Mike Schur (2:43)

What a wonderful introduction. Thank you. I mean, thank you first of all for highlighting my acting because I think, you know, that's the legacy that I hope to leave this Earth with more than anything else.

Ed Helms (2:55)

I don't think you get enough credit for your acting, and I don't think you act enough. I think you need to be in more stuff.

Mike Schur (3:01)

I will take any acting job that requires me to, A, remain mute and B, run along the side of a car like a dog.

Ed Helms (3:11)

Let's talk about Moats for a second, because what went into your choices, the choices that you made as an actor, was that something that, like, the writers room really kind of broke down and was like, it'd be really funny if he was just sort of spooky and almost like a horror movie character just sort of popping up. Or was that just your own brain sort of chewing on it and then showing up to set and being like, I'm gonna get weird.

Mike Schur (3:41)

Certainly the way that Greg Daniels and the writers wrote, and I'm putting that in quotes, wrote the character of Moses was spooky and weird and just kind of off. My choices as an actor I would describe as coming from a white hot panic. Just pure panic. Just no one had told me what to do. I didn't know what to do. I'm not an actor. And I just did anything. I just did anything that I could think of in the moment. And people kept finding it amusing. And so I just kept panicking and doing whatever came to mind.

Ed Helms (4:19)

I love it.

Mike Schur (4:20)

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Ed Helms (4:21)

It was a gift to all of America. So thank you, the world, really, truly.

Mike Schur (4:25)

Sure, yeah.

Ed Helms (4:26)

I'm really eager to dig into this snafu with you today. But before I do, I just wanted to tell you something because I was thinking about. We've known each other for 20ish years, and we've collaborated very closely in many different ways over the years. And I've talked about you in publicly, in interviews a lot over the years. And I realized there's something that I kind of say when your name comes up in interviews frequently, but I don't know that if I ever said it directly to you. And I was like, I gotta tell Mike this. I gotta get on the record with Mike Schur and let you know that the character Andy Bernard on the Office never would have clicked for me without you. And you were such an instrumental part of helping me find his voice and shaping who he became. And that whole process, all of our fun little huddle ups and just hard laughs and brainstorming sessions about who Andy Bernard could be and why Andy was funny or what made him funny. And it's just like one of my favorite memories of show business.

Mike Schur (5:45)

That's so kind of you to say. I mean, I will say that, you know, you joined the show in season three, and the plot was that, you know, Jim had moved to a different office, and the office that happened to be chosen was in Stamford, Connecticut. And I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, which is maybe an hour and change north of Stamford. And I just instantly knew Andy. I grew up with Andy, a lot of Andy's. And it was a very familiar character to me at the sort of preppy, like, Good Time Charlie guy who went to a Ivy League school and just wanted to be liked and was just desperate for, like, you know, was maybe a little clumsy in the way that he went about it, but had a good soul and a good heart. And I just remember thinking the combination of that character description and you as an actor, I was like, oh, I know. I get this. I get this. I know exactly who this guy is. And I do have a lot of, as I'm sure you do, specific memories of, like, little moments of, like, figuring out the exact right little mannerism or sort of prepster. Right little. Little turn of phrase or something that he would give. There was the. The episode where you all get drunk in the office, having to work late at night.

Ed Helms (7:03)

Oh, yeah.

Mike Schur (7:04)

And. And start. You start singing an Indigo Girl song.

Ed Helms (7:07)

Of Closer to Fine.

Mike Schur (7:09)

Closer to Great songs. And then Jim chimes in and you pop up and go, tuna, like, so excited that he also knows all the lyrics to Closer to Find. I mean, that's. That was my childhood. That was exactly. My childhood was, like, sitting around with my friends and listening to that album in particular.

Ed Helms (7:24)

That's really where I think our friendship forged. Like, that's when I met you was coming onto the office set and just immediately, like, you were one of. One of that handful of people that put me at ease immediately.

Mike Schur (7:39)

Oh, I'm so glad.

Ed Helms (7:40)

Yeah. I mean, it's just. Yeah, it's awesome.

Mike Schur (7:42)

It was a good time. It was a very fun, fun time in, I think, all of our lives. It felt like we were just in a very creative world with a bunch of creative, fun people. And our only job was to figure out what was the funniest thing that could have happened at any given moment. That's exactly.

Ed Helms (7:58)

Our only job was to make each other laugh as hard as possible. Yeah.

Mike Schur (8:01)

And I mean, there's no better job.

Ed Helms (8:03)

No better job. Well, Mike, I am thrilled you're here, because today's story is basically a political sitcom.

Mike Schur (8:12)

Excellent.

Ed Helms (8:12)

Only with a lot more graft, more fist fights, and way more dark money changing Hands under the table. Today we're talking about Tammany hall and the legendary Boss Tweed.

Mike Schur (8:26)

Fantastic.

Ed Helms (8:27)

Yes. How familiar are you with this story?

Mike Schur (8:30)

Fairly familiar, I would say, in the broad strokes. The Power Broker by Robert Moses is one of my favorite books ever written. And Tammany hall is a huge part of Robert Morris's origin story. And, you know, Robert Moses story is legendary and covers many chunks, but his, like, understanding of politics was forged in Tammany Hall.

Ed Helms (9:01)

All right, well, let's start with some baseline info here, because I think a lot of people have heard of Tammany hall but might be wondering, like, what is it exactly? Was it a building? Was it some sort of club? Or was it a symbol of something opaque and powerful, maybe even a little bit sinister? Well, the answer is actually, yes, all of the above. Tammany hall was indeed a series of buildings in New York City, the most famous of which stood at 14th street and Park Avenue South. But it is, in fact, so much more than that. When historians say Tammany hall, they're actually referring to the democratic political machine that controlled New York City politics for well over a century. From the early 19th century to the mid 20th century, Tammany hall was part fraternity, part Mafia, part city council. Think the Sopranos. Only the front business. Instead of being a strip club, it was City hall, right?

Mike Schur (9:57)

Yeah. It was the machine that ran New York for 100 years.

Ed Helms (10:02)

A political machine, by the way, was actually the term for this type of. It's not just a kind of random metaphor that I'm using. It was actually what these operations were called. For over 100 years, Tammany hall decided who got jobs, who got contracts, and often who won elections in the biggest city in America. So, Mike Scher, how did it all begin? Well, let's rewind a little bit, shall we? Back all the way to 1789, the same year George Washington became president. Coincidentally, back then, there were a number of prominent fraternal organizations like the Freemasons or the Society of the Cincinnati. And these groups tended to be a bit crusty and aristocratic, a little snooty, like country clubs. The Cincinnatians were even accused of trying to set up a kind of American hereditary nobility, which is pretty rich, considering we had just fought a massive war. War with England to get rid of all that crap.

Mike Schur (11:07)

The most. The most American thing, right, is you. You're like, no more sovereigns. And then as soon as the king is gone, you're like, what if we had a king?

Ed Helms (11:16)

Nobility's nice, isn't it?

Mike Schur (11:19)

It's good points.

Ed Helms (11:20)

So the modern version of these clubs, I think is like, we see around as, like Masonic temples or the Shriners, the Odd Fellows, which actually started in England around this time, was also happening at this time. And I think that largely. Or the Rotary Club, the Lions.

Mike Schur (11:44)

Well, it's not just those. It's also, you know, when you're talking about, like, societies that aim to pull levers of power, you're also talking about, like, in the modern day, there's Bohemian Grove and there's the Davos Conference, and there's. As long as there have been societies, there have been people seeking to form organizations that secretly control things. And so, you know that some of those clubs are more civic minded, some of them are more, you know, charity minded, but.

Ed Helms (12:14)

Or social, just like fraternal.

Mike Schur (12:17)

Yeah, but there's. It is always the case that there have been people in every society, even ones that purport to be purely democratic or republic or whatever you want to call them, that are like, wait, we're rich. And maybe if we quietly meet in a room somewhere, we can divvy up the society and capital in a way that will benefit us and not other people.

Ed Helms (12:38)

Yeah.

Mike Schur (12:38)

So it's a tale as old as time.

Ed Helms (12:40)

Yeah, indeed. What's funny is that, is that they're just as dumb as everybody else, but all kinds of conspiracy theories get ascribed to them. And I just think if you could probably get into those rooms, you'd be like, what? Oh, these idiots?

Mike Schur (12:56)

This is the group of people that like, yeah, my favorite thing in the world is when a billionaire does something stupid. And the reaction is like, well, that he's probably not doing that. He's a billionaire. And it's like, no, he. I promise, he's just as dumb as everybody else.

Ed Helms (13:11)

Of course. All right, so enter into this landscape of sort of crusty aristocratic societies. The Society of St. Tammany, founded in New York basically as a deliberate fuck you to all of these aristocratic clubs. So this was to be a patriotic club for the common man. It was named after Tamennand, a Lenni Lenape chief, mythologized as a patron saint of America and liberty. Of course, the Society of Saint Tammany also massively appropriated Native American attire rituals and. You're kidding.

Mike Schur (13:54)

Yes.

Ed Helms (13:56)

Yeah. Not a real progressive woke crew at this time, but they threw large events, parties and parades. They were rowdy, populist, and kind of a bit campy or silly. They had a big sense of humor and also probably quite a bit cringe as well.

Mike Schur (14:17)

Yeah, I would imagine yeah, yeah.

Ed Helms (14:20)

So guess who shows up real early in this zone. Aaron Burr. Yeah, yeah, that guy. Revolutionary War vet, the third vice president, and yes, the guy who murdered Lin Manuel Miranda. He's a national treasure. Miranda.

Mike Schur (14:40)

Does someone fact check these podcasts or should we do it in real time? Because I think.

Ed Helms (14:44)

No, I asked the Internet and they said that Aaron Burr shot Lynn Miller. There's video of. I swear to you.

Mike Schur (14:52)

You got the AI overview and it. Yeah, told you that Aaron Berman murder this Manuel Miranda.

Ed Helms (14:58)

100%. This is all AI generated, including me. I am fast asleep in my house right now. Okay, so no, he didn't murder Miranda. He murdered Alexander Hamilton. And Burr is the one who really saw early on the sort of political potential of Tammany Hall. He saw it not as just a bunch of rowdy, fun dudes, but as a ready made voter base. And he's the one who really steered Tammany hall straight into politics. Okay, so now jump ahead to the early 1800s. New York is being flooded with immigrants, especially from Ireland. Between 1820 and 1860, more than 1.6 million Irish arrived in America. And most of them funneled right through New York City. Of course, the famous Ellis island, right by the Statue of Liberty there in New York Harbor. Tammany, as an organization, not happy about this. They were deeply xenophobic, as were a lot of Americans at that time, and they really resisted this massive influx of immigrants, and sometimes violently. Not a real welcoming.

Mike Schur (16:21)

Not rolling out the red carpet where they.

Ed Helms (16:23)

Not exactly, but this will change, Mike Schur. This will. This will completely flip, because somebody at Tammany hall did the math, all right? Irish immigrants meant Irish votes, and votes meant power. And so Tammany did a 180, and they did in fact, roll out the welcome mat. And by welcome mat, I mean jobs, food, social services, and even protection from the angry nativist movement. In return, the Irish delivered loyalty at the ballot box. By the mid-1800s, they weren't just part of Tammany's political machine. They were basically the engine inside of it. Real talk, Mike Scher, do you see this as smart politics or just ugly exploitation? Or just maybe exactly the kind of two faced move that defines American politics in every era?

Mike Schur (17:21)

It's a familiar story. They were smart enough to understand the way the wind was blowing. It's also a classic American thing to have a bunch of immigrants come over to this country and then within a generation be like, I don't like immigrants. And it's like, what are you doing? But they were. And this was the source of all of their power was they were smart enough to understand that there were waves crashing on the shores of America and they could either try to fight them or surf them. And they decided to surf them. And so that is great metaphor, by the way. Thank you very much. That's the key to all of these movements, as I understand them and whether they survive or disappear is do you get on board with what is inevitable or do you try to fight it? And getting on board is a much smarter move politically. You mentioned the Sopranos. There's scenes in the Sopranos where it's Thanksgiving and the guys in the. In Tony's crew are like handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving.

Ed Helms (18:24)

Yeah. By the way, Tammany hall, same thing, invented it. Fully handing out turkeys. Yeah.

Mike Schur (18:28)

Like that one. Like having a giant free turkey Thanksgiving meal is like, that's a year's worth of votes that they just bought for. For, you know, at the time. What, like 75 cents worth of. Of f. Yeah.

Ed Helms (18:41)

Fabulous insight, Mike Schur. I love the way your brain works. We're gonna cut all that out though.

Mike Schur (18:47)

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I assume you're cutting all of this out, right? This isn't gonna air.

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Mike Schur (19:01)

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Ed Helms (21:31)

Q U-E-T.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. So we have now set the stage and here comes our headliner. Are you ready? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the man who. Who, well, not. Well, he's not going to join us. He's dead. But welcome to our narrative. The man who would come to embody Tammany Hall's power, greed and epic corruption, William Boss Tweed. Have you heard of Boss? You know, you're familiar with Boss Tweed. What does his name conjure for you?

Mike Schur (22:18)

It conjures an enormous barrel chested gentleman who strolls through the streets of New York. And everyone knows his name and he is legendary. And people whisper and point and wave and he waves back.

Ed Helms (22:32)

Oh my gosh. You're just. It sounds like an episode of Cheers.

Mike Schur (22:35)

It basically is. He's basically norm, but on the streets of 19th century New York and also.

Ed Helms (22:40)

Not afraid to just hit you with an axe. Yeah, yeah, he's a very complicated guy because he was enormous both in stature and in girth. And, and by all accounts a very gregarious and jovial guy. Yeah, really like the kind of like, you know, back slapping good time Charlie, but also like, capable of like Horrific violence.

Mike Schur (23:06)

Yeah. Combination of people, like breaking into huge smiles and waving and him waving back. And also moms grabbing their kids and hustling them inside when he walked down the street. That's what I picture.

Ed Helms (23:19)

All right, so let's get into old Boss Tweet here. Born in 1823 on Manhattan's lower east side, son of a chair maker, he actually apprenticed at the family trade. But he had much more lofty ambitions. His first step in chasing those ambitions was the rough and tumble, politically connected world of New York's volunteer fire companies. Isn't that kind of interesting? Isn't that kind of interesting? Yeah, because back then, fire companies, these weren't the noble Dalmatian loving institutions that we think of today. They were basically street gangs with hoses or buckets. Like, crews would literally fist fight over who got to put out a blaze because whoever controlled the fire, fires were so common, and whoever could control the fires had significant control over the neighborhood. And then, of course, all of the political clout that came with that. So think of, think of politics by way of pro wrestling, but with a lot more water damage.

Mike Schur (24:22)

Yeah, sure.

Ed Helms (24:23)

Thank God we don't have to rely on for profit emergency services anymore for now. Yeah. Yes. Or where things are.

Mike Schur (24:33)

When is this airing?

Ed Helms (24:34)

Yeah, exactly. So as we were. As we mentioned before, Tweed was a very gregarious guy. He first joined Engine Company Number 12 before helping found America's Fire Company Number 6 in 1848. This company was nicknamed the Big Six and their symbol, a flashy tiger. Tweed rose to foreman of this fire company, a position he parlayed into membership in the Society of St. Tammany. Again, these fire companies were very politically connected because it was just all power brokering between these sort of rough and tumble figures and politicians and the leaders of the various wards throughout New York City. So from there there, he bounced around a few different roles. He was an alderman, a congressman for a spell. Found that very boring. Came right back to New York City from Albany. He was even a lawyer for a minute. But he finally found real power on the New York County Board of Supervisors as Deputy street commissioner. What? A street commissioner? That just sounds mobbed up.

Mike Schur (25:49)

It really does.

Ed Helms (25:49)

The street commish.

Mike Schur (25:52)

Well, it conjures an image of like, this is the guy who knows all the other people in the neighborhood. Right. Like it's. It's a guy who's like, we need 60 people to do some task. And he's like, I got it. And he just goes out and knocks on all the doors and Gets rounds up the crew and. Yeah, yeah, that's a very, very mobbed up sounding job.

Ed Helms (26:14)

Well, as deputy street commish, old Tweed controlled city contracts, jobs and construction. And this is where Tweed's genius for corruption truly flourished. If you wanted your cousin on the city payroll, you slipped Tweed some cash. If you wanted your construction company to build a new school, you cut Tweed a slice. Or maybe you would just get the contract and never even have to build the fucking school. It's like they were just cranking out all the, all the cash.

Mike Schur (26:48)

So you've been in New York for 20 years and three of your cousins come over from, from Dundalk, Ireland, and they don't know what to do. And you go to see Boss Tweed or one of his minions and you say, we need construction jobs. And they go, here's three construction jobs. You give us 20% of your salary or whatever, and you take that deal. Because the alternative is.

Ed Helms (27:13)

And by the way, you vote for.

Mike Schur (27:15)

Us and you vote for us.

Ed Helms (27:16)

You show up and you vote for us. And if we tell you to, you go to the ballot box 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 times.

Mike Schur (27:21)

Yeah, you change your name 10 times.

Ed Helms (27:23)

It was a comment like they, like they were just stacking ballots. I want to be clear. So this wasn't something that Tweed brought to New York City government. This was the culture of New York City government at the time. It was just a profoundly corrupt apparatus across the board. The group of 20 aldermen and then there were 20 assistant aldermen who were sort of like governing body in the city, and they were known as the 40 Thieves. Like, that's how people referred to them. And this was well before Tweed even entered the picture. So he just kind of came in and was like, oh, I get how this works, and just kicked it up a huge notch. He basically industrialized political corruption in New York City. And, oh, don't forget New York City. It's nothing like it was today in scale, but it was massive for the time. And the economy of New York City was on par with entire other countries.

Mike Schur (28:29)

Nations.

Ed Helms (28:30)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Schur (28:31)

When we were researching Parks and Rec, we learned about a group of people in a city in California that shall remain nameless, that they incorporated this, the town. And then this group of people who'd been living there for a long time basically were like, we want to control this forever. And so the way they formed the government was, it was like, you know, there was a planning committee and a sewer committee and a construction committee and everything. And it had three members. And the way it worked was, you know, you serve, like a six year term, but at the end of the term, you. It was some mechanism by which, like, you named your own successor to the committee. And so then they just. All. They would, like, just all switch committees. So they just.

Ed Helms (29:16)

Oh, my gosh, it was brilliant.

Mike Schur (29:18)

Yeah. So they. And they. They. Their name was the dirty 30. It was 30. 30 people controlled the entirety of this town for. For decades because there were rules about how you could only serve on these such committees. State laws. You could only serve in the committees for a certain amount of time. So they just were like, all right, we'll only serve on the committee for six years, and then we'll just switch and hand it to someone else. And we just. They kept rotating, and as a result, they just controlled every single aspect of the planning of the community.

Ed Helms (29:44)

I'm very curious. How do you think Leslie Knope would do in Tammany Hall?

Mike Schur (29:51)

Not well. As a person who believed in fairness and equality and meritocratic system of achievement.

Ed Helms (30:00)

Sure. And also, I think she's someone who assumes the best intentions in others.

Mike Schur (30:06)

Yes.

Ed Helms (30:06)

Yeah.

Mike Schur (30:06)

I mean, she was no fool. She certainly, over the course of the show, had to deal with a lot of corrupt people and understood that people's motivations were not always pure. But, yeah, Tammany hall would not have been a good environment in which she could flourish to the best of her abilities.

Ed Helms (30:23)

I'll be honest. I also would not flourish. Yeah, I feel like my brain just doesn't work the right way for that. And I don't mean that in like a. Oh, because I'm a good person. I just mean, like, I don't. I can't track those complex webs of manipulation. And it's like. It's so overwhelming to me. It's. But. But someone like Tweed, like, he's really, like, an evil genius. He also was. He had that sort of, like, Bill Clinton level memory. So. He did. He had, like, an uncanny knack for people's names. That gives you power, and that's something that I've always, never had.

Mike Schur (31:01)

No, Like, I've forgotten your name, like, three times during the.

Ed Helms (31:05)

During this podcast. Yeah.

Mike Schur (31:06)

Yes. Yeah.

Ed Helms (31:07)

Likewise.

Mike Schur (31:08)

No, those people who have, like, an internal ledger where they know everyone's face and name and also where they live and what they owe you and what you did for them and can recall that with instant clarity. That's a. That's a real classic power grab skill that people have. All right.

Ed Helms (31:26)

Well, as well as things were going for Mr. Tweed, he would become truly unstoppable during the Civil war. So in 1863, the federal government has imposed a military draft and New York City exploded into riots. This was an incredibly tragic episode. Poor Irish immigrants were furious at the idea of fighting a war that they didn't feel was theirs, while rich people could buy their way out by paying for substitutes. Also, black people were being unfairly scapegoated as the cause of the war. And so they were being targeted for horrific violence. Mobs burned buildings and attacked the homes of Republican elites. It was violent, racist chaos. But of course, Tweed saw opportunity.

Mike Schur (32:18)

Of course. This, obviously, you might remember, was dramatized in Gangs of New York. That famous sequence toward the end of the movie there.

Ed Helms (32:26)

Yes, of course. The violence of that movie is so hard for me. It's so visceral. I don't know, Scorsese is like a genius of like, just making it that feel visceral. A lot of historical inaccuracies in that movie, but that is a. This chapter is exactly how that movie culminates. Tamony started offering loans to working class men so that they too could pay for substitutes in the draft. It was, on paper, compassionate, but it also meant those families now owed Tweed money. Gratitude and loyalty. The riots quieted down and Tammany's grip tightened even further. This is feeling like house of Cards on steroids.

Mike Schur (33:10)

Yeah.

Ed Helms (33:10)

Do you see brilliant crisis management or just sociopathic opportunism here?

Mike Schur (33:15)

Sociopathic opportunism? How do we make everyone more indebted to us than they were before?

Ed Helms (33:21)

Yeah, well, from here, things like Tweed just consolidated everything even more. Courts, legislature, city treasury, voting booths, everything bent to his will. And this is also when he earned the name boss. He became boss was a term at the time for like, the leader of a political machine. And he was definitely the boss. And here's where the corruption, it just. It scaled up so epically. Probably the most famous example is the New York County Courthouse. Do you know this story?

Mike Schur (33:59)

I don't think so, no.

Ed Helms (34:00)

Okay. The New York County Courthouse, which is down on Chambers street in Manhattan. It was built at this time and it was originally budgeted at $250,000, which is a ton of money for the time. By the time Tweed and his cronies were finished, the bill had ballooned to $12 million, which is roughly 200 million in today's money.

Mike Schur (34:26)

Wow. So what is that, 40x the original cost or something? Oh, yeah, yeah. 48x the original bid price. Great.

Ed Helms (34:36)

How does this happen? How does someone pull this off? Well, it's actually pretty Simple. Tweed's friends padded every single contract. Carpentry, plastering, furniture, even the brooms for janitors, all build at cartoonishly astronomical rates. One carpenter supposedly got paid $360,000 for a month's work. By the way, that's. That's in 1860 money. It's millions of million dollars or something.

Mike Schur (35:08)

Yeah.

Ed Helms (35:08)

A plasterer pulled down half a million. The courthouse became less a civic building and more a pinata stuffed with taxpayer cash. Just repeatedly whacked by Tweed's gang and just grabbing all that cash. And that's just one project. And by the way, they didn't even finish. They did this. This courthouse went unfinished for, like, decades later. Tweed would actually be tried in this very courthouse, which is ironic, but we'll get to that. By 1871, Tweed and his all of his buddies had skimmed off an estimated $200 million total, which was more than 4 billion in today's money.

Mike Schur (35:53)

Man, oh, man, they really knew what they were doing, didn't they?

Ed Helms (35:57)

They did, yeah. So he became the third largest landowner in Manhattan. He owned two yachts. I guess yachting was a thing there, too.

Advertiser Voice (36:06)

Sure.

Ed Helms (36:06)

At what point, Mike Schur, does corruption stop being shocking and just become like slapstick comedy? I mean, this is like when you're car carpenter is making more in a month than Apple makes in a quarter. Are we still talking about corruption or is this just like Marx Brothers?

Mike Schur (36:23)

Well, it gets to. It gets to the cartoonish level where eventually collapse is inevitable because no one ever, ever, ever says, I have enough now. I'm going to stop. I'm gonna, like, take what I have and just enjoy my life. It's never enough for folks in this position. So they just push and push and push and push until they're finally caught or brought down somehow. This is the story of all of these folks, especially the New York folks who were, you know, who had this massive pool of human labor and the ability to kind of consolidate power at a time when the country was still young and cities were still young. Every movie is about this too, right? It's like the person who's like, amassing, amassing, amassing. And then at some point, if they just said, all right, I'm good. I'm gonna retire. They could live their life and generations of their families could live their lives in wealth and security forever. They just never do. Because it's a psychosis that just pushes them to the point where inevitably they push too far and someone comes along and takes them down. And that's what happened to him.

Ed Helms (37:31)

But the other thing to keep in mind is that this isn't just something that's kind of like making a fool out of the city of New York. It's also, there are financial repercussions to this. The money is coming from somewhere, it's coming from the city's coffers. And a lot of the city's money is also, you know, been purchased by, by international investors who are, who are starting to sniff around like what is going on. Like the, it's starting to have real raise a lot of like real financial issues for the city.

Mike Schur (38:10)

Yeah, they're all, it's all essentially Ponzi scheme. Right. It all depends on this endless influx of new people and new stuff coming in so that there's more jobs and then there's more construction and there's more schools and more buildings. And at some point it's not fundamentally different from something like Enron or whatever where like the people at the top are, they're going to get away with it as long as the like confidence in the system sustains itself. And then something comes along. In Enron's case, it was the dot com bubble bursting that suddenly, like when the flow of new investors is cut off, suddenly someone goes like, well, wait a second now. Where has all this money gone? And then when people start looking into it, finally, that's when the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

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Mike Schur (39:11)

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Mike Schur (39:27)

Next.

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Mike Schur (40:20)

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Ed Helms (41:14)

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Mike Schur (42:51)

Absolutely.

Ed Helms (42:52)

Proud of that one. I'm proud of that one.

Mike Schur (42:53)

That's good. Yeah.

Ed Helms (42:53)

Kind of a nice little line there. You can use it.

Mike Schur (42:56)

Okay.

Ed Helms (43:01)

All right. So Tweed's operation finally began to crumble thanks to a very surprising thing, and that is the power of satire.

Mike Schur (43:13)

Hmm.

Ed Helms (43:14)

Yeah. Wait for it. Okay, this is really interesting. So the New York Times had begun publishing a huge expose on the city's finances and all of this corruption. We're talking reams of evidence that showed the courthouse scandal and dozens of other padded contracts and what ultimately brought the details of Tweed's abuses of power to light. It would take this extra push to really spread the news of Tweed's corruption throughout the city. Inter political cartoonist Thomas Nast. So you probably have an actual image of Boss Tweed in your mind, and almost certainly it is rooted in the cartoons of Thomas Nast. Nast worked for Harper's Weekly, a magazine with a huge circulation for the time. He drew Tweed as a grotesque vulture feasting on the city of New York. He drew him as a giant bag of money with legs. He drew the Tammany tiger devouring actual democracy. These doodles, as it would turn out, were devastating.

Mike Schur (44:21)

There we go.

Ed Helms (44:22)

There we go.

Mike Schur (44:23)

Yeah. That's what I think of as the bulging stomach. Like the vest with the buttons about to pop off because of the bulging money bag stomach. Yeah.

Ed Helms (44:35)

And ironically, a tweed suit. Now, here's what's fascinating about these cartoons. Tweed's reaction was like he was furious about the cartoons. And he said, this is a quote, stop the damn pictures. I don't care much what the papers write about me. My constituents can't read, but they have eyes. And he was exactly right. You know, so many of. Of the working population of New York City were just. Didn't have access to education. And so. But these pictures, they were devastating. They were on the covers of things. They were all. It just was. They were everywhere. And. And everyone could sort of immediately understand, oh, this is Boss Tweed and he is corrupt.

Mike Schur (45:23)

Right?

Ed Helms (45:23)

This is not. This ain't good.

Mike Schur (45:26)

Would you say that a picture was worth a thousand words?

Ed Helms (45:29)

In this case, like, 900.

Mike Schur (45:33)

Okay, maybe something north of 900.

Ed Helms (45:36)

Like a lot of words. Yeah. Now, it's worth noting, Nast himself, complicated figure. He was virulently anti Irish and anti Catholic. Many of his cartoons dripped with prejudice. But when it came according to Tweed, he was relentless. And it worked. He's Boss Tweed. So what does he do? He tries to bribe the New York Times to stop with all of this. One founder of the New York Times was allegedly offered $5 million to spike the stories Adjusted for inflation, that's well over $100 million. Just to keep quiet.

Mike Schur (46:14)

That's wild. And they say this is an insane.

Ed Helms (46:16)

Insane amount of money. Like how.

Mike Schur (46:19)

Who.

Ed Helms (46:20)

I just can't even imagine bribes at that level in this. I'm sure it's happening, but it's just wild. I mean, a Qatari jet is worth what? That's like around 100.

Mike Schur (46:32)

It's around 100 million. Yeah.

Ed Helms (46:34)

Kind of a bribe. I don't know. But here's the amazing thing. That New York Times publisher refused the money, saying, quote, I don't think the devil will ever bid higher for me than that.

Mike Schur (46:47)

Wow, that's a good line, too.

Ed Helms (46:50)

So the pressure, all of this pressure, kind of like coming down on Tammany hall and right onto Boss Tweed himself. It just became untenable. And the machine finally cracked. The city comptroller himself, caught up in the scandal, turned state's witness. He flipped, and he testified against Tweed, who was ultimately indicted on 204 counts of fraud and corruption. And I'm sure that was like, just.

Mike Schur (47:17)

The stuff they could actually iceberg.

Ed Helms (47:18)

Yeah, that was just the stuff they could document. He was convicted, sentenced, and jailed. But, oh, Boss Tweed, he wasn't done scheming. In 1875, he escaped custody. Now, this is kind of an interesting thing. Like, custody was kind of a loose thing. Like, they were let. They were still letting him, like, go out to dinner with. Go home for dinner with his family and stuff.

Mike Schur (47:43)

It just was like, they didn't want to be rude.

Ed Helms (47:45)

Well, yeah, I mean, he had been. He had given so many Christmas turkeys to everyone.

Mike Schur (47:49)

That's right.

Ed Helms (47:49)

Like, they were just like, yeah, go have dinner with your family at one point.

Mike Schur (47:53)

Just come back. You gotta come back, though.

Ed Helms (47:55)

Gotta come back. Well, one night he didn't come back, and he. He disappeared from New York City. He made his way down to Florida and under an assumed name, and then to Cuba, and then he got on a ship to Spain.

Mike Schur (48:11)

It's great to know that, even back then, when the criminal needs to flee somewhere. Where do you go? Florida. Yeah, you just go to Florida. It's just been the haven for criminals and. And misfits for since at least the mid 19th century. I like. I like knowing Florida is nothing if not consistent.

Ed Helms (48:31)

There's something. I don't know. There's something like, I have this like. Like, Like, Florida. You're so incorrigible.

Mike Schur (48:40)

Scoundrel.

Ed Helms (48:41)

Yeah, you scoundrel. Has this kind of like. Like, mischievous pirate thing going that I.

Mike Schur (48:46)

Kind of like, oh, Florida You've gone and done it again, haven't you?

Ed Helms (48:50)

It's like people running giant bags of cocaine and shooting each other, but then in the afternoon, they just, like, have their mojitos, turn on the Jimmy Buffett.

Mike Schur (49:01)

And just get on a fanboat and down some tequila and hang out in Florida.

Ed Helms (49:05)

Yeah, man, come on. Look, listen, we. We're incorrigible. What do you want? Florida, the weather's so good. Come on now. All right, so he made it to Spain, and this is really wild because the cartoons still haunted him. According to some accounts, Spanish police recognized him because of Nast's caricatures, which is also a testament to the scale of this news that was breaking. It really was international news, and it was setting off alarm bells in financial markets around the world. But, yeah, Spanish police likely recognized him and they called their the American guys and were like, yeah, we're sending him back. So he got sent back to the United States, imprisoned again, ultimately died behind bars in 1878, age 55.

Mike Schur (50:02)

I mean, for a guy of his girth in that time period, that's. Yeah, you know, know, that's not terrible.

Ed Helms (50:07)

The Tammany tiger had roared its last roar. So even with Tweed gone, Tammany hall did not vanish overnight. The machine limped along for decades, churning out mayors and dealmakers well into the 20th century. But when FDR was on his road to the presidency in the early 1930s, he campaigned as an anti Tammany New Yorker. And his winter was basically the final wrecking ball for Tammany Hall. The clubhouse doors finally shut for good in the mid 20th century. Mike Schur. That is the story of Tammany hall and Boss Tweed. The biggest, baddest, most corrupt machine New York City ever built. Do you have any sort of, like, larger big picture takeaways for me? I was really struck by the role that media played in this story, and particularly the role of comedy cartoons, right? It wasn't the cops or Congress or even rival politicians who brought down Bas Tweed. It was journalists and cartoonists.

Mike Schur (51:07)

I'll say a couple things. Number one is one of the best things about this country, this screwed up, messed up, messy, complex country that we live in, is that in the First Amendment, it says very clearly, the government cannot put you in jail for or prosecute you in any way for speaking up and saying what you believe. And it also says that the media is free. And because of that, we have a system by which newspapers in history and television shows and radio programs and other media outlets are allowed to point out and make fun of and highlight corruption in government. That has always been true. It is in theory, I would say, still true today. When I worked at Saturday Night Live, which was my first job, Jim Downey, who's probably the greatest political satirist, he's the Thomas Nast of his day, really wrote the famous debate debate speeches sketches between Bush and Gore in 2000. And the first debate sketch involved. Summarize your campaign in one word. And Al Gore. Daryl Hammond as Al Gore said lockbox. And Will Ferrell as George Bush said strategery. And that line stuck to George Bush so thoroughly. He did have a lot of malaprops in his day, but there's a large number of people who believe that he really said that, that he really said strategically at one point. There's a lot of people who believe that Sarah Palin said, I can see Russia from my house. She didn't. Tina Fey said that as Sarah Palin on snl. And that that tradition that is very much in the Thomas Nast tradition, right, is the. There's a difference between the way people understand the world we live in and the country we live in from dry media reports about fraud and corruption and everything else. And the way that we see it through comedy. And comedy is often a more powerful weapon and a more direct way to make people understand something about government and corruption and fraud and whatever else is going on than actual news. And I, that that's all I was thinking of as you were telling this story is this, thank goodness that this country allows us to do that, because I believe that is the most effective way often for people to come to understand what their political leaders are doing. That's what Thomas Nasted to Boss Tweed and that's what Jim Downey and other folks have done to politicians through SNL cold opens over the years.

Ed Helms (53:42)

Do you think that culturally we actually kind of underestimate the power of jokes? Like, can humor still land a knockout punch? I'm thinking about south park right now appears to be puncturing the armor of this administration in a startling way.

Mike Schur (54:07)

I mean, the media landscape in which we currently live is so much more fractured. You know, at the time, Harper's Weekly was probably the most powerful and important institution in media. And obviously there's, you know, there's barely newspapers anymore and now there's barely kind of tv. There's no monoculture in TV anymore. We're now in this tick tock, Instagram, Snapchat world where things are very, very fractured. Everybody has their own algorithm. So the question to me isn't whether humor can be as potent a tool anymore. It's whether the, the delivery mechanisms that we are employing now can actually deliver a piece of satire to the world that way, or whether people are so siloed off that they'll, that, you know, people, a large majority of the public won't ever see the same thing. That's my feeling.

Ed Helms (54:56)

I know exactly what you mean and I feel that sense of sort of fractured culture that you're speaking to. But I still have this feeling and it may start be transitioning into more of a hope at this point, but a feeling that truly exceptional work, whether it's a South park episode or a particularly keen clip of stand up, like, like the cream still rises to the top. And it does, it can still sort of permeate those silence.

Mike Schur (55:30)

I would hope so, because I think if the story of Boss Tweed teaches us anything, it's that, you know, that is what is needed in these moments. What's needed is a voice of satire and clarity and perspective that can cut through and present in a single picture or a single comedy sketch or a single joke. What it would take a scholar hours to properly relay a picture of a greedy person as a vulture devouring democracy is a lot more effective in a single blow, in a single coup than a lengthy article or a six part series in the New York Times or something like that.

Ed Helms (56:10)

That feels like a perfect place to wrap this up. Can you share what you're working on? I'm dying to know what the latest Mike Schur project is.

Mike Schur (56:20)

So Amy Poehler and I are back together again. We're making a new show called Dig that will be on Peacock sometime next year. We don't know when. Very exciting. Amy and I wrote the pilot together and we're working in the writers room now. And the extra fun thing is that my wife, J.J. philbin is co showrunning the show with me. So this is the first time we're ever working together, which is very exciting. And then in a couple weeks we start work on on man on the Inside. Season three in the writers room. Season two will drop in November. We're getting a head start on season three, the show with Ted Danson on Netflix. So I've got a full dance card, as they say. But I would not for a second even think about missing the chance to talk to my old pal Ed Helms on this podcast, which I really love by the way. It's truly entertaining and delightful.

Ed Helms (57:11)

Oh, thank you very much.

Mike Schur (57:13)

You're quite welcome.

Ed Helms (57:14)

Wait, can you give us any like a logline or a teaser about this show Dig with Amy, which sounds just utterly delightful already.

Mike Schur (57:22)

It's based on a book called Excavations that Amy read and really liked. It's about a group of women who work on an archaeological dig site in Greece. And it's four women ages 19, 29, 39, and 49. So four women from four slightly different generations, and they work on this dig site in Greece and they slowly, over the course of the show, uncover a sort of like literally conspiracy and they all left her.

Ed Helms (57:48)

Did some dinosaurs murder each other?

Mike Schur (57:51)

Oh, you've seen it. You've read the book.

Ed Helms (57:53)

I mean, what else are you gonna find at a dig?

Mike Schur (57:58)

It's a dinosaur homicide.

Ed Helms (57:59)

It just sounds like so much fun and all the people that I love.

Mike Schur (58:03)

Yeah, it should be very fun. I'm very excited about it.

Ed Helms (58:05)

Great. Congrats on that, Mike Schur. I'm so grateful for your time and just for the great hang today.

Mike Schur (58:14)

Thank you. Always a great hang, buddy. Thank you for having me. And I truly do love this podcast. Thank you for inviting me on.

Ed Helms (58:20)

Right on. I love you, buddy. See you soon. Bye. Snafu is a production of iHeart podcasts and snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Andy Kim, Whitney Donaldson and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino, Tori Smith and Carl Nellis. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. 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, Kerry Lieberman, and Nikki Itor. 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.

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Mike Schur (60:44)

This is an iHeart podcast.