Primo Podcasters: My Favorite Murder, Bowen Yang and More

Summary

SNAFU with Ed Helms — Primo Podcasters: My Favorite Murder, Bowen Yang and More
iHeartPodcasts | August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special Season 4 compilation episode of SNAFU, hosted by Ed Helms (with the host mic stand-in "Cody" for much of the discussion), brings together a cavalcade of superstar podcasters: the hosts of My Favorite Murder (Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark), Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, Hard Fork’s Kevin Roose & Casey Newton, Pivot's Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway, Crooked Media's Jon Lovett, and more.

Ed Helms and his guests dive into history’s wildest blunders, while riffing on podcasting itself, the lure of “screw-ups,” the nature of accountability (or lack thereof), media habits in the post-social-media era, and the enduring, slightly perverse fascination the public has with true crime, conspiracies, and public disasters — plus some epic podcaster snafus of their own.

The episode is, in Ed’s self-aware words, “part history lesson, part hangout pod, and part group therapy for humanity.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Podcasting Community, Crossovers, & SNAFU Spirit

[01:43 – 03:28]

• Ed discusses inviting favorite podcasters to bring their unique styles to episodes this past season (e.g., My Favorite Murder’s “true crime Sixth Sense insanity” on the William Morgan kidnapping episode, Robert Evans’ expertise on Iran-Contra, and tech-focused Hard Fork hosts breaking down the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal).
• “One of the things that might set our shows apart is that a lot of murders go unsolved and whatnot. But in a lot of murders, like people go to jail. In the stories I cover, accountability is virtually non existent.” — Cody (Ed Helms) [02:40]
• “Big blunders. The big mistakes throughout history, like people just bury it. They walk away or ... have such extraordinary power ... that they can't be held accountable.” — Cody (Ed Helms) [03:06]

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True Crime, Secret Societies, and the Appeal of the Unsolved

William Morgan Case with My Favorite Murder
[03:28 – 10:27]

• The group explores the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan, the potential involvement of the Freemasons, and why some crimes become legendary unsolved cases.
• Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff chime in with the dark humor and morbid curiosity that defines My Favorite Murder.
• Discussion veers into murder concealment (“they knew what stones to use … it’s gotta be granite!”), the nature of the “perfect crime,” and why unsolved cases are so endlessly fascinating.
• “You can't get people to shut up. Even in the masons, I'm sure ... there's always a loose thread.” — Georgia Hardstark [07:32]
• “When everyone's a little bit responsible, no one's going to speak.” — Georgia Hardstark [08:45]
• “When it's not solved, it becomes this legend ... some horrible person who isn't that interesting did something awful. It's not like a legend. ... Solving it and showing how sad and simple it is, I think takes that power away from it.” — Georgia Hardstark [09:03]
• Playful theorizing about Morgan's fate (Canada? A book deal? The Niagara River?) showcases the merging of true crime and legendary folklore.

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The Origins of Pivot and the Art of News Consumption

Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway / John Lovett
[10:28 – 13:56]

• Kara Swisher recounts first meeting Scott Galloway (“He danced around, he showed off his stomach … Germans were perplexed, but I was completely entertained and also horrified.”) [11:19]
• Swisher discusses her “news diet” — from Blue Sky, Threads, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, “weird stories people send me,” to cultural reads and Scott’s columns. [12:50]
• Galloway ribbing: “My media go-to’s: The Economist, the BBC, and the Financial Times. Ed, all of that is a lie. I get all my information from Instagram, TikTok, and occasionally Threads. My mind is being shaped by algorithms run by psychopaths.” — Scott Galloway [13:25]
• The segment spotlights the irony of supposedly serious newspeople being as hopelessly addicted to the churn of social media and new platforms as anyone else.

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Surviving the News — During Actual SNAFUs

Jon Lovett (Crooked Media) on Staying Sane in Trump World [14:07 – 16:13]

• Helms asks Lovett about maintaining “hope” as a media figure specializing in political dysfunction and horror.
• “Hope makes demands of us. It does. And it requires you to do things.” — Jon Lovett [16:13]
• “There are always places where we have agency. And if you're giving up ... it's not because you can't have an impact. ... Hope makes demands of us.” — Jon Lovett [16:07]
• Joking aside, Lovett stresses that feeling hopeful is essential to staying engaged and fighting cynicism.

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Why Are We Drawn to Disaster?

With Robert Evans (Behind the Bastards) [20:41 – 22:23]

• Helms and Evans dissect the human allure of fiascos and “car crash curiosity.”
• “If somebody else screws up in a major way, you want to pay attention … Can I avoid that?...I just love watching the hubris meet with physics.” — Robert Evans [21:37]
• Ed/“Cody” and Evans discuss “schadenfreude”: feeling slightly better seeing others fail, or at least not alone in messiness.
• “Someone always has it worse than you do. Pretty much.” — Evans [22:20]
• Evans describes how his curiosity about conflict — online and off — led him into investigative journalism just as hard-right/alt-right movements exploded.

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Spotlight: Investigative Journalism Today

[23:24 – 25:55]

• Evans praises organizations like Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigations desk, BBC’s Africa Eye, and investigative financial journalists.
• “There's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work being done by folks who are willing to do things like spend hundreds of hours combing through footage ... laboriously matching ... ‘there’s a mountain in the background’ ... it's really impressive work to me. And it's so much more of a pain ... than what I did.” — Robert Evans [24:25]
• The hosts marvel at the sheer labor and specialized knowledge required to “translate” complex investigative findings to the public.
• Evans applauds financial crimes investigators: “The wonkiness required ... I can barely balance my checkbook.” [25:55]

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Personal SNAFU Stories: Kal Penn’s “MILF” Moment

[26:28 – 29:42]

• Kal Penn tells a hilarious story from his White House days when he replied-all to a security council email warning about the “Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),” not realizing “MILF” was (unintentionally) comedic D.C. jargon.
• “I hit reply all and I wrote, yo, their main terror group are the MILFs. Amazing. And I hit send ... you are not in a writer's room at Universal. You are in the White House ... with the National Security Council.” — Kal Penn [28:06]
• “We were all thinking it … but nobody would write LOL in reply, because nobody wanted to be on the public record associated with that!” — Kal Penn [29:10]
• The story exemplifies how professional life is littered with accidental SNAFUs—sometimes hilarious, sometimes public-record.

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Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and Manipulation at Scale

With Scott Galloway, Hard Fork, et al. [33:08 – 36:31]

• An exploration of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal and how “fear and uncertainty” became tools for political campaigns (especially Trump 2016).
• “Whatever gets you to open the app more ... that's what you’ll see. And it turns out that if you scare and upset people, they look at the app more.” — Scott Galloway [33:56]
• “Negative political ads have existed for a really long time ... but Cambridge Analytica felt really different … microtargeting your particular fears and neuroses, and manipulate you into voting for someone without you even understanding what's happening.” — Scott Galloway [34:52]
• Ted/Hard Fork add skepticism about effectiveness: “If it worked really well, President Ted Cruz would have been elected ... It may have just been a sales pitch.” [35:49]
• The group agrees Trump’s real gift is “running the AB test in real time” — playing the human newsfeed algorithm. [36:58]

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The Power of Women’s Sports (& A Wild Family Story)

With Sarah Spain (Good Game Podcast) [37:18 – 39:22]

• Sarah Spain shares how her all-women’s sports daily pod “Good Game” fills a crucial media gap: “In women's sports, you really just need the same cadence ... so you get excited about the games, buy the merch ... we're offering that to people and people seem to love it.” [37:59]
• Spain’s new book tells the remarkable true story of NFL coach Dylan McCullough — who, after decades of not knowing his birth family, learns that his college coach and mentor is his biological father. [38:27]
• Explores deeper questions of family, inheritance, and identity far beyond just a sports story.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Georgia Hardstark on secrecy and crime: “Telling as few people as possible. Because people talk. You can't get people to shut up. Even in the masons, I'm sure, you know, there's always a loose thread.” [07:27]
• Jon Lovett on hope: “Hope makes demands of us. It does. And it requires you to do things.” [16:13]
• Robert Evans on car crash fascination: “I just love watching the hubris meet with physics. But there is a darkness to it as well.” [21:37]
• Kal Penn’s epic White House snafu: “Yo, their main terror group are the MILFs. Amazing.” [28:06]
• Scott Galloway, on social networks: “They're optimized for engagement. And if you scare and upset people, they look at the app more. That brutal calculus is one of the reasons why we're in this mess we're in today.” [33:56]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• [01:43] — Ed Helms welcomes listeners and previews podcast crossovers
• [03:28] — True crime, secret societies, and what makes the “perfect crime” (My Favorite Murder hosts)
• [07:27] — Georgia Hardstark's “loose thread” theory & group SNAFUs
• [10:28] — Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway discuss Pivot origins and how news obsessions start by mistake
• [13:25] — Scott Galloway’s “I get all my information from Instagram/TikTok” confession
• [16:07] — Jon Lovett on optimism vs. despair in U.S. politics
• [21:37] — Robert Evans on hubris, disaster, and public schadenfreude
• [24:25] — Investigative reporting today, and the painstaking art of war crimes research
• [28:06] — Kal Penn's “MILF” White House email snafu
• [33:08] — Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and fear as political engagement
• [37:18] — Sarah Spain on creating the first daily women's sports podcast
• [38:27] — The wild “family surprise” at the heart of Spain’s new book

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Tone and Feel

The tone is sharp, witty, honest, and irreverent — much like Ed Helms’ hosting style and the voices of his all-star podcaster guests. Banter and in-jokes abound, but so do moments of insight and earnestness, especially around topics like media literacy, civic hope, and the pressures (and pleasures) of investigative work.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a love letter to the “primo podcasters” that make up the backbone of today’s smart, funny, and deeply weird media scene — and a testament to how history, disaster, and media chaos are all more fun (and more understandable) when unpacked together.

Whether you’re in it for the historical deep-dives, true crime rabbit holes, or the behind-the-scenes peek at podcasting’s biggest names, you’ll find lots to chew on — and plenty of reasons to embrace your inner “toddler with nukes.”

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

[Andrea Gunning]

This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal Weekly. This is a stunning story based on the hit true crime podcast Betrayal. He was a tall, handsome police officer, the man of her dreams. Caroline knew right away he was the man she would spend her life with. But then she got a text that changed everything. The man she loved was having affair after affair with so many different women in his cop car while on duty. I implore you to watch Betrayal Dirty Secrets now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Cody]

Amazon Health AI presents Painful Thoughts why did I search the Internet for answers to my cold sore problem? Now I'm stuck down a rabbit hole filled with images of alarmingly graphic sores

[Carrie]

in various stages of ooze. I can clear my search history, but

[Cody]

I can never unsee that. Don't go down the rabbit hole.

[Kal Penn]

Amazon Health AI gets you the right care fast.

[Cody]

Healthcare just got less painful.

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[Cody]

Greetings to the SNAFU faithful. If you're listening to this, you're one of the good ones. You're bigger than a fan. You're family now. And speaking of familial bonds, I never feel more embraced as a member of the distinct podcasting community than when I meet and befriend other fellow podcasters. I even had the privilege of inviting a bunch of my favorite podcast hosts onto SNAFU this past season. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, from my favorite Murder really brought their true crime Sixth Sense insanity to our tale of the kidnapping of William Morgan. Robert Evans, the head honcho of the behind the Bastards podcast, illuminated the Iran Contra debacle of the 1980s with incredible wit and gravitas. And on a slightly more tech oriented episode, the co hosts of Hard Fork, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton provided firsthand accounts and reactions to one of Facebook's most epic fuckups. So enjoy these hosts and several more on this week's compilation episode from my absolute favorite primo podcasters. One of the things that might set our shows apart Is that a lot of murders go unsolved and whatnot. But in a lot of murders, like people go to jail. In the stories I cover, accountability is virtually non existent. Like snafus. Big blunders. The big mistakes throughout history, like people just bury it. They walk away or walk away, or they're just people who have such extraordinary power already that they can't be held accountable.

[Carrie]

Which kind of feels like part of it. Because when it's like a secret society where they have all the power, but it's such a small group, doesn't society always kind of want to get rid of those? It's like they're waiting for that, you know, that takedown. It's also great modern day the Internet attack or whatever where it's like, yeah,

[Cody]

we love a good collapse.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The OG cancel culture back then.

[Cody]

Well, as for old Willie Morgan himself, nobody ever found out what truly happened to him. In the years that followed his disappearance, unverified sightings trickled in. Some claimed to have spotted him traveling through the Ottoman Empire.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Others,

[Cody]

I saw him, I saw him.

[Carrie]

He was on top of an elephant. He had a threat.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He had a string in his mouth and he was yelling, mur.

[Cody]

Yeah, he was walking along the top of the Great Wall. I swear I saw him. That's so funny to me. Just like they saw him traveling through the Ottoman Empire. Others swore he'd turned up in the Cayman Islands living as a pirate. Of course. This is the famed Captain Morgan.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is it?

[Cody]

I mean, it's not. Oh, oh, that actual pirate. That is a real pirate who has an actual story.

[Robert Evans]

But.

[Carrie]

And some nice rum.

[Cody]

I think some people. Yeah, some yummy rum. But I think, I think this sort of got convoluted into that. And then there's of course, the Niagara river theory, which several people actually maintained to their death. And in my very amateur historian view, is the most plausible. Right. He was just dumped in the river.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You don't think they would have found some trace of him? I mean.

[Cody]

Well, I, you know, I skipped over this before, but a body did wash up and Lucinda, it was like a year later so badly decomposed. But Lucinda said, yeah, that is him. I can tell by his teeth. But then another woman was like, ah, no, sorry, honey, that's my husband. I can tell by the clothes he's wearing and the fact that he has a full head of hair. And our guy was bald, so that's not very conclusive. I don't know. The Niagara river is huge.

[Carrie]

Also, what if it's the stone mason bricklayer thing where they know exactly what kind of stones to weight a body down with to make it disappear forever. Mafia style.

[Cody]

Yeah. This is so my favorite murder of you. Like, I love how you're thinking. I'm just like, they knew how to do it.

[Carrie]

They knew. And you're acting like they didn't get together every Tuesday night to talk about how to murder. That's what the secret was.

[Cody]

But, Carrie, I love that you also said, like, they knew what stones to use.

[Carrie]

Right.

[Cody]

Like, if you want to hold down a body, you got to use granite. You can't use sandstone. It's not going to work.

[Carrie]

No pumice, you can have holes in the stone. We know that.

[Cody]

Forget it. It's gotta be igneous. It can't be volcanic, whatever it is.

[Carrie]

Geologists back us up here. Georgia does cold cases a lot. And I've been trained to be like, well, maybe I'll fix it, maybe I'll solve it, or whatever. Because it's just like, it's so frustrating when you don't get to have that kind of like. And then these four stones were found near this thing. Whatever. You don't get to have that nice solid ending.

[Cody]

From your perspective, what actually makes a perfect crime possible? Is it like the planning and the intelligence, or is it all luck? Is it having those levers of institutional power, timing? What is it? What makes a perfect crime? And I'm not asking because I want to commit one. I'm just saying. Or anything, theoretically, if you wanted to,

[Carrie]

if you wanted to write it down step by step, that'd be great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Telling as few people as possible. Because people talk.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You can't get people to shut up. Even in the masons, I'm sure, you know, there's always a loose thread.

[Carrie]

Yeah, but these are the people, they're so good at keeping secrecy.

[John Lovett]

Yeah, they are.

[Cody]

This is like part of their culture. So in that sense, like, if you're going to have a group on board, something like, make sure it's one that already values secrecy. Right.

[Carrie]

And already has the handshakes pre choreographed. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. I also think there's like, back then. Well, compared to now, obviously, but much easier because I think those, like, first of all, they were centered in the power as the masons. They had like, hey, I know the mayor, I know the judge, I know this lawyer, whatever. So they had those people kind of in place. So it's like, I know a guy, I own the, the lumber mill, and we have an incinerator there. We have this, like, those kinds of things now. I'm planning them.

[John Lovett]

Right.

[Cody]

This is getting real specific.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But I love theories.

[Carrie]

I mean, you know, just making it up off the top of my head.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sure.

[Carrie]

That idea where there's, like, you've got people with connections willing to all be in on the secret.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. And then when everyone's a little bit responsible, no one's going to speak. I'm going back on what I said. You get everyone to, like, do a

[Cody]

little bit when everyone has, like, some skin in the game, they might be more beholden to the secret. Is that something you see a lot in these murder stories that you guys talk about?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, that's why I love cold cases. I'm so fascinated by them and want to talk about them. Is when it's not solved, it becomes this, like, legend and becomes bigger than what it really is, which is some horrible person who isn't that interesting, did something awful. It's not like a legend. It's not powerful in any way. And so, like, making it into some kind of, you know, fairy tale just gives it more power. But solving it and showing how sad and simple it is, I think takes that power away from it.

[Cody]

Right. Interesting. Well, Karen in Georgia, that is today's snafu. And this has been an absolute delight. Thank you for coming on.

[Carrie]

So fun. I love that story. That was really fascinating.

[Cody]

Yeah, it's a cool one. It's a cool one, you know, in part because I just love how the scale explodes after it happens. It's like it turns into this national crisis.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I gotta say, I think he went to Canada. I think he was offered a new life.

[Cody]

I like that take.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He said, fuck it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Cody]

He's like, I got. Lucinda's really getting on my nerves.

[Carrie]

Exactly.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She's not 19 anymore.

[Cody]

I got 10 kids going to college. Forget it.

[Carrie]

And the book came out, so there's a chance that he, like, made the money off the book and was up in Canada.

[Cody]

Like, it all did was, like, kicking him some dividends. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe we'll do a part two.

[Robert Evans]

I love it.

[Cody]

Trying to navigate this insane moment that we find ourselves in. Welcome to snafu. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

[Carrie]

Thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, Scott is the definition of snafu. That's how we got started. It was a snafu.

[John Lovett]

That's my stage name. When I'm a stripper.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's your porn name.

[John Lovett]

Snafu. There you go.

[Kara Swisher]

Snafu.

[Cody]

How do you mean that? You Got started through a snafu.

[Kara Swisher]

It was a mistake. It was a mistake. We were. I was hosting. Yeah, I've told the story before, but I was looking for another partner and ran into Scott in Germany, of all places, where he was giving this speech about his trend speech, which is really co. He had all these charts and I was watching it and I kept learning things. And I think I know everything, obviously, because I do. But he kept giving me insights. I was like, oh, that was smart. But he was so obnoxious on stage. He danced around, he showed off his stomach, he did all manner of things and the Germans were perplexed. But I was completely entertained and also horrified. And so I went up to him and I said, you really are a jerk, but boy, are you smart. And will you come on my show? Which is, you know, that's the meet cute kind of thing. And he did.

[Cody]

Do you see yourself as a jerk or is this. Is this a fair characterization?

[John Lovett]

It was my first book, so to get on with Kara was a big deal. But just to finish her story, she called me and said, and Kara gets pretty high profile guests. She said it. Your episode is, according to our data, the most downloaded episode in our history. And we think it's a mistake. So we want you to come out a second time. That was my favorite part. We're pretty sure it was a mistake, so come on a second time. Anyways, the rest is history.

[Cody]

There's no conceivable reason we could make sense.

[Kara Swisher]

You're so how did you beat Elon Musk? That's exactly what I was saying to him and it was perplexing. But people seem to like our little dog and pony show.

[Cody]

I am one of those folks. You guys are like a Voltron of podcasting. Cause you're both kicking ass in your own lanes and then you kind of stack up as this giant powerhouse on pivot. And you're so well informed, but also clearly insanely busy. So I have been dying to ask you this. How do you keep up with the news? Like, what are your news consumption habits? What are your go to sources? Kara, you first.

[Kara Swisher]

I've lately been using blue sky and threads to keep up with news. Like I watch there. But I do read the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post when things are suggested, the New York Times, obviously. But I look everywhere, I find news everywhere. Weird stories, people, things sent, people sent to me. But I have a pretty strong news diet. And then I watch a lot of TV and et cetera, try to keep on cultural stuff and read people I like right. That are really smart. Including Scott. I read his stuff that he reads. He writes all the time, no mercy, no malice. But I keep up with it rather actively and I think Scott does too.

[John Lovett]

So my media go to's the Economist, the BBC and the Financial Times. Ed, all of that is a lie. I get all of my information. I get all of my information from Instagram, TikTok threads and occasionally threads. And I hate to say it, but I don't. My mind is being shaped by algorithms run by psychopaths.

[Sarah Spain]

That tracks.

[John Lovett]

I get all my news from social media now. And it wasn't that way two years ago.

[Cody]

He's also somehow turned crippling anxiety about the future of America into a wildly successful media empire. Please welcome the one and only John Lovett.

[Adam Devine]

Hi.

[Mike]

What an intro.

[Cody]

Thank you.

[John Lovett]

Hey.

[Cody]

Yeah, that's what we do here. We honor our guests, we elevate them. And I've been on your shows over the years many times. I'm so glad to have you on here. So in your job at Crooked Media, you basically spend a lot of time analyzing the daily horrors of American politics, particularly Trump World, and yet somehow you stay quick and clever and weirdly hopeful. What's your secret? Is it just therapy or are you on black market ketamine? How do you not collapse into despair all the time?

[Mike]

I want you to know something. If I ever am on ketamine, it will be from a prestigious Los Angeles based, pill pushing, fancy doctor. I'm not gonna do black market drugs. Forgive me, that's not why I moved

[Cody]

to this city and I should know better.

[Mike]

But so it's interesting. The truth is, for me, I think hope's important. I think it's important that people feel it, because I think without it, they may not be as involved or invested. It has real genuine value. There's a whole media apparatus that wants people to feel cynical and negative and to view all politics as corrupt and all politicians is useless. And if you give in to that, the people that want you to feel that way win. They really do. And as bad as things have gotten, as bad as they could continue to get, there are always places where we have agency. And if you're giving up, it's not because you can't make a difference or you can't be involved or you can't have an impact. It's because either you don't know the way to find it or you've decided it's too hard. And maybe that's okay. That's something people can decide. But I think there's a way in which people try to tell themselves things are worse than they seem or are irredeemable because it makes it easier. And the truth is, hope makes demands of us. It does. And it requires you to do things.

[Cody]

Well said. Thank you for reflecting on that with me. I actually. I kind of only want to talk about this stuff with you. I just like how you communicate about these things. Just a quick question. You were on the show Survivor.

[Mike]

That's right.

[Cody]

Did you guys at any point on that show ever consider eating one another, just like, casually as a backup plan?

[Mike]

The truth is, I was only. I was only surviving for three nights, which meant I only really missed three dinners. And eating a fellow person doesn't come up after three dinners.

[Cody]

You're already taking. Taking this question too seriously. It's.

[Mike]

But so it never comes to that. The other thing, too is there are coconuts strewn about.

[Sarah Spain]

Sure.

[Mike]

Right. You know, the exact number of coconuts one might need to survive happen to be randomly distributed by, I think, God.

[Cody]

Oh, yeah. Well, today's snafu does involve actual cannibalism. One of the most famous disasters in American history. We're talking about the Donner Party.

[Carrie]

Hell, yeah.

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[Andrea Gunning]

This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal Weekly. This is a stunning story based on the hit true crime podcast Betrayal. He was a tall, handsome police officer, the man of her dreams. Caroline knew right away he was the man she would spend her life with. But then she got a text that changed everything. The man she loved was having affair after affair. So many different women in his cop car while on duty. I implore you to watch Betrayal Dirty Secrets now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Kal Penn]

Hey, everyone, it's Kal Penn, host of Irsay, the Audible and Iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Divergent author Veronica Roth. To talk about her sprawling new novel, Seek the Traitor's Son. It's a sci fi fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted.

[Veronica Roth]

My first book was Divergent, and when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted like, mostly positivity, but the negativity I sucked in like a sponge. And I think it was like critiques of things I liked. When I was like, you know, I was 23 and I wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves in it. And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things. And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little things that like, make you feel pleasure when you read. But I also was like, saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it.

[Cody]

Yeah, so that's this book.

[Kal Penn]

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Adam Devine]

This is Adam Devine, Blake Anderson and Honors Home from this is important. You know those moments when you realize you've been adulting too hard? Like getting excited about a new vacuum, making a spreadsheet for a group trip, saying, let's circle back and meaning it. That's when you need a slice. And trust us, we all need a slice.

[Slice Soda Advertiser]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Cody]

It's funny, our shows have some thematic similarities. You focus on bad people throughout history. I focus on bad events or incidents or mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to the dark side?

[Robert Evans]

Robert Evans I mean, I think there's part of it's just like this little piece in all of us that's encoded by evolution to where like, if somebody else screws up in a major way, you want to like pay attention to see. It's like if you see a car wreck, it's like, what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make Sure. I don't get into that kind of problem.

[Cody]

It's funny you put it that way because I feel like that's a well intentioned or it's sort of a positive spin on why we're drawn to these things. I feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us, like why we look at car crashes. It's not because it's like we're looking for ways to avoid that. It's because I think what, what is it? It makes us feel safer to see other people injured or something.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know. That is a good one. Cause like one of my favorite ways to relax, like when my friends and I, a couple years ago, we all got laid off at the website we'd been working for and I had everyone over to the house and I just put on hours worth of footage of people injuring themselves trying to cut down trees. Cause it'll be like a guy and his kid and a 300-year-old oak tree and he's got a $40 saw that he bought from Home Depot and he's like, I can take this tree. And I just love watching the hubris meet with physics. But there is a darkness to it as well.

[Cody]

I think we all have a sort of schadenfreude gene in us that's sort of like it can be soothing to just know we're not alone in our pain and misery in this world. Yeah, it's pretty universal.

[Robert Evans]

And someone always has it worse than you do. Pretty much.

[Cody]

Now you have a background in investigative journalism with some pretty serious chops in that area. What drew you into that space?

[Robert Evans]

You know, I've always been fascinated by conflict. I came into it sort of as like a military history nerd, someone who was interested in that. But really what kind of like broke me into like a significant role in media was I just happened to be paying attention to these weird little corners of the Internet right as like the alt right erupted. And you know, 8chan 4chan kind of like became major things in terms of like people were carrying out attacks and stuff based on, you know, having been radicalized in these little fascist corners of the Internet. And I just kind of been watching them for a couple of years. And so I've realized at a certain point, like, oh, there's not a lot of other people who understand how these communities work. I should probably explain them to people because members of those communities are now killing people. Right. It was a mix of like accident and I guess, happenstance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Cody]

Well, it was a product of your own curiosity.

[Slice Soda Advertiser]

Right?

[Cody]

And I feel like that's one of the traits of the great journalists out there, is like this relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place. It's not just like, how do I get the next big scoop? You know, it's like I really. My sense, and I'm not a journalist at all, but my sense of it is that the journalists, the great ones, really have like a personal, like unquenchable thirst to know and this curiosity that drives through. Because investigative journalism is tedious, it is incredibly time consuming. It can be dangerous a lot of times. And that thirst for the truth or for knowledge or for clarity on something is really powerful. I think it's such an admirable space to be in. Do you see great investigative journalism happening today? Like, who are the people that you think are really standing out or doing great work? Besides Tucker Carlson, of course.

[Robert Evans]

Of course, Tucker. You and I are both big fans of Tucker. My old colleagues at bellingcat continue to do great work. The New York Times Visual Investigations desk has done some really impressive open source reporting on conflicts all over the world over the last several years. I find myself really interested in BBC AfricaEye, which is their kind of open source covering, particularly war crimes in places like Cameroon. So there's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work being done by folks who are willing to do things like spend hundreds of hours combing through footage that we know is a war crime, but we don't know what militia was responsible or where it was done, and laboriously matching. You can kind of see a mountain in the background. And so they'll just spend weeks going through Google Maps and they're like, it's this mountain. And because of where it is in the frame of the shot, we can now locate this exact point geographically. And we know that these militant groups reacted. That's really impressive work to me. And it's so much more of a pain in the butt than what I did when I was covering that stuff. So I have, I have tremendous admiration for that. And anybody who's doing financial crimes investigative journalism, the wonkiness required. The ability to dig deep into the financials of a company that's doing something wrong is so labor intensive, I can

[Cody]

barely balance my checkbook. I can't even wrap my head around that stuff. It's not only the digging into it and the figuring it out, it's then the ability to translate it into English in an interesting way that laypeople can understand. Well, kudos to you and your colleagues and all the people out there doing great investigative journalism. Do you have any specific snafu from your life that you can tell us about? Oh, man, can be huge, can be tiny, doesn't matter.

[Kal Penn]

So many. There are so many. I'll tell you for folks who don't know, I took a two year sabbatical from acting with the intent to always come back. Acting and performing is my first love. But I was the President's liaison to young Americans and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in an office called the Office of Public Engagement. Think of it as like an outreach office. And on my third day, the National Security Council.

[Cody]

Are you in the White House?

[Kal Penn]

In the White House. In the actual White House. They add me to a massive email chain. And these email chains have like 100 people on them. Real serious national security people in those days. And everything in government is an acronym, right? So like for example, if you get an email from the National Security Council, it'll say National Security Council. Then any other time in the email it'll just say nsc. And so they had, they said, you know, plus, Cal, Cal, because you're the President's new liaison to the Asian American community, you should know about this delegation from the Philippines that's meeting at the White House. And the thing that you should know is about this terror group in the Philippines that you might get questions on. They're called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And then in parentheses it just said milf. And then the rest of the email. I'm not fucking with you. The rest of the email said, MILF is considered highly dangerous. MILF is known to recruit young men. And then things like. Many young men grow to regret their affiliation with MILF over.

[Cody]

This is the opposite of a snafu. This is delightful. I love that there are these little nuggets of governmental awkwardness.

[Slice Soda Advertiser]

Great.

[Kal Penn]

So I thought this was so wonderful that in my head I'm at my desk laughing my ass off. I hit reply all and I wrote, yo, their main terror group are the MILFs. Amazing. And I hit send. And as soon as I hit send, I was like, you idiot, you are not in a writer's room at Universal. You are in the White House on an email chain with the National Security Council. And I couldn't unsend it. And it was silent after that. And in the hallway, coworkers, many of whom in the pod world, you all know a lot of the pod Save America guys and Tommy Viator and Ben Rhodes. And these guys who I worked with at the time in the hallway were like, yo, that shit was so funny. We were all thinking it. Like, will one of you please hit reply all and just say lol? That's all I need. I just need one of you to LOL me. And they all were like, hell no, man. This is gonna be a public record one day. I just don't want my name associated with you calling out the MILF thing. So that was my one of my professional snafus.

[Cody]

Oh, my God, I love it. You know what? The only thing that would have made that snafu better is if Obama himself had, like, walked up into your office, like, leaned against the door jam and just been like, california, buddy, what the hell? We're gonna have to fire you. Like, you're gonna.

[Mike]

This is not.

[Cody]

You can't do this.

[Kal Penn]

If that were the case, I felt like it would have gone the other way. And he would have just been like, did you see the name of this terror group?

[Cody]

I feel like the government needs more people like you, Cal. It'd be a lot more fun. A lot more like chuckles in the hallways.

[Kal Penn]

And I enjoyed myself.

[Cody]

It's so serious all the time.

[Andrea Gunning]

This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal Weekly. This is a stunning story based on the hit true crime podcast Betrayal. He was a tall, handsome police officer, the man of her dreams. Caroline knew right away he was the man she would spend her life with. But then she got a text that changed everything. The man she loved was having affair after affair with so many different women in his cop car while on duty. I implore you to watch Betrayal Dirty Secrets now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile Now. I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

And mintmobile.com switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or $180 for 12 month plan required. $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.

[Kal Penn]

Hey, everyone, it's Kal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay the Audible and Iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.

[Ray Porter]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.

[Kal Penn]

Listen to Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Adam Devine]

This is Adam Devine, Blake Anderson and Honors Home from this is important. You know those moments when you real been adulting too hard. Like getting excited about a new vacuum, making a spreadsheet for a group trip, saying let's circle back and meaning it. That's when you need a slice. And trust us, we all need a slice.

[Slice Soda Advertiser]

Slice is a soda you remember back and better for you. And yes, it's still soda. The full flavor, the fizz, the whole thing. But now it has Grown up. Benefits 5 grams of sugar or less, plus prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotics. I personally love the orange soda flavor because it takes me back to my childhood.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So you get real soda flavor, real fizz and real benefits without making some sad adult compromise. Grab a slice when you want something full flavored, low sugar, gut, friendly and way more fun than whatever responsible thing you were about to do. Slice a better soda for fun's sake.

[Cody]

At the time, his digital operation was basically non existent. So Cambridge Analytica saw an opening and they moved fast, pitching themselves as the high tech edge the campaign needed. Before long, they were brought on to handle all of the digital responsibilities for the campaign, and from there they got to work shaping what voters saw online. The strategy was simple in concept and unnerving in practice. They'd figure out what worried you, what scared you, and then feed you content that leaned into those concerns while positioning Trump as the solution. So basically anxiety and uncertainty custom tailored just for you. Just a spigot of fear. I don't know, it feels like a horror movie. How cynical is this?

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, it's so cynical, but also like this just is how we have built our social networks they're optimized for engagement. So whatever gets you to open the app more, to spend more time there, to do more things in the app, that's what you'll see. And it turns out that if you scare and upset people, they look at the app more. So, like, that kind of brutal calculus is one of the reasons why we're in this mess we're in today.

[Cody]

This is the first place that. But I've seen or heard about fear and terror being a deliberate effort on the part of a campaign, of a social media campaign, and yet we have heard a lot about how algorithms have sort of naturally steered things in that direction. So which is it, or what's the bigger force at work here, do you think? Is it the built in programming or is it, like, bad actors?

[Scott Galloway]

So, I mean, look, negative political ads have existed for a really long time. You can go back to, like, the daisy ad and, you know, do you really want this guy's finger on the button and, you know, vote for him and we're all going to die in a nuclear holocaust. So that kind of stuff has a proud tradition in American politics. I think where Cambridge Analytica felt really different was that was this suggestion that they could essentially micro target and add to your particular fears and neuroses, and they would manipulate you into voting for somebody without you even understanding what was happening to you.

[Cody]

Right, right, right.

[Scott Galloway]

So, and, you know, they could do this at, like, a massive scale, but, you know, because the vast majority of Americans were on Facebook, they could just sort of reach all of those people instantaneously in a way that they would not have even been able to do with a TV ad.

[Ted]

Well, I think there's some additional nuance to add here, which is that it's not clear that what Cambridge Analytica was offering to do actually worked.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

Right.

[Ted]

If it worked really well, President Ted Cruz would have been elected. So this may have just been a sales pitch that they were giving. I think it is also true, simultaneously, that the Trump campaign appears to have done a very good job of using Facebook as a way of getting voters to engage with whatever they were sharing, to inspire people to go to the polls, that they ran a very sophisticated, essentially marketing operation on Facebook. But it's not clear to me that they did that, like, using the tools and techniques that Cambridge Analytica gave them, rather than just the advertising and marketing tools that are available through Facebook's own ad platform.

[Cody]

Sure. And also the incredible instincts of Donald Trump, Right. Like his just unbelievable ability to tap into cultural tides of anxiety and his Humor. Like the way that I think his undeniable charm was just feeling so fresh and kind of unbelievable to people at this time.

[Ted]

I think he's like a human newsfeed algorithm. He just, you can sort of see him as he's giving a speech. He's just like sort of testing out stuff. And if it gets a laugh or people get excited about it, he like does it again. And if people don't seem to respond, he doesn't do it again. He's sort of like running the AB test in real time on his audience.

[Cody]

You just put a book out. Congratulations. In addition to your amazing podcast all about sports, tell us about Good Game first.

[Veronica Roth]

Yeah.

[Sarah Spain]

So Good Game with Sarah Spain is the first and only, as far as we know, daily women's sports podcast. Yes, daily. It is a lot of work, but it is what was necessary. The folks who started the I Heart Women's Sports Network reached out and one of them was Sue Bird. And you can't say no to Sue Bird about really anything. Cause she's a legend. But when she said, we want you to do a show for the network, what would it look like? And I had just gotten out of 13 straight years of daily radio for ESPN. I was enjoying my first year of not having a show every day. And I stupidly said it's gotta be a daily show. Cause that's what's missing.

[Ted]

That's a daily.

[Sarah Spain]

Because in women's sports, you really just need the same cadence of learning about the star stakes, stats and stories that are out there so that you get excited about the games and want to watch them and attend them and buy the merch. And so we're offering that to people and people seem to love it, which is.

[Cody]

That's awesome. So you have a book. You just put a book out called Runs in the An Incredible True Story of Football, Fatherhood and Belonging. Give me the quick breakdown.

[Sarah Spain]

Well, I wanted to be like you, so I wrote it all in the two weeks between when your book came out and mine came out. Can you believe it? So fast. No. So I wrote a story for ESPN and did a feature for ESPN a handful of years ago about this guy, Dylan McCullough. He's the running backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders and grew up in Youngstown. Post steel milk collapse. Was adopted. Never knew his birth family. His adoptive dad leaves when he's two. So sort of a troubled relationship with father figures. Gets into football, gets recruited, has a great career until he gets a knee injury and becomes a coach. And finally in his 40s, the laws change in Pennsylvania, where he was born. He can get his birth certificate. And he discovers after finding his mom, who never told the dad that she had gotten pregnant, was sent away to have the baby in private like they used to do in the 70s, finds out that his college football coach and mentor of almost 30 years was his birth dad all along. And neither of them knew it.

[Cody]

Oh my God.

[Sarah Spain]

So it's this really unbelievable story, but also there's a ton in there about nature versus nurture. What we inherit through blood and DNA, what we inherit through family systems, emotional DNA, messages, lessons, all the things. And so I really wanted it to be a book about him. Cause his story's so incredible, but also a book that anyone would read and think to themselves, like, what are the irrefutable things that I've been passed on that I can't reject or deny? And what are the things I get to choose to hang onto or pass on?

[Cody]

I can't wait to read this. It really, really sounds insanely inspiring. And congrats. Writing a book is a big freaking deal.

[Kal Penn]

It's hard.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

I know.

[Sarah Spain]

You're too. Congrats.

[Cody]

It's a ton of work.

[Sarah Spain]

Yeah, it is.

[Cody]

Oh, that's awesome. Snafu is a production of Iheart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbow, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gossen and the Collected Works legal review from Dan Welch, Megan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horne, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Niki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu the Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com thanks for listening and see you next week. Across America, money is being abandoned. By taking a few seconds to Check Lyft before your next ride, you can give money a better home inside your wallet.

[Ray Porter]

Save the money.

[Cody]

Check Lift.

[Hulu Advertiser]

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[Kara Swisher]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.