Revisiting the Prohibition Era (Ext. Interview with Terence Winter of Boardwalk Empire)

Summary

SNAFU with Ed Helms: Revisiting the Prohibition Era

Extended Interview with Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire Creator)
Published: April 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

This bonus interview episode of SNAFU finds host Ed Helms in conversation with Terence Winter, the Emmy-winning creator and showrunner of HBO’s "Boardwalk Empire." Together, they reflect on Prohibition’s epic misfires, the real-world and fictional figures who shaped the era, and Winter’s own unconventional—and often comical—rise from Brooklyn auto-mechanic aspirant to Hollywood powerhouse. Along the way, the duo nerd out on history, swap stories of grit and perseverance, and highlight the unintended consequences (and era-defining hypocrisies) of America’s booze ban.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Terence Winter's Unlikely Path to Hollywood

• Brooklyn Roots and Early Aspirations
  • Winter grew up in the blue-collar Marine Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, initially studying to be an auto mechanic before pivoting to law.
    • "You may have heard of Sheepshead Bay, which actually was an integral neighborhood in terms of Prohibition, because boats used to come right in there..." (06:10, Winter)
• Corporate Law and Existential Dread
  • Practiced law for two years in Manhattan, quickly realized it was making him miserable despite outward success.
    • “I had everything I thought I wanted. I had an assistant, I had an office. I had a diploma written in Latin. I was like, holy shit, look at me, I'm a lawyer.” (10:09, Winter)
• Secret Drive to Write Comedy
  • Longed to be a sitcom writer but suppressed it due to peer pressure.
    • Cites a professor’s private letter urging him to pursue writing: “Please don’t go to law school. Please be a writer. And I was like, holy shit. This is the second adult who's told me I'm a good writer.” (08:57, Winter)
• Testing Comedy Chops via Stand-Up
  • Used NYC’s stand-up circuit (early '90s) as a testing ground for comedic legitimacy, encountering rising stars like Sarah Silverman and Chris Rock.
    • “I wasn’t particularly interested in being a stand up, but I wanted to see: am I crazy or am I really funny?” (11:43, Winter)
• Ingenious Hollywood Scam
  • Invented a fake talent agency (The Doug Viviani Agency) as a ruse to get his scripts onto showrunners’ desks.
    • “I was the messenger, I was the lawyer, I was everybody...I just hit every sitcom office in LA.” (15:16, Winter)
  • First big break came when Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s showrunner called his fake agent line and he impersonated his own agent to secure a meeting.
    • “I called her back and I said, yeah, hi, Doug. ...The only agent I ever saw was Reuben Kincaid on the Partridge Family. ...I’m just gonna wing it.” (16:22, Winter)
  • Breakthrough came with acceptance to the Warner Bros. Sitcom Writers Workshop, then staffed as a TV drama writer thanks to his relatable blue-collar credentials.

From Personal Crime Proximity to Fictional Mob Worlds

• Brooklyn Mobster Connections
  • As a teen, worked for a butcher shop owned by infamous Gambino boss Paul Castellano; later worked in illegal gambling operations.
    • “By osmosis, I just kind of knew those guys. I also just became fascinated with crime and criminals…” (18:34, Winter)
• Fascination with the Con
  • Early love of hustling and elaborate scams stemmed from pop culture (e.g., "Oliver", Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal this Book”, and “The Sting”).
  • “To this day...if I’m presented with a problem, I always think: what’s the way to scam my way through this?” (20:06, Winter)
• Drawing on Life for The Sopranos
  • Saw an early Sopranos pilot and instantly recognized the authenticity of its world from his own upbringing.
    • “I know these guys. I know these people. ...Get me on this show!” (20:31, Winter)

Falling Down the Prohibition Rabbit Hole

• How Boardwalk Empire Began
  • HBO handed him a book on Atlantic City’s history with Scorsese attached. Winter found his subject in Nucky Johnson—Atlantic City’s corrupt Prohibition-era treasurer.
    • “There was a chapter about this guy named Nucky Johnson... I went, this is the series. This guy, this era.” (22:55, Winter)
• The 1920s: An Era of Surprising Modernity
  • Loved the period’s snappy dialogue, style, and the fact it felt surprisingly contemporary.
• Rigorous Research
  • Delved deeply: “What books did [Nucky] read? What was happening in 1920? …What were the movies?'” (23:51, Winter)
  • Hunted for authenticity in language (“23 skidoo”), costumes (yearbook research on facial hair), and props (chain-link fences, period fashion, music selection).

The Madness and Consequences of Prohibition

• Why Prohibition? The Moral Panic and Anti-German Backlash
  • Helms notes the “moral panic” and anti-German brewer sentiment during WWI, making Prohibition possible.
    • “Coleslaw is liberty cabbage and hamburgers are liberty sandwiches. ...Half the brewers got shut down.” (29:48, Winter)
• Catastrophic Policies: Government vs. Public
  • Government denatured industrial alcohol and, during Prohibition, upped the ante by adding lethal ingredients (Formula 6) to discourage bootleg drinking—leading to thousands of deaths.
    • “For a long time, the government was putting additives into industrial alcohol...and then during Prohibition, Formula 6 emerges. ...[they] start adding real poison to alcohol in levels sufficient to kill people.” (46:34, Helms)
• Blindness, Bootleggers & the Origins of Mixed Drinks
  • Bootleggers would mix in turpentine, wood alcohol, and even formaldehyde, causing mass poisonings and a rise in blindness.
  • “The advent of the mixed drink came because of prohibition. ...All the drinks that you hear about today...come from the need to make this stuff palatable.” (49:31, Winter)
  • Describes elaborate bootlegging subterfuge, such as submerging crates in seawater to fake authenticity.

Gender, Class, and Grit in Boardwalk Empire

• Enterprising Female Characters
  • “Boardwalk” deliberately focused on multidimensional women (e.g., Margaret Thompson, Gillian Darmody), inspired by true anecdotes and the era’s social upheavals.
    • “I said, that’s interesting. That’s an interesting relationship. ...What if her husband is a creep and he beats her up and Nucky gets rid of him?” (36:33, Winter)
• The Effects of WWI
  • Winter explored the return of traumatized veterans and advancements in battlefield medicine—a major source of the show’s character dynamics.

Real-Life Parallels and Historical Deep Dives

• Fiction vs. Fact
  • Explores how Boardwalk Empire characters like Assistant Attorney General Esther Randolph (inspired by Mabel Walker Willebrandt), George Cassiday, Gaston Means, and “King of the Bootleggers” George Remus are rooted in strange but true stories.
    • “There were bootleggers who were showing up at the Capitol with suitcases full of stuff, selling their stuff to Congress people…” (39:37, Winter)
    • “One of the craziest stories you hear about: an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes like the biggest bootlegger ever and then loses everything, goes to jail, his wife completely steals all of his money in conjunction with a federal agent who she has an affair with. ...Then he gets out and murders her and is found not guilty by reason of insanity.” (41:24, Winter)
• Federal Taxation of Illegal Liquor
  • Remarks on the absurdity of the government taxing illegal booze and using tax evasion charges to nab criminals like Capone.
• Religious and Medical Loopholes
  • “Catholic Church, you know, sacrificial wine. ...Jewish churches, suddenly, everybody was a rabbi because there was an excursion…” (51:27, Winter)
• Enduring Consequences and Modern Parallels
  • Winter draws explicit connections between the organized crime windfall from Prohibition and today’s illicit drug economy.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Breaking Into Hollywood:
  “The only agent I ever saw was Reuben Kincaid on the Partridge Family. ...I figured, you know what? Let me just — I'm just gonna wing it.” — Terence Winter, (16:22)
• On the Lesson from Prohibition:
  “It was like outlawing turkey sandwiches...Most people didn’t give [a damn]. ‘Wait, what? I’ve been drinking beer my whole life, now I can't do it? Fuck you. I'm gonna keep doing this.’” — Terence Winter, (25:20)
• On Research Detail:
  “I actually got the yearbook from Princeton University of 1922. ...Not one college student had a mustache or a beard in 1922. I said, that's the level of accuracy we need to have here.” — Terence Winter, (34:03)
• On the Scale of Prohibition’s Failure:
  “The fallout of Prohibition is commensurate with the stupidity of it in the first place.” — Ed Helms, (53:01)
• On Historical Parallels:
  “I guess I’m certainly not the first person to make the observation that the drug business today is exactly the same thing.” — Terence Winter, (53:32)
• On the Delight of Deep Research:
  “If I made that up, you'd be like, come on. And this absolutely all happened...” — Terence Winter, (41:24)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment Description | |----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:27 | Meet and greet, the culture shock of comedy ambitions, and early career roots | | 10:20 | Law school blues, testing himself in stand-up, and first steps in showbiz | | 14:08 | The “Doug Viviani Agency” story: Winter’s self-engineered Hollywood break | | 18:34 | Working for Brooklyn mobsters as a teen; fascination with scams and cons | | 20:31 | How Sopranos felt like home due to his mob neighborhood upbringing | | 22:34 | Discovering Nucky Johnson and the birth of Boardwalk Empire | | 29:45 | Anti-German backlash during WWI, rise of Prohibition, and era's complexities | | 33:43 | Researching 1920s authenticity for Boardwalk Empire | | 36:33 | Creating powerful female characters based on historical context | | 39:23 | Real-life legal and bootlegging figures that inspired Boardwalk Empire | | 46:32 | Formula 6, government poisoning, and the evolution of forensics in Prohibition-era NYC | | 49:31 | Bootlegging tricks, mixed drinks, religious/medical loopholes, and mass criminal entrepreneurship | | 53:01 | The direct legacy of Prohibition’s stupidity in the scale of organized crime |

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Tone & Style

Ed Helms keeps the conversation light, curious, and full of wry admiration; Terence Winter matches him with self-deprecating humor, Brooklyn candor, and infectious nerdiness about history and writing. The episode balances playful banter, meticulous research, and a candid look at how history rhymes across generations of American folly.

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For New Listeners

This conversation is a treasure trove for fans of Boardwalk Empire, American history buffs, and anyone curious about how showbiz careers are hacked together through chutzpah and hustle. You’ll leave with a sharper sense of why Prohibition was so spectacularly disastrous—and how fiction brings overlooked truths about law, crime, and human ingenuity to life.

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Noteworthy:

• No major content after 54:54; episode closes with credits and ads.
• For more on Prohibition’s human costs, catch SNAFU Season 3’s full “Formula 6” deep-dive referenced repeatedly in the interview.

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Transcript

[Terence Winter]

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[Ed Helms]

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[Terence Winter]

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[Ed Helms]

Hello and good day. This of course, is Ed. On this lovely morning, I'm going to bring you back to one of our favorite bonus episodes from season three of SNAFU Formula 6. I had the incredible pleasure of sitting down with Terrence Winter, the creator, writer and executive producer of the amazing and epic TV show Boardwalk Empire. Terry did a ton of research on the Prohibition era. So we got to actually compare notes and even teach each other a thing or two about those good old bootlegging days. We also talked about our very different entries into Hollywood. And Terry's story is insane. He essentially conned his way into showbiz. It's a wild story. He's also the brilliant mind behind the show Tulsa King and the great Scorsese movie the Wolf of Wall Street. It was an absolute honor and delight to connect with Terry. I loved his story, his grit, and his humor. And I think you will, too. So keep listening and we'll be back with your regularly scheduled programming next week. Hey there. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu Season three, Formula six, How Prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. Welcome to another bonus episode. You may recall in these bonus episodes, I bring in a guest and just have a great interview. So after spending this season unraveling Prohibition, I wanted to talk to someone who knows this era inside and out, someone who could give us a whole new layer of of historical context, color, and detail. So who better than the guy who actually built it or at least rebuilt it on TV? Enter Terence Winter, the brilliant creator of HBO's Boardwalk Empire. He joins me for a fascinating deep dive into Prohibition's gangsters, corrupt officials, and, of course, its completely bonkers policies. We talk about his unlikely journey from Brooklyn to Hollywood, including the wild story of how he invented a fake talent agency to get his foot in the door. And how he stumbled upon the real life Nucky Johnson, the inspiration for his lead character, Nucky Thompson. I also ask him whether Formula 6 was ever on his radar and dig into some of the not entirely coincidental parallels between his fictionalized characters and the real people we covered this season. And honestly, just as a fellow showbiz guy, I had a blast nerding out with him because who doesn't love a peek behind the curtain of a great TV show? So settle in, grab a stiff drink, preferably non poisoned, and enjoy my conversation with Terence Winter.

[Terence Winter]

So good to meet you, man.

[Ed Helms]

You too. It's so, so great to meet you.

[Terence Winter]

Honestly, I didn't know you were a history guy.

[Ed Helms]

You know, there's such a cool overlap of this season of snafu, which is all about Prohibition, and we'll get into some. Some of the really surprising things that I learned in research for this this season that might even be surprising to you as an expert on Prohibition because of your incredible series Boardwalk Empire. But let's Start a little more broadly so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better. Where are you from originally? What was your sort of path to Hollywood, writer?

[Terence Winter]

I grew up in Marine Park, Brooklyn, which is an area that I usually have to describe by its proximity to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that people have heard of. You may have heard of Sheepshead Bay, which actually was an integral neighborhood in terms of Prohibition, because boats used to come right in there and that's kind of near Coney Island. So, you know, basically blue collar family, blue collar neighborhood. I actually studied to be an auto mechanic in high school and that didn't stick. I took a detour into the deli business. Eventually figured out that I needed to go to college. Eventually went to law school, practiced law for two years, hated it. And then my deep, dark secret was I had always wanted to be a sitcom writer, which was something that, you know, on the east coast in the 70s, you dare not tell your friends that you wanted to go to Hollywood and be anything.

[Ed Helms]

I had a. I had a similar thing. And growing up in Georgia, I harbored these deep aspirations from a very young age. But I knew I could never tell anyone because they would.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, either get beat up, crazy, or

[Ed Helms]

they would just crush your. Your dreams.

[Terence Winter]

Absolutely. Which is what friends are for. Can I curse on this?

[Ed Helms]

Hell, yes. Or. Okay, good.

[Terence Winter]

Because it's very difficult for me to talk with that. Yeah. I do hold the record for the most uses of the word fuck in a movie, Wolf of Wall street, which I'm very proud of. So it's very hard for me to have a conversation, so that'll slip out occasionally. Good. Anyway, once I came out of the closet as a writer, I just said, I'm moving to LA and I'm going to figure this out. I showed up here in 1991 and I just kind of plunged in and I started out, you know, attempting to be a sitcom writer and then eventually just morphed into drama that kind of had comedy in it. So I just got incredibly lucky and still lucky to be doing that kind of stuff.

[Ed Helms]

So growing up in Brooklyn and then heading off to law school, did you then become a lawyer in Brooklyn? Did you stay?

[Terence Winter]

I was a lawyer in Manhattan. My only ambition as a kid was I wanted to be rich, because we were not. And the only two jobs I knew that could make you rich were doctor and lawyer. The doctor was out. And I remember there was a quote by Benjamin Franklin and he said, pour thy purse into thy head and no man can take it from you. You Know what? Get an education, basically.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, That's a beautiful qu. I like that.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, I love that. So I took creative writing, and eventually I stumbled onto journalism. And, you know, again, you know, my ambition was to make money. That was what a good job was. The concept of liking your job was something, you know. You know, you just want to make money. So lawyer was the thing. So I had another professor, journalism professor, named Jerry Schwartz, who is a managing editor at the Associated Press. And he. I asked him to write me a recommendation for law school, and he did. He wrote me this glowing recommendation. He gave it to me in a manila envelope, and he said, there's another letter in there for you personally. And that letter said, please don't go to law school. Please be a writer. And I was like, holy shit. This is the second adult who's told me I'm a good writer.

[Ed Helms]

Good thing you didn't submit that letter to the law school.

[Terence Winter]

It might have saved me a lot of time. Meanwhile, all my friends who became auto mechanics were making a fortune, and they all thought I was the biggest idiot in the world. Joe College. I'm already now in the whole student loan wise from nyu. And I said, all right, there's only one way forward, and that's the law school. So I did that. Went at night, worked for Merrill lynch during the day as the legal assistant to one of the lawyers who counseled the trading people and graduated, got a job at a big Manhattan law firm, passed the New York bar, the Connecticut bar. And my first week there, I realized I had made a grave, grave error. I hated it. I didn't. I just couldn't give a shit about any of it. Within about a week and a half, I was sneaking out during the day, going to movies, bookstores. I just. Two years in, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I just didn't want to go there. So it was really, you know. And it's very, you know, really.

[Ed Helms]

Were you making good money there?

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, yeah, it was great. I had everything I thought I wanted. I had an assistant, I had an office. I had a diploma written in Latin. I was like, holy shit, look at me, I'm a lawyer.

[Ed Helms]

And was that new? Did you go to NYU Law School also?

[Terence Winter]

No. I went to St. John's Law School, which is the Harvard of Queens.

[Ed Helms]

Sure.

[Terence Winter]

And I was in the top 5% of the bottom third of my class, so I was very proud of that. Again, it was like I wasn't even thinking in terms of, are you happy? Yeah. And, you know, it was. I was like 29 at this point. And I had that moment like, okay, you were going to either jump out a window in 10 years from the depression of working somewhere you just don't like, and you'd never be good at this because you don't like it. What do you want to do when you wake up in the morning? And I was like, all right, well, maybe I'd be a salesman, you know, because I looked at and I was like, all right, there's a little voice that said, come on, it's not salesman. What is it? And it's like, all right, well, an ad copywriter, maybe I could do that. And then even the voice, like, come on, go deeper. And then it was finally, I want to go to Hollywood and write sitcoms. And once I said that out loud, it was like everything changed. But then I thought, all right, well, I remember this bit in Mr. Saturday Night with Billy Crystal where he talked about the idea of, you're either living room funny or you're really funny. You know, you could be funny with your friends. And yeah, hey, I'm the funniest guy in the group. Can you do that for real? And I thought, all right, well, I think I can. And I thought the fastest way to figure this out is write my own material and do stand up. And if I can get people to laugh, then I'm legit.

[Ed Helms]

Wow.

[Terence Winter]

I wasn't particularly interested in being a stand up, but I wanted to see am I crazy or am I funny or I really am funny. So for a couple of months, right around that time, I was doing stand up and Catch a Rising Star.

[Ed Helms]

And this is what year?

[Terence Winter]

Strip 90. 1990.

[Ed Helms]

1990. Wow. What a great time in those clubs.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was interesting too, because it was like this young woman named Sarah Silverman. Sure. Holy shit. Chris Rock was still around. You know, I was, these are the real deal, you know, And I was doing open mics and watching these people and going, man, you know, like a young Sarah Silverman was just great to see that. And then to watch her career after that was great. But, you know, I did okay. You know, I get on at two in the morning, the three people, and okay, I said something, they laughed. Great, that worked this, worked that. And then once I. Once I said, okay, I'm not crazy. Then I was like, all right, I'm doing this.

[Ed Helms]

So you stopped doing standup and then dove it. That's so interesting that that, that crucible of standup was your sort of testing ground. And it was I had a similar. Similar path. I knew that I wanted to work in comedy, and to me, stand up was sort of like, all right, if you're serious, you know, get into it. And I got right into that same circuit you were in, but, like, the next sort of time frame. So I started in about 97, 98. And I love. I still relish my years in the New York City standup series.

[Terence Winter]

And for anybody who's never done it, I mean, you know, it's funny if you think like they say. One of the biggest fears people have is speaking in public. Speaking in public with the agenda of also trying to get people to laugh is like, and it's funny. You do a bit or you say a joke and people don't laugh. It's like getting punched in the face. Oh, yeah, it is. Like, there's no sound louder than people not laughing when you think they're going to.

[Ed Helms]

Let's say you're like a string quartet or like even a great professor at a university giving a lecture. Most performers will get up in front of an audience, and the audience actually wants them to succeed. Not true. In comedy clubs. A lot of audience members in a comedy club want you to bomb. They want to feel the train wreck. They're there to see the just car crash. But, wow, that's awesome. Okay, so then Hollywood, and you just moved out, and I jumped in.

[Terence Winter]

Just moved out. I did not know a soul. I literally sold everything I had. I was not in a relationship at the time. And I just showed up here on May 8, 1991. I got a room in a horrible SRO hotel. It was actually in MacArthur Park. And now I was like, all right, I have to figure out. So I went down to the Writers Guild and this was just complete luck. They had a list of new agents or young agents who were actually looking for clients. And on that list was a guy I went to law school with who sat four seats away from me.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, wow.

[Terence Winter]

And his name was Doug Viviani. He's not an agent, so don't call him. But I called him and I said, what are you doing? Are you an agent? He goes, no, I'm a real estate attorney, and a client of mine wrote a book on real estate, and I used the fee to get bonded as an agent, but I don't know anything about being an agent. I said, well, congratulations, you're my agent. What are you talking about? I'm in la. I'm right. I'm trying to be a writer. I need an agent. I said, so I'M going to create the Doug Viviani Agency out of a mailbox, et cetera. And we're going to get letterhead and a phone mail, and I'm going to submit my work under your letterhead. And if I get anything, you get 10% like an agent. And he said, great. So that's what I did.

[Ed Helms]

So you were your own agent. He was just the sort of, like, nominal agent.

[Terence Winter]

He was like, you know, the guy on Charlie's Angels. So I did that, and I photocopied all my scripts. And this is back. You know, this is now like 1992 when you could do this. I would just pull up to the Warner Brothers lock, for example, and say, yeah, I'm the messenger from the Doug Vibiani Agency. I have some scripts I need to drop off. And I just hit every sitcom office in LA and there was like 30 of them at the of time. And I addressed, you know, here's my scripts to the showrunner from an agent. And now at least my scripts are in the building where theoretically, if lightning struck, I could at least have a shot.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah.

[Terence Winter]

And I don't know, about a week or so into it, I got a. There's a phone message on the Doug Viviani voicemail line, and it's a woman said, yeah, hi, my name is Winifred Hervey Stallworth. I'm the executive producer of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I read Terry Winter's stuff, interested in having him in maybe to pitch. So I said, oh, my God. So I called Doug in New York, and it was a Friday, he was gone for the weekend. I was like, shit, I gotta wait till Monday now. And I was like, you know what? Doug doesn't really know anything about being an agent. I'll just be Doug. And I called her back and I said, yeah, hi, Doug.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, that's so Donald Trump of you.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, John Barron calling. So, yeah, And I have no idea what agents did or said. The only agent I ever saw was Reuben Kincaid on the Partridge Family. And he didn't seem to do much, but I figured, you know what? Let me just. I'm just gonna wing it. And she said, yeah, yeah, we read his stuff. He's really, you know, talented. Kid's amazing. So she said, does he have, like, one more teenage oriented script? Cause, you know, Fresh Prince is kind of a teenage show. I said, yeah, he just finished an incredible episode of the Wonder Years, but I don't have a copy of it. I won't have it until. So I'm trying to calculate in My head. How long is it gonna take me to write a Wonders episode? So it was Friday. I go, I can get it to you two late Tuesday afternoon if that works. Yeah, fine, Great. So hung up the phone and cranked out a Wonder Years episode. Went in, gave it in. Now, he was the messenger, I was the lawyer. I was everybody. And they had me in to pitch an idea, and that became my foot in the door. I sold him on an idea that ultimately never went anywhere. But that was my first shot. And a little after, I got into a thing called the Warner Brothers Sitcom Writers Workshop, which they used to do. They would take 15 people from a pool of hundreds around the country and then put you through a program. At the end of it, they called me and they said, we have an interesting situation. We have a show we think you'd be great for. It's not a sitcom. And this isn't a reflection of your sitcom writing. It's a drama that has comedy in it. And I said, well, why me? And they said, well, it's about a blue collar guy who's a lawyer who works for a big, stuffy law firm. Do you think you could do that? And I was like, if I don't get this fucking job. I said, yeah, that's basically my life story. So, yeah. And that was my actual first staff job. It was a show called the Great Defender with Michael Rispoli, Peter Krause, Richard Kiely, who was man of La Mancha. And thank God that I've been working ever since that show.

[Ed Helms]

Wow. Incredible, incredible story. There's a thread here which is grit and moxy and a sort of never seeing an obstacle as an obstacle, but. Yeah, but just something to work around.

[Terence Winter]

And especially with this, I was not taking no for an answer.

[Ed Helms]

So where do you think that came from growing up? Like, were you a scrappy kid in Brooklyn?

[Terence Winter]

I mean. Yeah, I mean, I grew up. I was 13. I started working for a butcher shop that was owned by Paul Castellano, who's the head of the Gambino family. When I was 16, I worked in an illegal card game run out of a synagogue in our neighborhood that was run by a guy named Roy demeo, who's the subject of a book called Murder Machine. He and his crew in the early 80s, killed more people than the Iraqi army. At the time, I think was the. The statistic. He had a bar in my neighborhood, so by osmosis, I just kind of knew those guys. I also just became fascinated with crime and criminals. Actually, somebody asked me this, like, what was the first thing? And it sounds quaint now, but it was the movie Oliver. I loved the idea of being part of that gang of pickpockets. That was, like, so cool. I wanted to be the Artful Dodger. That looked so cool to me. And right around that time, I read Abbie Hoffman had this book called Steal this Book, of course, which was my bible. And it was the first time I was like, oh, wow, you can scam shit. And then the sting came out, and I was like, oh, my God. Using your brain to psych people out and get what you want. And I just became fascinated with the idea of using psychology or human nature to sort of, you know, get my way through the world. And I just sort of. Yeah, became that guy and that kid, you know, who's always think. Even to this day, my initial instinct. If I'm presented with a problem, I always think of, what's the way to scam my way through this? And I go, yeah, you can just pay it. You can just pay the bill. You don't need to do this.

[Ed Helms]

Right, right, right.

[Terence Winter]

But that's right where I go. What lie do I tell to get? And I go, that's you from when you're 15 years old. But, wow, it was so ingrained.

[Ed Helms]

Well, that's a pretty good transition point for us, because you had a kind of exposure to that criminal element in Brooklyn. Is that what made you such a perfect candidate for one of your biggest staff jobs at the Sopranos there?

[Terence Winter]

I think so, yeah. When I saw that pilot, my agent at the time sent it to me. And, you know, like most people, I thought, opera, what is this? And I don't even think I finished watching it. And I was. I was, like, trembling. I was like, I know these guys. I know these people. I know how they talk. I know how they think. I called him up, I said, you've got to get me on this show.

[Ed Helms]

So the real life mob life was not for you. It was not something that. That even attracted you from a sort of, like, romantic or exotic sense, which I think draws a lot of people into that space. But the fictional mob space was right where you felt at home.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, I love that stuff. And it's like all the fun of

[Ed Helms]

the Mafia with none of the danger.

[Terence Winter]

It's like I say, why people ride roller coasters. It's like you feel like you're about to die, but you're not actually gonna die. How exhilarating. So writing about it, you know, was much preferable for me.

[Public Podcast Advertiser]

All right.

[Ed Helms]

I could Go on for hours. I love hearing about your career and all the machinations and steps you took. It's my favorite thing is just learning about how people got where they wanted to be. And you have an incredible story. But let's turn the page and get into kind of where you and I actually have this interesting overlap, which is in our shared fascination with the prohibition era. I think most people assume they know what prohibition is. Liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake. There was a bunch of mobsters and tommy guns, and then it got repealed. You made this incredible show Boardwalk Empire. What drew you to Prohibition in the first place? I mean, I could make an obvious leap from the Sopranos to prohibition era gangsters being the overlap. But was there anything about that era in particular that felt so. So ripe for storytelling?

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, I mean, I was given a book by HBO called Boardwalk Empire about the history of Atlantic City. And they said, maybe there's a TV series in here. Okay, the history of Atlantic City. That sounds great. But on the way out the door, they said, Martin Scorsese's attached to that book. And I was like, oh, okay, well, that's a different story. I will find the TV series in here.

[Ed Helms]

You're right.

[Terence Winter]

So you started reading, and there was a chapter about this guy named Nucky Johnson, who I later fictionalized as Nucky Thompson. But Nucky was the corrupt treasurer of Atlantic City during the prohibition era, where, you know, you have a corrupt politician in charge of a city on the eastern seaboard where all the alcohol comes through. And suddenly overnight, he was friends with Lucky Luciano and Arnold Rothstein and Al Capone and everybody else. I went, this is the series, this guy, this era. And I was like, I love the 20s. You know, that snappy, fast talking 1920s stuff. I've always been fascinated with that kind of dialogue. The era, you know, was also interesting to me too, is that Even though it's 100 years ago, it still felt modern. People dressed in suits, they went out to restaurants, they talked on the telephone, they drove in cars. You know, it still felt cool. It still felt, like, accessible. It wasn't like 10 years earlier would have felt like, you know, Downton Abbey, but this was modern. You know, you could wear some of those clothes today.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah.

[Terence Winter]

And I said, wow, this is such a great setup. And it's really not really been explored in TV or film. So when I went to meet, I'll call him Marty, because I know him, and I know it sounds douchey, but that's his name. When I went to meet Marty. When I went to meet Mr. Scorsese, and believe me, that's what I called him initially, he was like, oh, this is great. I've never done anything in this era before. So once he gave me the blessing, you know, we were off to the races. And then, you know, the real work started. We had a protagonist who was like 50 years old in 1920. So I was like, okay, so he was born in 1870. So God, what books did he read? What was his pop culture references? What was happening in 1920? There's the war. World War I just ended. He had all these guys coming home. Women just got the right to vote. Prohibition itself. What were the movies? So it was like a ton of research. You know, also, how did people actually talk? I'm sure they didn't alter it. Say, 23 skidoo every five minutes, do the Charleston was like, every time you ever see anything in the 20s, everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like, did they do. Is there any other songs written between 1920 and 1930? And it's funny, I mean, I wanted to do a thing where, you know, it was like that Nucky at some point says, if I hear the Charleston one more time, I'm gonna kill somebody. And it actually didn't come out till 1924 anyway, so we didn't even touch on it until way late. But yeah, it was just sort of. Once I started doing the research, it was just fascinating. Not. Not just all the other stuff, but the prohibition stuff itself was so eye opening in terms of the history of how it. How it even came to be. And then. And what a disaster it became, you know, the single biggest thing that made criminals millionaires overnight. And it was like outlawing turkey sandwiches. It was like most people didn't give like, wait, what? I've been drinking beer my whole life now I can't do it. Fuck you. I'm gonna keep doing this. And just. So many failed consequences of that law.

[Public Podcast Advertiser]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers. Growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index, and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures wasn't that delicious?

[Terence Winter]

So good. Your bill, ladies. I got it. No, I got it. Seriously. I said I assisted first. Oh, don't be silly. You don't be silly.

[Ed Helms]

People with the Wells Fargo Active Cash

[Terence Winter]

credit card prefer to pay because they

[Ed Helms]

earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases.

[Terence Winter]

Okay, Rock, paper scissors for it. Rock, paper scissors. Shoot.

[Ed Helms]

No the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card. Visit wells fargo.com ActiveCash Terms apply ever

[Martha Stewart]

wonder how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret Getting ahead of the Mess with New Reynolds Kitchens Countertop Prep Paper Just lightly wet the counter beforehand so the paper grips and stays in place. Then lay down the Reynolds Kitchens countertop prep paper so drips and spills stay on the paper, not all over your kitchen counter. You can roll out dough, prep a party spread, or cook alongside family. When you're done, cleanup is as simple as as lifting the paper and revealing that clean counter underneath. Effortless. You can use it for cooking and baking, prep and even crafting, especially when you need extra working space. Because when the mess is already handled, you can focus on what matters the food, the people, and the moment. It may look effortless, but now you know it's Reynolds Kitchens Countertop prep paper. Take a tip from me. Wet it, set it, prep it. Done. Make it easy. Make it with Reynolds Kitchens Countertop prep paper Available now in the Reynolds Wrap aisle in Walmart, Target, Amazon and Costco.

[Jana Kramer]

This is Jana Kramer from Wind down with Jana Kramer. Every Mother's Day, I tell myself I'm going to be more thoughtful than flowers, because flowers are beautiful. But they don't last. In my house, everyone always ends up in the kitchen. Friends, family, the kids. And I love having things around that spark conversation and feel special. That's why I love the Lenox Spice Village and your mom will too. It's a set of 24 hand painted little houses that are actually spice jars and I swear people notice it the second they walk in it's charming, it's nostalgic, and it somehow makes even everyday cooking feel a little more fun. And here's the best part. It actually gets used every day. Whether you're starting the full set or helping her complete one she's loved for years, there's a whole world of Spice Village to explore. This mother'. Give her something she'll treasure long after the card is put away. Trust me, once you see it, you'll want one too. Find the full [e-mail] Spice Village

[Ed Helms]

it is truly a wild moment in American history. The sort of moral panic on one hand, and then there's the anti German sentiment kind of like flaring up. And then that gives the teetotalers ammunition

[Terence Winter]

to go after the brewers.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, to go after all these German brewers.

[Terence Winter]

It was a perfect storm. I mean, yeah, you're at war with Germany and now suddenly, you know, coleslaw is liberty cabbage and hamburgers are liberty sandwiches. And, I mean, I think half the brewers got shut down. And I got where it came from. You know, there were. It was. Alcoholism was devastating. You know, the cliche is the dad got paid on Friday and then you didn't see him and spent all his money at the bar and, you know, and your family went destitute. This is in days social programs or even before AA was a thing, I guess. So there was a real. It was a real problem.

[Ed Helms]

So Nucky Thompson is a character that was played by Steve Buscemi. How close to the real Nucky Johnson was he?

[Terence Winter]

Not at all. Not at all. If we were to cast a real. We were to cast somebody who looked like Nucky Johnson, Jim Gandolfini would have actually been perfect. Nucky was a big, burly, bald headed guy.

[Ed Helms]

So I feel like Steve Buscemi's casting was such a stroke of genius for Boardwalk Empire because it is against type and in a way that, you know, can this guy who's sort of a slight build, not an intimidating presence, and whose face, to me just has a sort of kind of warmth and sadness and a sort of tenderness. Can this guy carry a mob show? Tell me a little bit about why Steve Buscemi was so perfect for Boardwalk Empire?

[Terence Winter]

You know, it started with Marty. You know, we said, all right, who are we gonna get to do this? And, you know, I said, well, this is what the real guy looked like. And Marty said, well, no one's ever heard of this guy. Which is also funny because when I went down to do my research in Atlantic City, the real nucky between like, 1910 and 1930 was hands down the most powerful guy in Atlantic City. Everybody knew him. Nothing moved without Nucky. And when I went down initially and talked to old timers and people. Ever hear Nucky Johnson? No, never heard of him. Never heard him after the show. Oh, yeah, Nucky, I. My uncle worked for. Suddenly everybody knew who he was, but nobody knew who this guy was. So Marty's, you know, very. You know, correctly said, it doesn't matter. We can cast anybody. And then he just said, well, who. Let's. Let's just name actors we like. And one of the first. Yeah, Ed Helms was not available.

[Ed Helms]

Not available.

[Terence Winter]

And I said, well, Steve is semi. I always. I love Steve. And he goes, oh, he loves Steve Buscemi. And we rattled off a couple of other names. And then he's like, all right, whatever. And a couple of days later, Marty called me up. He said, I can't stop thinking about Steve for this. And I said, yeah, me too. I said that. Crazy. I see. He says, yeah, yeah. And it's funny. Even Steve, when I called him, he knew he was in the running. And when I called him to tell him he got the role, I said, steve, you know, we're. We're really excited. We want to offer you this role. And he said, hey, look, you know, it was really just an honor to be considered. And I. And I said, steve, no, I'm giving. We're giving you the role. And he's like, what? He goes, I've been preparing myself for two weeks to not get this. I didn't even hear you. I didn't even let that register. I said, yeah, no, you got it. We're doing this. And he's like, holy shit. And then, of course, you know, he went on. You know, I think he won the Screen Actors Guild a couple times in a row and Emmy nominations, and, you know, people just loved him. He totally sold it and pulled it off. Obviously, he's Steve Buscemi.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, he is. I would imagine, you know, your collaboration as a showrunner with the wardrobe department and the production design department and the props department was so fun on a project like this and so cool. And then, of course, your music team, both the score and, you know, your needle drops throughout the episodes. What are some things that stood out to you in that research process that were either surprising or especially. Especially exciting or fun to think about and write about? And were there things that came up in that process that inspired moments in the show?

[Terence Winter]

I loved all the wardrobe stuff, the hair stuff. One of the Things I loved was a little detail that in somewhere in 1916, the Gillette Company invented the safety razor. Up until that point, men shaved themselves with a straight razor. So facial hair was a big thing. So a lot of guys had beards and mutton chops and all these crazy. Everybody had facial hair up until 1917. Suddenly, that was the safety razor came out. So young people started looking at facial hair as, oh, yeah, that's your dad, that's your grandfather. So we. Somewhere around season two, I would start seeing young people with mustaches in the crowd of extras or on the show. And I mentioned it to our hair person a few times and I mentioned it to our extras casting person. I said, do not send me any young men with facial hair. It kept popping up and it started to drive me crazy. So I actually got the yearbook from Princeton University of 1922. And I went into the hair department and I said, find me one man in this book with facial hair. And there was not one college student that had a mustache or a beard in 1922. I said, that's the level of accuracy we need to have here. And I did. I had the A plus team of every department head, hair, makeup, wardrobe, music. It shows production. Production design. Just crazy details. Yeah, you know, like wardrobe is like, you know, drives me crazy. If you see a Show Set in 1920, everybody's dressed like it's 1920. You know, I don't know about you, but I've, you know, I have, guess jeans from the 90s, probably, that I still have. Actually, my wife has called me on shit like that a couple of times. Like you gotta, you know, you gotta get rid of. So not everybody dresses like it's 2024. Most people don't. You know, if you're really hip and maybe you're in New York or la, maybe you do, but you sure don't don't. And if you're a working class guy in Atlantic City, you dress like it's 1893. Yeah. You know, so I needed a. We needed a smattering of that. And everybody took such pride in it too. I remember even once a big debate about a chain link fence. You know, I didn't even bring it up. But our production designer, he said, you know, we had a chain link fence somewhere. And he said, before you say anything, yes, they had chain link fences in 1920. They're invented in 1905. Okay, take it easy. He goes, I didn't know myself and I had to check this out, but yeah, they had chain link fences. Back then. So, yeah, like, stuff like that. Ah, I love that.

[Ed Helms]

And it just informs all the. The actors on the set. It gives them all these. These kind of anchors and reference points to latch onto. So most prohibition crime stories center around the male bootleggers, but Boardwalk features a lot of extremely unique and morally gray and enterprising female characters. Margaret Thompson, Gillian d' Armody being a couple of standouts. What was the inspiration for those incredible characters?

[Terence Winter]

In the book Boardwalk Empire, Nelson Johnson fictionalized a meeting between the real Nucky and a woman from the neighborhood who came to ask to get her husband a job. And he said, this is the kind of thing Nucky would do. You know, people worked in the hotel business in the summer months. It was great. But during the winter, people were out of work, and if your husband drank and didn't have money, you were going without food. So he talked about a little fictional encounter between a neighborhood woman, Nucky, and Nucky would give her $50 to tide her over for the month, whatever. And I said, that's interesting. That's an interesting relationship. I wonder who that is. Who is that woman? And then I just took it from there. Like, okay, what if he's interested romantically? And what if her husband is a creep and he beats her up and Nucky gets rid of him? And where does that go? So that became Margaret Gillian d' army just came. You know, I knew Jimmy Darmody was coming home from World War I, and this was again, one of those happy or not happy accidents of Prohibition. World War I ended, and you had a lot of disenfranchised soldiers coming home after horrific experiences overseas. And I think most Americans even to this day, have no idea how incredibly brutal World War I was. Trench warfare and just. Absolutely. Just horrific. Guys living up to their waists and filth and rat infested water and, you know, just shooting at each other. And for. No, they didn't even know why they were there, but it was really horrible. So a lot of these guys came home and.

[Ed Helms]

Chemical warfare.

[Terence Winter]

Oh, chemical. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and a lot of guys came home and, you know, our character on the show, Richard Harrow, who was the guy with the half face and the mask, you know, played by Jack Houston. That was the first time that, you know, battlefield medicine got to. To the point where you could keep people alive and well, because it was trench warfare. There were so many then. Inordinate amount of facial injuries. Guys would poke their heads up from a trench and boom, get half of their face blown off. Normally 20 years earlier, you're dead. But now battlefield medicine got to the point where you could keep those people alive. So those guys are coming home alive. So thousands of guys are coming home with facial injuries. Literally, like half your face blown off or your jaw blown off. And then they had to get into society. So there was an artist in New England, a woman who was a sculptor, who thought, I wonder if I could do, like, a half mask to match their face. So these guys could at least go out in public or go out at night and just. And that's where that character came from. But again, it was just these little details in the research.

[Ed Helms]

There's another formidable female character in Boardwalk Empire, Assistant Attorney General Esther Randolph, who attempts to prosecute Nucky. Now, she's presumably based on the real world, Mabel Walker Willibrand.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, great. Who? Fascinating character. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

So we talk a lot about her in Snafu. I'm just curious, kind of what your research brought to light. What excited you about her as a character? She's such a mess of contradictions.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah. I mean, the one thing I loved is that when prohibition ended, she went to work for a wine company. Like, and even, like, she wasn't averse to having a drink herself. But it's like once she became like, okay, you know, I'm doing this, she was really staunchly trying to enforce those laws. And of course, her bosses were just unbelievably corrupt. Harry Daugherty, Warren Harding, that whole administration was just like, you know, you can't. And that's another thing that just surprised me about the ERA Again, it's, you know, the idea of corrupt politicians. These guys were selling shit right out of the White House. I mean, you literally. There were bootleggers who were showing up at the Capitol with suitcases full of stuff, selling their stuff to Congress people. And you could buy anything you wanted from Harry Daugherty and his guy Jess Smith, and just another fascinating relationship.

[Ed Helms]

And George Cassidy is a character that is a real life bootlegger who actually had an office in the Capitol building where he was distributing liquors to Congress people.

[Terence Winter]

That.

[Ed Helms]

That's very similar to your character Gaston Means in Boardwalk Empire, who is kind of a supplier to high level folks, right?

[Terence Winter]

Yeah. And a real guy. Yeah. I mean, the more we would research this, the more incredible it became. Another detail too. Al Capone's brother, one of his brothers, moved out to the west and became a sheriff. And he was like a cowboy sheriff who would arrest bootleggers. And we were like, we gotta get this on the show. And we could never work it in. But it's like just these little odds and ends. You're like, holy shit, this actually was real.

[Ed Helms]

It's so cool to hear you touch on these things that we also dig into in Snafu and some of these strange and more obscure connections.

[Terence Winter]

Or George Ramis too. Another one. Like one of the craziest stories you hear about, like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes like the biggest bootlegger ever and then loses everything, goes to jail, and then his wife completely steals all of his money in conjunction with a federal agent who she has an affair with. And then he gets out of jail and then murders her and then is found not guilty by reason of insanity. He represented himself and he with a temporary insanity plea. And it's like, if I made that up, you'd be like, come on. And this absolutely all happened and Willebrandt

[Ed Helms]

prosecuted him and he's part of what led to the federal government taxing illegal liquor.

[Terence Winter]

Right?

[Ed Helms]

Which is just another insane.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, why would you think you'd have to do that? But yeah, I mean, I guess it's the same principle now, like, you go, okay, well I don't care how you earned your money, even if it's illegal, you have to still have to pay taxes on it. And that's, I guess how they get Al Capone, you know, for tax evasion. It's like, I know you said you were furniture salesman, but you've got $1 million here. So. Okay.

[Public Podcast Advertiser]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor supplier suppliers, growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities. Completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures wasn't that delicious?

[Terence Winter]

So good. Your bill, ladies. I got it. No, I got it. Seriously. I insist. I insisted first. Don't be silly. Don't be silly. You don't be silly.

[Ed Helms]

People with The Wells Fargo ActiveCash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases.

[Terence Winter]

Okay, rock, paper, scissors for it. Rock, paper, scissors. Shoot.

[Ed Helms]

No the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.com ActiveCash Terms apply this

[Martha Stewart]

is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Ever wonder how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret it Getting Ahead of the Mess with New Reynolds Kitchens Countertop Prep Paper Just lightly wet the counter beforehand so the paper grips and stays in place. Then lay down the Reynolds Kitchens countertop prep paper so drips and spills stay on the paper, not all over your kitchen counter. You can roll out dough, prep a party spread, or cook alongside family. When you're done, cleanup is as simple. As simple as lifting the paper and revealing that clean counter underneath. Effortless. You can use it for cooking and baking, prep and even crafting, especially when you need extra working space. Because when the mess is already handled, you can focus on what matters the food, the people, and the moment. It may look effortless, but now you know it's Reynolds Kitchens countertop prepaid paper. Take a tip from me. Wet it, set it, prep it. Done. Make it easy. Make it with Reynolds Kitchen's countertop prep paper, available now in the Reynolds Wrap aisle in Walmart, Target, Amazon and Costco.

[Jana Kramer]

This is Jana Kramer from Wind down with Jana Kramer. Instead of giving your mom something that fades, give her something that becomes part of her home this Mother's Day. The Lenox Spice Village is a set of 24 hand painted little houses that are actually lovely spice jars, perfect for anyone who loves to cook, entertain, or enjoy the little details that make everyday life special. As a mom, I love gifts that help turn ordinary moments into memories. Charming, timeless and meant to be used. This is one of those pieces she'll treasure. And once you see it, you'll want it for your own home too. Find the full [e-mail] Spice Village

[Ed Helms]

I just was going to kind of bring it back to this overarching theme throughout that era of hypocrisy. Sometimes it's kind of buried, and sometimes it's just outrageous and flagrant. Like we discussed George Cassidy and these bootleggers supplying the lawmakers who are passing the laws of prohibition with alcohol. I'm curious if you hit on in your research, are you familiar with Formula 6?

[Terence Winter]

I am not. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

So one of the things we get into in this season of Snafu is this really staggering realization that for a long time, the government was putting additives into industrial alcohol to prevent people from drinking it. And these were things that made industrial alcohol. This process was called denaturing, and it made alcohol incredibly yucky to imbibe, but it also made people a bit sick, just enough to keep people from drinking it. And that was going on for decades. Before Prohibition, industrial alcohol had a lot of uses, obviously. Then During Prohibition, Formula 6 emerges. And in order to try to dissuade people from drinking alcohol, they start adding real poison to alcohol in levels sufficient to kill people. We get into the really remarkable story of the New York City medical examiner's office, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, who kind of pieced this together by examining the corpses of a lot of people dying and sort of. And starting to see patterns of different. Different chemicals and poisonings and also at the same time, revolutionizing chemistry in the service of toxicology and medical examination as a practice. These were relatively new at the time. And Alexander Gettler is credited with really kind of inventing a lot of processes to figure out what chemicals were in dead bodies or in human tissue. Anyway, it's just wild what they start.

[Terence Winter]

I have to assume formulas two through five were varying degrees, I guess. How bad is this gonna be? Like, why? Yeah, Formula four is like diarrhea. That's not enough. We gotta really get, like, you know, you know, blisters. Now let's.

[Ed Helms]

Formula 5 knocks you out for like a week.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed Helms]

Formula 6.

[Terence Winter]

You're not drinking anymore. So, yeah, I was very aware of the fact that bootleggers would incorporate. Sometimes it got to the point where they mix turpentine, they'd mix wood alcohol, you know, all of which, you know, into their shitty, you know, home manufactured stuff. And that was killing people, making people blind. Sure. There was a rash of people who went blind. I think it was in New York City, like, 18 people over the course of a weekend who all drank the same bootleg alcohol. I'm wondering now if was that some of the stuff that the government was actually now sneaking into the criminal? Like, how were people getting government poisoned liquor?

[Ed Helms]

There was a drink called Derail because it was an alcohol that was used in. In the industrial railroad industry. And it was. And it was making people terribly sick. That was basically bootleggers Just using industrial alcohol to enhance their product.

[Terence Winter]

Yeah, formaldehyde, too, is. They actually did that on the show, actually showing somebody using it and anything. And it's interesting, too. Like, this is the people don't realize, like, the advent of the mixed drink came because of prohibition. Because the bootleg alcohol was so vile, they had to start mixing it with fruit juices and stuff. So all the stuff that we know today, you know, up until Prohibition, it was, you know, straight whiskey, beer, you know, it was just straight alcohol. It wasn't, you know, and you do. You just drank it to get drunk quickly, I guess. I don't know. There's a lot of sipping going on. But it was, you know, suddenly all the drinks that you hear about today, you know, are, you know, come from the. The need to make this stuff palatable. And, you know, what killed me, too, is I love the details, the lengths bootleggers would go to in terms of creating false labels, getting the bottle, filling it up with alcohol. There was one which detail that blew my mind, that they would create a whole false crate of alcohol, put them in fishing nets, like, bunch of them, and then take the fishing nets and dunk it in the water, leave it in seawater for a couple of hours and come out. You know, you dump this big fishing net full of crates that say Johnny Walker or whatever it was, and there's still seaweed on it. And you go. Nobody would ever think you faked this. But the lengths they would go to to make stuff that was fake look real. You go, wow. I mean, and that appealed to the con man in me. I go, wow, what a brilliant little touch. You can still smell the salt water. It's obviously came out off a boat in the ocean.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah.

[Terence Winter]

No, this is made in some guy's garage.

[Ed Helms]

That's no different than you calling up Paramount, pretending to be your own agent.

[Terence Winter]

Not at all. But, yeah. He's like, wow, that's. That's. You know, and that's. I think, what people don't realize that criminals 24 hours a day is people thinking about how to do this shit. You know, it's pretty. Pretty incredible. And even the hypocrisy, too. And thinking, like, as you were talking about, you know, the whole. The Catholic Church, you know, sacrificial wine.

[Ed Helms]

Sure.

[Terence Winter]

Suddenly they had unbelievable demand for sacrificial wine. And the Jewish churches, suddenly, you know, everybody was a rabbi because there was an excursion, like you could do it for religious things or doctors. How many doctors were writing prescriptions, running low on Manischewitz. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Selling it out your back door. And how many, you know, neighborhood people had stills in their kitchen? You know, you could make, you know, extra money by, you know, you'd have guys like entire tenement buildings. Everybody had a little still and, you know, you could make an extra 20 bucks a week in 1920. That was a fortune. That was your grocery money, I'm assuming, or more. And the local gangsters would just come around and pick everything up and sell it. And this went on for years. And again, you know, all unintended consequences of this. And again, back to me, back to what? The point I made before about this, making millionaires out of criminals overnight. This is how organized crime infiltrated legitimate people business. They needed a place to put all that money. And it's like, great, let's buy trucking companies, which they initially did to transport all this stuff. Then it was like, you know, let's buy warehouses, let's buy real estate, let's get into other things. And this, over that 12 year period, enabled them to infiltrate every other area of American life.

[Ed Helms]

It's almost like the scale of the stupidity of Prohibition as, as a law is commensurate with the scale of how much organized crime then penetrated American society.

[Terence Winter]

Absolutely.

[Ed Helms]

In other words, the fallout of Prohibition is commensurate with the stupidity of it in the first place.

[Terence Winter]

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, up until Prohibition, most organized crime was gambling, prostitution, extortion and things of that nature that were, I guess, lucrative, but not. This was just a windfall that they couldn't have even possibly predicted. And I mean, I guess I'm certainly not the first person to make the observation that the drug business today is exactly the same thing.

[Ed Helms]

Well, I can't help thinking that there is a really cool prequel to Boardwalk Empire in the story of the New York City medical examiners who uncovered. Yeah, some of this insane, you know, because they're, they're right at the interface of law and crime, basically.

[Terence Winter]

Right.

[Ed Helms]

Because they're examining the. The coroner's job was just to rubber stamp all of the police misconduct. And you know, the police were just, you know, they kill somebody that they didn't like or, or because they were in some crime lord's pocket. This was a suicide. Even though he's got like six gunshots to the back of his head. And, and. But then Charles Norris came in, really turned things around and Alexander Getler turned out to be quite a genius of chemistry and put it to good use. It is an incredible story. We're recording this interview before season three of SNAFU actually comes out, so I really can't wait for you to hear it.

[Terence Winter]

I know. I mean, there's so many details you wrote up that I hadn't heard of, and it's again, it's just endlessly fascinating.

[Ed Helms]

Well, Terence Winter, this has been an absolutely delightful, very enlightening conversation. Thank you so much for jumping on stage.

[Terence Winter]

Absolutely. My pleasure. It was so fun to do. I can't wait to hear season three.

[Ed Helms]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Terence Winter]

Thanks so much, Ed. Take care.

[Ed Helms]

SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Steven Wood, Olivia Canney and Kelsey Albright. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Ekemene Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Our associate producer, Torrey Smith edited this episode. Editing, music and sound design by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Our amazing theme music is by Dan Rosado. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Rysak.

[Terence Winter]

Wasn't that delicious? So good. Your bill, ladies. I got it. No, I got it. Seriously, I insist. I assisted first. Oh, don't be silly. You don't be silly.

[Ed Helms]

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[Terence Winter]

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[Ed Helms]

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[Terence Winter]

Okay. Rock, paper, scissors for it. Rock, paper, scissors.

[Martha Stewart]

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[Terence Winter]

No.

[Ed Helms]

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[Martha Stewart]

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[Terence Winter]

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