkes now.

[Robert Evans]

Was the Snow White made in like the 60s? It's not woke. I don't know.

[Cody Johnston]

Anyway, it's because they made a new one and the actress wasn't white.

[Robert Evans]

I haven't been keeping up with the fucking Disney movies. Don't. Yes, but I think it's important to hear the spirit of envy is the primary. That's the center of Ben Shapiro's soul. Right? It is quite obvious, reading his angry rants against Hollywood. That's a huge amount of his writing. And it's why he's tried to make the Daily Wire. They wasted millions of trying to create their own Hollywood. Because his hatred of the left, its origin in a lot of ways, I'm not gonna say this is the only origin point, but a major source for his hatred of the left is because he sees Hollywood as a fundamentally leftist institution that refused to give him the respect he deserves, that didn't recognize his brilliance. Right. That is Ben Shapiro's origin story as a villain is that he couldn't hack it as a fucking professional screenwriter. Yes.

[Cody Johnston]

About 85%.

[Robert Evans]

Right. Yeah, exactly.

[Cody Johnston]

Growing up fundamentalist, religious, conservative, all that kind of help did not help. But that resentment fueled By Envy is 100%. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And he can only see this as an example of Hollywood hating conservatives like him. Right. It has to be bigotry because that's the only way he could not succeed. Right. And you know, he has to ignore a lot in order to believe this. If you were to look at reality, he would see that plenty of conservatives have been very successful in Hollywood. Screenwriters like David Mamet and John Milius. Right. Or Milius, I always forget the guy who did Red Dawn. Right. Actors like Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight, not to mention Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who feels more like a Democrat today but was the literal Republican governor of California. Right. There's plenty of successful conservatives in Hollywood as actors and writers.

[Cody Johnston]

Franklin Eastwood, massively, successfully talented, very conservative person.

[Robert Evans]

And plenty of conservative, like movies that are conservative. And I just think about how many during the war on terror, how many TV shows and movies had a scene where the guy has to torture someone to save lives. Right. That is conservative propaganda.

[Cody Johnston]

Even though it's made by a lot of like, you know, self described libs or whatever. Like it's still conservative ideologically.

[Robert Evans]

Like. Yeah.

[Cody Johnston]

But we're in America, so we don't recognize that all of that is in service of a more right wing viewpoint. And he resents it. And I mean, we're seeing it now with all this like, move to like. I'm not even gonna say cancel culture. Cause that's not what it is, it's not what's going on. But like the firing of all these people is an expression of that resentment because they want to do it. They want to be doing it.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And they're. Yeah, part of it is if I get them out, finally, I'll get a sh. People will realize that was better.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Finally.

[Cody Johnston]

Late night with Gutfeld.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Right. And obviously, you know, Ben did not fail to make it in Hollywood because people were bigoted against his conservatism. He failed because he's not a good writer. His only talent is in agitating people with cheap political shots. This is very funny because the next paragraph of the book, after that line about the spirit of the scavenger is the spirit of envy. The very next paragraph is basically Ben describing himself. Quote, the scavenger does not believe in an understandable universe in which success is the result of performance of duty. Duty. Instead, the scavenger believes that any such argument is a guise for power and power alone. The scavenger, in his perverse projection, believes that there is a great conspiracy against him and that the only path to success lies in tearing away at that great conspiracy with tooth and claw.

[Cody Johnston]

Oh, Ben, Ben, you gotta read that again.

[Robert Evans]

Ben, that's like your whole life, buddy. That's your. That's your entire, like, career, buddy.

[Cody Johnston]

Your first book was about the conspiracy against you and you specifically, and conservatives generally.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, with tooth. And that's your whole life, bro. Now, Ben goes on to write that while lions form a pride, scavengers form a pack. Is it a problem from a writing standpoint that pack and pride are basic synonyms? No. I mean, it should be. But can you describe lions as having a pack? Sure, sure. You know, right. I guess you couldn't describe other, like pride. It doesn't go. But pride is very sweet. It's like a bourbon whiskey thing. Right. Anyway, the pack consists of looters, lechers and barbarians. The fall of London, he writes, is symptomatic of the growing power of the pack. And reading this reading to him, right, about the fall of London felt particularly ridiculous in 2025, given that about a month before Ben's book was published, London police arrested 474 people at a Palestine Action Ban protest. Per the BBC, police have arrested 474 people at a demonstration in London in support of the ban group Palestine Action. The Metropolitan Police said 466 protesters were arrested for supporting the group, five for assaults on police officers, two for public order offenses, and one for a racially aggravated offense. Scores of people simultaneously unveiled handwritten signs with the message, I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action. At the protest organized by Defendar Juries at Westminster's Parliament Square Square. It was the biggest protest since the government prescribed the group in July under the Terrorism act of 2000, making membership of or support for it a criminal offense, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. No officers were seriously injured, and the Met police said that the number of Arrests was the largest made by the force on a single day in the last 10 years. London really has fallen to the pack of police. You can't even say, I oppose genocide. I support this group. They'll arrest you.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, you know, I feel like he loves it. Again. It's just. This is what they're talking about doing now. Labeling anybody as a terrorist and doing exactly what you described. But here, that is their political project. That is what he is supporting right now. He's guesting on all the podcasts with the Vice president, who's only a podcaster now, talking about this exact thing.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, exactly.

[Cody Johnston]

So maybe he's a. I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

A wolf, A vulture?

[Cody Johnston]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

A lion? Yeah. Yes. Bad writer. Yes.

[Cody Johnston]

Lying piece of shit. Bad writer. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, given the way book publication timetables work, there's no way that, you know, these mass arrests happen. They certainly didn't happen in time for Ben to revise his book to account for it. Right. But the fact that this happened puts the lie to everything he says here about the supposedly massive and rising social power of the pack and the fact that they've taken London, you know, the fact that the pride has to constantly be back on their heels, scrambling desperately to hold onto civilization. Because if. If, like, you just acknowledge that, like, no, actually, they have all the power and they're, like, massively abusing it and, like, hurting people and, like, are in no danger whatsoever, but are endangering huge numbers of people. That doesn't sound as good.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, no, it needs to be. Barbarians at the gates. We're perpetual, Desperately victims, perpetually persecuted, rather than.

[Robert Evans]

We have every lever of power.

[Cody Johnston]

Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

And he critiques leftists in this passage for embracing Mao Zedong's statement that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. But that's the only power Ben has ever recognized. What do you call these ma. What do you call mass arrests, man?

[Cody Johnston]

Premise of police. Like, what are you talking about? Like, ice is, like, do it. Like, that is political power.

[Robert Evans]

What do you call, like, Israel's actions? Right. Like, I mean, it's bombs, I guess, more than the barrel of a gun. But, you know, the basic idea is the same, right?

[Cody Johnston]

You can use language in ways to mean many things. Yeah, he believes that.

[Robert Evans]

That.

[Cody Johnston]

Yes, he believes that.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Ben continues with a warning that the children of lions will themselves become scavengers if the lions don't pass on their ways to their kids. And then he pivots to talking about an 1897 poem that Rudyard Kipling wrote for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. This poem written at the height of the power of the British Empire, he sees as a warning that went unheeded. The tumult and the shouting dies the captains and the King's departure. Heart still stands thine ancient sacrifice and humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget. Lest we forget. Now, I don't really see that as a warning about not indoctrinating your kid with propaganda, but I guess I can see where he's coming from there. That said, it's clear that where he goes next in this chapter, basically he says that the reason England fell, so to speak, is that they embraced the welfare state and that's why the British Empire is ended. Right. That's why they're no longer the center of the west, is because they got taken over by these socialist ideas. And like the establishing of a welfare state, all of those lions, their kids became scavengers. You know, that's the argument.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. It's a mandatory scavengerism.

[Robert Evans]

Right, right. And this is classic Ben, leaving out a massive and important inconvenient fact that does not fit in his neat ideological lines. The British Empire didn't get sick and failed because of welfare. It began its slow deathslide during the First World War in which it lit its treasury on fire and annihilated a generation of young men. Kipling himself was profoundly changed by the horrors of World War I. He was a strong imperialist. His whole life he was a very strong imperialist. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities in World War I. Kipling despised Germany and German civilization and he was a huge supporter at the outset of the war in England, getting involved and committing to it as the war started. He wrote something that feels very familiar to what Ben writes in his book. For all we have and are for all our children's fate, stand up and take the war. The Hun is at the gate. That's essentially what Ben's writing.

[Cody Johnston]

That is what he's writing, Right? Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So let's talk about Kipling. Let's talk about what World War I did to Kipling because Rudyard had one son, 16 year old John Kipling. John was 16 when the war started. Started. Now John had intended to join the Royal Navy, but his eyesight was bad and so he was unable to take on a Navy career. So Rudyard used his connections being a very famous and influential person in media to get John a commission as an officer in the Irish Guards. Which is a British military unit made up of Irish soldiers, right, with British officers. In 1915, John became a platoon commander in the Irish Guards and was sent to fight in the Battle of Lewes. He died while assaulting the German lines. This was a profoundly traumatizing and changing event for Kipling. For one thing, prior to his son becoming a platoon commander, Kipling was super anti Irish, right? He was a strong unionist, so he was anti, like Irish Independence, but he was also just kind of bigoted against Irish people. He had written with disgust about Irish culture previously and this changed, I think, in part just because he had more contact attacked through his son and whatnot with Irish people as a result of this. That's how things like this can happen. And I'm not going to say he ever totally turned around on the issue, but he wrote poetry about Irish history and started expressing after this point a considerable degree of admiration about Irish, particularly in comparison to what he'd written before. Now, he also wrote this about what happened to his son in the wake of World War I. If any questioned why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.

[Cody Johnston]

That seems maybe different from, yeah, what the topic started as, right?

[Robert Evans]

It seems maybe again to go from where Ben is, like, like, no, the war is at the gate. Anything we have to do is justified. And like, oh, no, my son's dead. Oh, my kids shouldn't have done that.

[Cody Johnston]

We shouldn't have said that. We shouldn't have told him to do that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, maybe this was a fuck up, right? Now there's some context to this line and I'm going to quote from an article for the Irish times by Ronan McCreevy explaining the context behind this line. This has often been wrongly interpreted as Kipling believing that his son's death was in vain. He never believed the First World War was unnecessary. He believed it was badly prosecuted. On a more general level, this couplet is about the lies the older generations tell that compels the younger to fight. It could also allude to his own lies and getting his son a commission when he was physically unfit to fight. So there's a lot going on here. But Kipling was racked for the rest of his life with a tremendous guilt because of what happened to his son and because even if he could never admit that World War I was itself fully a bad idea, he knew that it was right. He had to be like, well, it was badly prop, but he. I think there's a degree of ego there. But he knew that he'd fucked up, right? That they all had Lied to them.

[Cody Johnston]

To get them to fight. That's.

[Robert Evans]

And, you know, Ben will never admit to being wrong about anything. I don't think, no matter what happens, he's capable of that. But Kipling was, to an extent. You know, he never fully repudiated imperialism, but he went to his grave racked by the knowledge that the war he'd endorsed and supported had taken not only his son, but had shattered the British Empire. Right. It had shattered his hopes of continuing British imperial dominance as an imperialist. He couldn't ignore the fact that, like, oh, this kind of ruined it, all. Right.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah. I mean, like, sometimes expressing that sort of guilt is how you're actually saying that you were wrong without saying it.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Cody Johnston]

Because that's. Human beings are complex and it can be very hard to just say those words. So you just express the guilt of it.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And it's so telling about Ben and about what goes on in his head that he cites approvingly this passage of Kipling while ignoring the rest of his life. Because in reality, a figure like Rudyard Kipling ought to be a warning to Ben Shapiro and those like him. Right. And even again, and I don't want to frame it as, like, Kipling got woke after World War I, but Kipling got increasingly critical of imperialism and of his previous stances after World War I, and he actually wrote some stuff. One of his poems, A Picked Song, is one of my favorite anti imperialist pieces of writing, and I was considering just reading, like, a segment from it. But do you mind if I just read the poem?

[Cody Johnston]

Go for it.

[Robert Evans]

Because I think we all need this, right? I think this might be handy as we all, all watch this fucking empire come down to crush us and the ones we love. So I'm gonna read this poem and then we'll talk about it.

[Cody Johnston]

Preface it with something really depressing, and then, yeah, Doctor, nice poem.

[Robert Evans]

So this is a picked song by Rudyard Kipling. Rome never looks where she treads Always her heavy hooves fall on our stomachs, our hearts or our heads and Rome never heeds when we bawl her sentries pass on, that is all. And we gather behind them in hordes and plot to reconquer the wall with only our tongues for our swords. We are the little folk, we too little to love or to hate Leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the state. We are the worm in the wood we are the rod at the root we are the taint in the blood we are the thorn in the foot Mistletoe Killing an oak. Rats gnawing cables in two, moths making holes in a coat. How they must love what they do. Yes, and we little folk, too. We are as busy as they, working our works out of view. Watch, and you'll see it someday. No, indeed, we are not strong. But we know peoples that are. Yes. And will guide them along to smash and destroy you in war. We shall be slaves just the same. Yes, we have always been slaves. But you, you will die of the shame. And then we shall dance on your graves. I like that poem. Anyway, that's all I got. For part one, or for the first. We'll probably come back to this book. But I think you get the idea of what Ben's going for here and why it's full of shit.

[Cody Johnston]

I mean, I'm convinced that maybe we're all lions and scavengers.

[Robert Evans]

Are we part of a pack?

[Cody Johnston]

We're also a part of a pack. And we are also a colony of. We can say ants. We're a hive also. And the hive are made of crows, and the crows are made of lions.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right. Every crow contains a lion, you know, it is known. Yeah, it's known.

[Cody Johnston]

You know, we all went to school, we all learned about lions and crows.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's like the parable of the butterfly and the Tyrannosaurus rex, you know, Both of which swim deep in the ocean in the Marianus Trench, on the moon. It's as accurate as what Ben's written.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, it's good.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway. How you feeling, Brody? Have I ever done that before?

[Cody Johnston]

Yes, I think I. I feel like you have.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And showdy. Showdy, sure.

[Cody Johnston]

I appreciate that. He at least knows he needs to get some good sentences into his books, so he quotes other writers, even if he doesn't, like, necessarily interpret them well. He's at least trying to.

[Robert Evans]

Gotta pad this out with some Tolkien and Lewis and Kipling.

[Cody Johnston]

I gotta keep people.

[Robert Evans]

Otherwise people might notice that I can't write. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Good stuff.

[Cody Johnston]

Good job. To him.

[Robert Evans]

Cody, you want to plug anything? Sure, why not?

[Cody Johnston]

Check out Some More News. It's our weekly show. I sit at a desk, I read the news and talk about various topics. We also have a show called Even More News twice a week. Talks about more current events in a more casual way. And check out my band. It's called the Hot Show. Shapes.

[Robert Evans]

Hell, yeah. Check out Cody's band. Check out Cody, you know, at like a bar or something. Be like, hey, how's it going?

[Cody Johnston]

I'll be like, good, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You want to drink? I'LL say, yeah, don't do that. Probably.

[Cody Johnston]

Yeah, don't.

[Robert Evans]

I shouldn't joke about the weird parasocial stuff because that'll happen.

[Cody Johnston]

Oh, we don't want any of that.

[Robert Evans]

But check out Cody's podcasts and YouTube show. And check out when we come back to Ben Shapiro's book, which I'm sure we'll do at least one more time before the year ends. Okay, well gang, this has been behind the Podcast a Bastards About Shapiro, Ben, Good night and good luck. Bye.

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[Robert Evans]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.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 behindthebastards in.

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[Robert Evans]

Up less and feel refreshed in the morning. Plus, unisom sleep tabs are clinically tested, tested and proven, effective and completely non habit forming. So make the ultimate sleeper pick and put it to bed with unisom use as directed. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas and I'm Matt Rogers.

[Cody Johnston]

Also a host of Las Culturistas.

[Robert Evans]

Big news to share. Do you know what the perfect thing to bring to any party is? Bowen, we talked about this.

[Cody Johnston]

I'm a person, not a thing.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I didn't mean you. I meant Casamigos. Okay, chic.

[Cody Johnston]

And honestly, the only other correct answer.

[Robert Evans]

Casamigos Margarita. That's. That's a sleigh.

[Cody Johnston]

Ah, Casamigos. Anything is a sleigh.

[Robert Evans]

Anything goes with my Casamigos. Anything goes with my Casamigos. Bo, you're a poet. Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Company, White Plains, New York. Casamigos Tequila. 40% alcohol by volume. This is an I heart podcast.