Unknown Speaker (9:58)

Yeah, like, I mean, I got into revolutions like I started the Revolutions podcast, because revolutions, I think, are inherently interesting moments in time. Right? Like, this is where so much is happening. And like, so many of the pivots of history, like, exist in this and it's so chaotic. There's so many. Like, there's. The French Revolution is inherently interesting. The Russian Revolution is inherently interesting. So I did want to, like, go through these and I thought it would be a make for a great, you know, format for a show. And then when I'm doing the individual revolutions, I'm not really thinking about, like, how these connect necessarily to other revolutions. I just want to explain the one that is right in front of my face right now. Like, I want to explain the Revolution of 1830 in the specifics, the specific context of 1830. And then when I do the Mexican Revolution, I want to talk about the specific context of the Mexican Revolution. But then when I was all done with like these 10 seasons worth of revolutions that I had written, I did produce, like, I forget how many episodes it is now, like 12 or 15 episodes where I went back through and really did a big compare and contrast of every revolution that I had covered, from the English Civil wars to the Russian Revolution. And there are sort of similar structures, similar character types, similar orders of events. There are reasons why things happen that you can sort of, you know, extract from this, like an abstract structure. And then we would never want to take that abstract structure and like, put it, you know, on today and say that means this is how things will go, or put it in the future and say that's how things will. Will go. But when things then do roll out, if we get another revolution, I'll bet you anything you could go back through it, talk about the specific context of that particular revolution, and then see, oh, yep, this is exactly like it was around the Cromwell era, and exactly like it was for Robespierre and Danton. And that is sort of how things go because, you know, history marks. Yeah, history doesn't repeat itself, but it absolutely does rhyme.

Mike Duncan (11:47)

It's amazing. And Tony, as you, when you're creating these worlds, are you then going through work like the work that, that Mike does as. Or as a fan of that, how are you compiling those kinds of ingredients that he's talking about to create the worlds that you're creating? Because what you do so well is. Is you make them resonate. There's a reality to them. They feel three dimensional, which is set for. For an artist, for a director, for a writer, that is such a challenge. What's your process like then?

John Stewart (12:30)

Well, I mean, I. First of all, I need like, a booster seat or flotation device to participate in a real historical conversation because I am not a pro. Like, I am.

Mike Duncan (12:42)

That's what Mike's here for, man. Me and you, we're on the different side.

John Stewart (12:45)

I mean, you're.

Mike Duncan (12:46)

For.

John Stewart (12:46)

You guys have the kind of, you know, you guys have the kind of memories and the kind of minds that, that, that, that, that hang on to all this stuff. I'm. I. I'm liberated. I, I get. I really. I. I mean, in 40. 40 years of doing this, or 35, 37 years of doing this, I have never once done a tr. For a script. You can imagine how many scripts I've written. You can imagine how many things I got offered over the years. I mean, how many. And I've never done one. My brother and I touched on one, but the character was so obscure, it really didn't matter. I've even. I've even hijacked projects that were nonfiction and fought hard to turn them in against the tide to turn, to fictionalize them, saying, I can't do this if we're going to stay real. So I, I get this absolute instantaneous free pass. So I don't have to tell the truth. It's really. It's.

Mike Duncan (13:48)

You don't have to tell the truth, but when you're building the foundation of a story to make it resonate, to make it unbelievable.

John Stewart (13:55)

Yeah, I'm getting there. I mean, it's, It's. It's. It's. It's the best. It's the best possible situation I can. I've listened to. I've now listened to all of my. I didn't do it in order I looked today. What am I missing? What didn't I do? The only revolution I did not do with Mike was the American Revolution.

Unknown Speaker (14:14)

Oh, that's fine.

John Stewart (14:15)

I don't know why. Because I. Because I did it in school. That's the only one I didn't do.

Unknown Speaker (14:19)

Yeah, you could skip that one.

John Stewart (14:20)

And Martian. I didn't do Martian because I didn't want to get. I didn't want to have any. I didn't want to. Like, I didn't. For five years. I didn't listen to any.

Unknown Speaker (14:27)

Oh, you didn't want to go through a whole nother science fiction revolution in space? That would be a good idea, having just spent five years doing that.

John Stewart (14:34)

Maybe not. And so. And then. But this. But the reason that I listened to it wasn't just because I was working on the show. The reason I listened to it. Cause I've been a freak for this my whole life. So, I mean, the library in this house is just a chaos of, you know, of random books from the street and bad history books and great history books and weird things. And so I. I have that. I have what you were describing before. I use history as a catalog. I really get to use the entire catalog of Inc. It's almost as if it's. You know, I shop for what I need as I go along. And I have my. I have one. I have one requirement that is above all that, which is. It has to be. It has to be behavioral. It has to be relatable to character. It all has to be something.

Mike Duncan (15:29)

Explain that. Explain that.

John Stewart (15:30)

I mean, all of these. I, you know, I don't necessarily. I don't really have a dog in the fight of the great man or great moment philosophies of history. You know, the big debates about all that doesn't matter to me. But when I read history, I am always. If it's not being presented to me overtly, I am always trying to dig behind the. What's going on for the behavioral aspect of. Why is Mussolini doing this now? Why is Garibaldi doing this right now? Why. Why would they do that? And what does he need? What is he so afraid of? That. What is. What is she so desperate to have? So I. That's my.

Mike Duncan (16:10)

You're looking for motivation in a lot of ways.

John Stewart (16:14)

I think motivation is. Is just. Motivation is a word that's just right up front. I think behavior is much more important than motivation, in a way. But. So I don't have any of the moral or objective criteria or judgments or comments coming at me about truthfulness that. That anybody else is going to have. But I do have a very high bar in that the behavior has to be honest. It has to be real, has to be consistent. And I have to find a way to get my people, my characters into situations. And I can't, I can't. I can, I can set the trap, I can set the things in motion, I can light the kindling on fire, but I cannot, once the characters are involved in the, in the machinery, I can't, I can't manipulate the machinery to do what I want. The characters have to take it where it goes. That's my responsibility.

Mike Duncan (17:14)

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Unknown Speaker (19:07)

I mean, everything Tony just said is like what I do in revolutions. I'm obsessed with why people do the things that they do, right? And there are large structural forces that people are existing within, like, of course, but it is like individual choices and individual, like, motivations. Like what is getting people up out of bed and driving them to do things and then, especially when we're talking about, like, you know, people like Czar Nicholas or, you know, Marie Antoinette, like, you know, Tsar Nicholas was not sitting down and being like, I'm going to be an evil tyrant today and oppress people. And then. And then they will, you know, they'll rise up against me. But that. I don't. But I hate them. No, he was convinced that he had been given his position by God and that it was his job to steward this responsibility, that the Romanov family had to reign over Russia and hand that off to his heir. That's their principal motivation. That's what they're focused on. They're not focused on anything else beyond that. And inside of Nicholas's mind and Alexandra's mind, this makes a ton of sense. And what they're doing makes a ton of sense and is internally consistent with their own belief system, even though it appears from the outside to be like, well, you're just awful people who need to be overthrown. That's nobody. Nobody actually works like that. So anytime I'm reading a biography or I'm reading a history or something, I'm very much focused on what is the psychological motivation for people and the things that they do. That's a huge part of the show.

Mike Duncan (20:30)

See, that's such an interesting. I think that's such an interesting point. And I wonder, Tony, how you deal with this in the way that you're constructing these things. I think we view that there's a difference between genuine belief and cynical manipulation. And in revolutions, there's always that moment. And Orwell sort of, you know, spoke to this, I think, really well, that idea of the people that are in charge, are they behaving based on true belief, or are they manipulating systems for maximum power? Like Tsar Nicholas you. You might look at it that way. But then when we look at, like, maybe the more modern revolutions where propaganda, you know, when you talk about the Nazis or Lenin and Stalin, do they believe that what they're doing is right, ordained by God, or are they manipulating for. For power? Does that. Does that enter into as you construct either villains or heroes? Tony?

John Stewart (21:41)

No, I will say. I mean, it's going to say about Mike's. Mike's the Revolutions podcast. I mean, he's dead on. I mean, the reason that makes it so entertaining and the reason why it's so com. You listen to it so compulsively, and I just. It really. There's a lot of hours I put into that, and you don't just do that. It is personal. He's delivering characters all the way through. I don't think I agree completely with the basis of the question because it's like, I don't see power or rebellion or. Or insurrection as. I don't see anybody having a. Having a firmer grip on cynicism than anybody else. I think cynicism is a. I think there's some very cynical revolutionary leaders along the way. I mean, really cynical, right? I mean, people that are just, you.

Mike Duncan (22:36)

Know, who are the people that come to mind for you?

John Stewart (22:39)

Well, I mean, look how Lenin uses everybody around him for crying out. Look at Mao. I mean. No, but that about.

Mike Duncan (22:45)

That's what I mean now.

John Stewart (22:45)

I mean, right? I. Man, I don't know if there's ever been a greater. I don't know. Maybe Mike. Maybe this book's discredited. Maybe Mike will know more. But I think one of the most incredible books I ever read was because I don't think there's ever been a personal. Personal account of someone who was so close to a. An historical dynastic leader. Is Mao's doctor's book. That book that Mao's doctor wrote is like. It's just. And the cynicism inside that. So I don't think anybody has. So I never look at it that. If you look at. If you look at our show. If you look at what I do, I. In general, I'm really interested in what people wake up in the morning, I guess, and what is really driving them. I think just as many Nazis were driven by who had the best parking place and who had the best corner office. I don't think anybody. I don't think a whole lot of people woke up in the morning and thought, you know, it's really great. We're nationalizing the industries. And I really hate Jews so much, I want to go out and do mass graves.

Mike Duncan (23:48)

You don't think any of them thought that you really. It couldn't have all been Parkinson's.

John Stewart (23:52)

Yeah, sure. No, no. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. But you can't write a character like that. That's why.

Mike Duncan (23:58)

Oh, that's interesting.

John Stewart (24:00)

That's why that movie, the. The Zone of Silence was so incredibly effective. Without doing anything. Man, I remember that, you know, the. The. The Auschwitz movie that was out two years ago, where they never went into the camp.

Mike Duncan (24:10)

The zone of interest, right?

John Stewart (24:11)

A scene where the. Where the wife tries on the coat in the room, and you realize when she goes to the pocket that it's someone else's coat.

Mike Duncan (24:20)

Right?

John Stewart (24:21)

She loves it and it's like, man, that's where I want to live. That's where history is for me. History's in the tendency of those people to want things. Mike can speak much more eloquently, I'm sure, about how individual behaviors get shaped into a lump, and a lump gets shaped into a movement, and it moves forward. And. And those title. Those title shifts are, you know, they're important in their story. But I can't start characters from the point of view of anything other than how much chaos they have inside of them. What do they really need? What are they afraid of?

Mike Duncan (25:00)

You know? But then what is that, Mike? Is it, you know, is it the conductor or is it the orchestra? You know, does somebody in revolutions for this? Because I think if you look at the. The span of human history, oppression and violence has always been with us, but it doesn't always combust into revolution.

John Stewart (25:25)

Right.

Mike Duncan (25:26)

Those moments are really specific. And as we're talking about sort of character and behavior, does there have to be a conductor? As you look at it? It must there be somebody, you know, when you talk about Nicholas, who is, you know, this person who believes I'm ordained by God and these are the things I'm doing, not to be evil, but because this is. This is biblically you know, written. How do you view that, Mike? As you. As you look at those.

Unknown Speaker (25:59)

Well, it's a giant, like, interplay of things, right? Like the orchid. The orchestra can play without the conductor, and the conductor can wave his arms without the orchestra. And the two things, like, have to come together in order to make the revolution happen in the moment that it does. And yeah, like, to your point, there was, you know, there's a line from Trotsky that is like, if you're talking about sort of what are the. What are the things that cause a revolution? Like, what are the triggers of a revolution? You can't really say the misery of the. Excuse me. The misery of the peasants is a cause of revolution because the peasants are always miserable, right? The peasants are miserable whether they're revolution or whether it's the very nature of peasantry at the time. Time. So you can't say, like, oh, people are miserable, and therefore there's a revolution, because human misery is omnipresent. So it takes all of these other things fitting together up and down the socioeconomic line from the very inner circles of power all the way down to, yes, the peasantry is miserable, and they are ready to rise up. In my experience with revolutions, this gets sort of, as I've gone through history, starting with These very early modern revolutions. Then moving all the way up into the 20th century, you can see revolutions sort of professionalizing as a, like, career path and like, a career choice. Because in the. In the. In the early days, you know, like the American Revolution, the French Revolution, like, these things, they. Chaotic things happen, and there are leaders and there are people trying to do things, make reforms, do this, do that. But, like, usually events start to spin out of control. Nobody's really in charge of it. And then inside of these chaotic revolutionary vacuums, leaders do pop up and movements do pop up and parties do pop up, and then those groups start to, like, bend. Bend events this way and that. But at least in the early days, it's never people being like, okay, we're going to sit around, we're going to stage a revolution, and then it's going to work. Like, the first time that even happens is In August of 1792, when they do get together and overthrow the monarchy. But that's three years into the French Revolution by the time they're even getting down to business and planning stuff like that. But then you move forward 100 years and, yeah, Lenin is a professional revolutionary. That is what he is trying to do. Like, that is his job. And so he's trying to create the conditions that will make this revolution happen.

Mike Duncan (28:14)

And that's the first time you really see that being exercised.

John Stewart (28:18)

Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (28:19)

You know, it comes along. In the mid 19th century, there were definitely precursors to Lenin. But even when the Russian Revolution gets going, like, where's Lenin? He's in Switzerland. Like, he didn't even know it was happening. He was. He had to. He had to cut a deal with the Germans just to get back there so he could lead the revolution that he had nothing to do with. And then he did. And then. And then him. And the Bolsheviks do, like, you know, bend events their way. But, like, this is really. I mean, revolutions at their bottom are just really out of any one person's hand for sure.

Mike Duncan (28:46)

Right.

John Stewart (28:47)

You know, John, remember, I mean, it's usually. I'm curious if Mike thinks this is true, but it's. In the end, it's a body in the street. It's like the guy who started Arab Spring because he started himself on fire. It's the women in Paris marching to Versailles. It's like someone just says, hey, it's raining. I don't give a fuck. We're going to. We're going to march to Versailles and demand that we get our bread. I mean, and it's. In the end, it's somebody goes to the street or somebody. Or somebody blows up the Reichstag or somebody. Or false flag or somebody does, you know. But it. Yeah, I'm sure the Spartacus League and various revolutionary groups have a very highly articulated checklist of things that will start a revolution, but I have probably pretty sad.

Unknown Speaker (29:42)

Yeah, that could be a Thursday. It could be two years from now.

Mike Duncan (29:44)

That's what I'm getting to, though.

John Stewart (29:46)

It's sad, that list. It's sad, yes.

Mike Duncan (29:48)

But as you deconstruct these revolutions, what you end up with is in some ways a to do list. And, and you have a variety of choices and options. Like you say the Reichstag fire or you know, you have the false flag, Tony, you had that in andor. You have that massacre in the square and they lure them in and you see the planning of, you know, the empire and they're saying you have that wonderful Dedra who says you just need the right people to do the wrong thing or the wrong people to do the right. You know, you need the people who think they're the revolutionaries to commit an act that allows the empire to, to massacre them.

John Stewart (30:37)

Well, okay, just look at that. Just look at the one thing that you've said because you're just, you're going to hit on a whole bunch of things that have their own. These are all part of the catalog.

Mike Duncan (30:46)

Right, right, right.

John Stewart (30:46)

They don't, they don't go into every revolution probably. You know, I don't know how, but, but, but, you know, building the enemy you want is a key tactic.

Mike Duncan (30:55)

Boy, that's a nice phrase. Building the enemy you want.

John Stewart (30:58)

Well, look, J. Edgar Hoover puts people in the civil rights movement and the anti war movement.

Mike Duncan (31:04)

Right.

John Stewart (31:05)

You know, the Brits put ira, they have Provost. I mean, a lot of people would argue, I might agree, that Netanyahu built Hamas. I mean, you know, he took apart everything else and he put, he built the enemy that he wanted. You do that. That's what she's saying there. She says we need people that'll do what you want them to do. And that is in the authoritarian playbook for sure. I mean, Mike could probably give you 19 other examples where that happened.

Unknown Speaker (31:33)

Well, I mean, the head of the SR combat organization was taking money from the Tsar while also planting bombs. Right? Yeah, there is that. There are those connections like all the time again. But getting back to the checklist of stuff, those guys can have a checklist and you can hit every single part of the checklist and then no revolution happens because there isn't Actually a series of buttons that you press and then have a revolution happen. And even In February of 1917, the Bolsheviks, the February revolution gets going because the women went into the streets. It was National Women's Day and they wanted to, the women wanted to go out into the streets and protest. And the Bolsheviks were telling them like, no, we don't want to do this, we don't want it. We want to, you know, keep our gunpowder dry. We're going to save it for May Day, like, which was just a couple of months away. And then they went out there and it was a bright, sunny, warm day after a long winter in St. Petersburg and the whole city just like went crazy outside of everybody's, you know, expectation of what would happen. So these things, they happen or they don't. But you're never just going to sit down and do like check nine things and then, and then be able to stage a revolution. That is absolutely not how these things work.

Mike Duncan (32:48)

Folks, you've heard me talk about this before and I'm going to talk about it again. And I'm not going to stop talking about it until you people get on this damn thing. Ground News, it's a website, it's an app. It's a website and an app. It's on a mission. It's going to give readers an easier, more data driven way to read the news. I don't understand why they didn't do this before. This is they prioritize critical thinking, media literacy. Everything they offer is all related back to those two ideas. Every day they're pulling thousands of news articles from around the world. They organize them by story. Each story comes with visual breakdowns of the political bias, ownership and headlines. Oh, relevant to today? You bet your ass. It helps you better understand why you're seeing what you're seeing and who's behind it. Ground News is a response to that fear. Anger based media. They don't dictate how readers should think or feel. They aggregate and they organize the information and they help readers make their own informed decisions. Ground News can help you sort through the noise and get to the heart of the news. Go to groundnews.com stewart subscribe for 40% off the unlimited access. Vantage subscription brings the price down to like $5 a month. That's Ground News. Stewart, do you find? Is it? You know, when we think about America in the way that we've mythologized our revolution, and I think it speaks sometimes to fiction because the Star wars universe is so interestingly, you know, I think people look at the Rebel alliance as the liberals and the Empire as, as well, that must be conservative. The liberals. Look, they're, they're all different species in there. They're living together in sin and doing all kinds of, of, of different things. And the Empire is much more kind of fascistic and authoritarian, and they're doing those. But revolutions don't neatly play along. The liberals are the good guys and the conservatives are the bad guys. You know, Orwell wrote his was Stalinist, you know.

John Stewart (34:59)

Yeah. I mean, no, I mean, the Empire's pretty clearly fascistic. I would say.

Unknown Speaker (35:06)

It seems to have some fascist overtones to it.

Mike Duncan (35:08)

I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (35:09)

Stormtroopers. I don't know if anybody gets that connection.

John Stewart (35:12)

The color palette may be a little bit anyway, but they, you know, and look, I don't. I win no Star wars trivia contest at all. But I do know what I was given was five years. I have a five year piece of the calendar. And the five years that I have is a furnace that's just about to go nuts because the Empire is at this moment making a.

Mike Duncan (35:40)

And this is the five years prior.

John Stewart (35:42)

To a new five years prior to Rogue One. Yeah. Prior to the blowing up of the Death Star and the whole thing. So I get those five years and I have a couple canonical incidents on the calendar that I have to pay attention to. But the general, the general understanding of that period of time is they are consolidating power aggressively because they know they're building this. This energy project that will dominate everything. They are. They are doing what every fascistic government does, which is nationalizing all the corporate entities first. They are stripping the legal system, they are rewriting. They are emasculating and completely neutering the political organizations. I have them write a public order resentencing directive in the first season, which just changes all of the laws about arrests and they're building.

Mike Duncan (36:41)

Sending them to prisons, to detention centers that are.

John Stewart (36:44)

Factory prisons.

Mike Duncan (36:45)

That's right. Where they're working.

John Stewart (36:47)

Yeah, yeah. Where they're working and all those different things. I mean, they're on a big power grab. And the other liberating thing about what I'm doing, I suppose the other thing that makes it easy. There's a lot of things that are hard about it, but makes it easy is not just that I don't have to tell the truth or have to be beholden to any specific revolution, but I also, I don't really have anybody espousing their ideology of what they want the galaxy to look like when the fight is over.

Mike Duncan (37:21)

Oh, wow.

John Stewart (37:22)

I don't have anybody saying, when we're done, this is what it's going to look like. And I thought in the beginning when I came on the show that that was going to really be a very big thing for me. I think I probably somewhere in this office, I have a couple weeks of work on that, trying to figure out how I was going to try to deal with that. And I gradually realized that I just didn't really need to do that. And I thought, how long can I get away with that? And then it turned out to be. I don't miss it at all. People don't miss that. It's, it's.

Mike Duncan (37:52)

Man, you, you just blew my mind because I, I hadn't thought of it that way, Tony. But you're, you're right. In the entirety of that five year period and with, with Rogue One, I don't think I ever remember. There's no moment like there is. Like with, with Padme saying, so this is how liberty dies.

John Stewart (38:09)

No, no, it's saying we're really going to have collective bargaining.

Unknown Speaker (38:12)

That's, that's, that's because, that's because Tony's a really good writer. That's why you don't hear that line.

John Stewart (38:20)

I'm an old sneaky writer. But, but, but it's surprising to me that, that I mean, I have some, I have, I mean, I, I tiptoe around it. I have a thing very early on where Forest Whitaker's character, because he's a real.

Mike Duncan (38:35)

Right.

John Stewart (38:36)

He's a real outlier, you know, partisan, uncontrollable. And he has a, he has a long speech with.

Mike Duncan (38:42)

He's a real revolution.

John Stewart (38:43)

Yeah. And then he, and he says, man, what are you? Are you. And he names like seven different groups. And some of the names I just made up for the moment, you know, human cultists and the Maya PEI brigade and different things I put in there, which. Who are you? But I never, I never, I never pinned them down to what it is they want. That fight is going to come later on. I do want to suggest that that fight is going to. And coalition and I do spend a lot of energy, as in every revolution and every revolution that Mike's dealing with, I mean, fighting authority is just one third of the battle.

Mike Duncan (39:21)

Right?

John Stewart (39:21)

One third is trying to get food, the other third's trying to get food, and the other third is fighting with the people you're working with.

Mike Duncan (39:28)

Mike, when you look at those real revolutions, the thing that Tony's talking about, sort of that governing philosophy the isms that are associated with it. What part does that play in being able to coalesce these kind of revolutionary groups into something that is more successful or less successful? How much of it is ideology and what the world should look like?

Unknown Speaker (39:56)

Well, I think in the beginning, Tony gets it right, because it usually is opposition to a single shared enemy, some kind of opponent that you all share a common hostility towards, created or otherwise.

Mike Duncan (40:12)

Like created or imagined.

Unknown Speaker (40:14)

Yeah, and it's usually. And the way I describe it is like, basically whatever you want, whatever it happens to be on the ideological spectrum, there's a. There's an obstacle to getting what you want. And so a lot of people, like the king is the obstacle to me. I'm a liberal noble. I just want to reform things. And then like, over here you have the communist. The king is. Is an obstacle to me because I want full, you know, I want full luxury communism. And we got to get rid of the king. So that makes these two sides, at least in that part of the revolution, allies, of course, because everybody's sharing the same obstacle. And so that brings this huge disparate group together, and they all charge at that one obstacle together and they blow it up. And then, yes, they are left with what to do next. And in the revolutions podcast, this. This start. This pattern showed up very, very early on, which is any re. Revolutionary group that wins immediately breaks into at least two factions and they start fighting each other.

Mike Duncan (41:07)

Is that the most fraught stage, Mike, that you. That you see in. In these types of movements, that sort of.

Unknown Speaker (41:15)

Every stage is fraught, but oh, yeah, dude, a power vacuum is incredible.

Mike Duncan (41:18)

Nobody likes power vacuum.

Unknown Speaker (41:20)

Yeah, because you're just making it up as you go. Right. We declared a provisional government. On whose authority? We don't know, but we just declared it. And hopefully people will believe it because all this stuff just exists in our mind, you know, like sovereignty and accepting, like, who has power and who doesn't. These are all just like emotional states and psychological states getting back to that. And so, but when. When they achieve power, they're. They're going to wind up fighting with each other because even though they shared an obstacle, they did not share an ultimate goal. And so this just. So I call this the entropy of victory, which is that anytime a group achieves victory, then they just start to spread apart and it usually, it breaks down into some kind of binary, because then these guys over here roughly say to themselves, well, our new obstac, those guys over there. And these guys are saying, well, our obstacle is those guys over There. And then they start fighting. This group wins, and then they split. This group wins, and then they split, and then suddenly you got ropes. Beer. Blowing his own jaw off because he's about to get overthrown.

John Stewart (42:15)

And then Frankenstein wakes up, and it turns out he's not dead after all.

Unknown Speaker (42:19)

Yeah. He's not dead after all.

Mike Duncan (42:21)

Yeah.

John Stewart (42:21)

No. Oh, my God. Napoleon the 19th. Yeah.

Mike Duncan (42:24)

And, Tony, this is what's so brilliant about sort of how you construct these in the fictionalized universe. And even Star wars, it's. It's a New Hope, and then it's, you know, or it's Rogue One, but then it's the Empire Strikes Back, and then it's the Force away. You know, this ebb and flow of.

John Stewart (42:44)

I don't have to worry about any of that, John. I just had to do andor. I just do an andor.

Mike Duncan (42:49)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (42:49)

And I. And I could not have been more disappointed with what they decided to do with those sequel movies, because, you know, the whole point of the original three movies is like, we defeated the Empire. Now we're gonna go forward, and let's see what happens next. And the idea that there is not drama and conflic conflict and incredibly fascinating things to deal with, you know, after you've overthrown the Empire, now you're trying to, like, restore the old Republic. And how does that work?

Mike Duncan (43:11)

Right, right.

Unknown Speaker (43:12)

That stuff. That stuff is all over the place is. Is. Is beautiful fodder. And now we're left with sort of a franchise that, like, you end the sixth movie and they're dancing on Endor because everything is great. And then the first scene of the next movie is like, oh, we're. We're a resistance again. We're fighting. Who, like, what. What is the new world? I don't know what any of this. I just thought we beat all these guys.

Mike Duncan (43:31)

They.

John Stewart (43:32)

Mike said that. I just want to make sure. Mike said that.

Unknown Speaker (43:35)

I'm saying. I'm saying it's a. Nobody else has to. Yeah, I was.

Mike Duncan (43:38)

Well done.

Unknown Speaker (43:38)

I was really. Yeah, thank you. I was really bummed out by that, because those. And people talk about, like, you know, when I do the show, like, nothing ends on Bastille Day. Right. Like, nothing ends when the czar is overthrown. That's the middle of the show. Or even just still occurring in the first third of the show. And then it's everything that happened.

Mike Duncan (43:56)

And they haven't even introduced the new character of Napoleon yet.

Unknown Speaker (43:59)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. These guys are showing up, like, very, very late in the game, and. Yeah. So all of that stuff is as fascinating and as much a part of the revolutionary process as the initial overthrow, which is like the first wave of the revolution is usually united. It's usually very democratic. Words like freedom and liberty are just, like, on everyone's lips. And we see this all the time. And then, yeah, as soon as you get power, then it's every. Every group starts breaking against every other group.

Mike Duncan (44:26)

Tony, I thought what was so interesting about Andor is, you know, what he's talking, the way that you handled, you know, this idea of. Of what Cassian andor's journey to it. What was so interesting is oftentimes in fiction, there's sort of this idea of the ordained. There's Neo or there's Skywalker. Cassian Andor is just some guy. Like, he doesn't. He's not a revolutionary. He has to be, like, kind of roped into this, and his conditions become so extreme that it seems like his behavior really changes. How did you resist that kind of ordained trope?

John Stewart (45:11)

I mean, it was. Well, it was baked into the very concept of what I was doing. They tried to do several other prequel shows with the same idea, and they, you know, what's the. What's the smart. What's the obvious thing to do? So they wanted to have a show where Cassian and K2 would go do adventures and stuff. So they tried to do that a couple times. And after they did the first one, it was very slick, the script and the package and everything, but it was. Kathy Kennedy sent it over to me, not to work on, but just as for advice, and said, hey, what do you think about this? And I go, well, this is very smart and slick and entertaining. I go, but I don't know what the hell you're gonna do after episode five. I mean, what are you gonna do, just storm the Citadel every week? There's nothing to do. You'll die on the vine here. I mean, there's just. There's no pro. There's no story. Protein here at all. She said, well, what should we do? And I said, well, man, if I was gonna do this show, you take this guy back to a roach and take him on the. Pick him up on the worst day of his life and try to see how. How far away from, you know, in Rogue One, he's all singing, all dancing, revolutionary warrior leader. I mean, he has every skill there is, right? He's a butterfly. So, like, how far away from that could you take somebody to get there in five years? And that was too radical for them. At that. At that moment. And. But when they. When they came back, they came back a year and a half later and go, you know, that idea doesn't sound so crazy. So it was baked in for me. I don't see any other way that you would do it. I don't see how you'd get there. And I don't want to make it seem like I've got a chalkboard here and a calculator, but I do want to pull from the menu of what radicalizes a human being. What are the stations of the cross that makes somebody wake up to political consciousness and then past political consciousness? How does somebody wake up to the. To the point of personal sacrifice and ultimate sacrifice, really? And so that first season is him, you know, is me. You know, I'm kind of. I'm kind of working the menu there. I mean, he's a. He's a thief, he's a killer. Nobody wants to see him. He's broke, he's cynical. He'll be a mercenary, he'll stay a mercenary. He'll go on a party with the money that they stole. And everybody that he meets along the way, his mother even, and every single person has an effect on him. I have a Trotsky character who spins ideology to him. You know, Nemec reads his manifesto. He meets people along the way whose whole families were slaughter. There's people there for revenge. He meets all these other influences. And then all of that was, I try to, you know, pack that musket as tight as I can, and then I send him to prison. And in the prison, the only way he's going to get out of the prison is to lead a revolution because no one else is going to do it. And so he builds a mini revolution in the prison, and by the time he gets out on the success of that, he's fully committed. And that's so. I mean, I'm trying to show what it takes to get somebody all the way there. And if you look at the characters that Mike's dealing with in the show all the time, I mean, I don't know. I mean, some of these people are there instantly. I mean, if you're in the Haitian revolution and you're, you know, you're a slave, it's pretty easy to figure out where you want to get, I would think.

Mike Duncan (48:39)

But it is interesting how often prison seems to play a role in either the hardening of these revolutionaries or of the awakening of them or of in the, you know, setting that feeling of like, and now this will be look at Hitler.

John Stewart (48:57)

Who more than Hitler, right? If he didn't have time to write that fucking book, what would happen? I mean, holy cow. I mean, really.

Mike Duncan (49:04)

But it is those little moments. And again, this is one of the brilliant things. And I'll ask Tony about this, because then. And then go to Mike. But the brilliant thing about, I think, the rogue universe and the andor universe is you take this one moment that is the climax of the very first Star wars movie, which is this one in a million Trust the force shot of, you know, a bomb into an air duct that goes in, and you build out this entire world of how did they make that shot? How did they get it? Turns out the guy who designed it was doing it under direct. He had placed that in there. But they had to get that. There's. There's this whole universe in this one moment. And it's so brilliant that you played that out and created this entire world of.

John Stewart (50:01)

Just like Mike said, you go tablespoon by tablespoon, you don't ever look at it as a big thing. You just go step by step. You can't look at it as it. It's like he goes into a brothel to look for his sister. You could say, oh, if he doesn't go in the brothel, look for his sister, you don't blow up the Death Star. Of course, you could look at everything that way. Way. But it is. It is stitch by stitch and what feels good and what's behaviorally right and what's politically interesting and what will people really believe? And. And, yeah.

Mike Duncan (50:28)

Mike, do you. When you look at the actual history, I think it's. It's easy for us when we look at fictionalized representations, to think of the inevitability of revolutions or the inevitability of the victors. Are you surprised by the lack of inevitability and the way that they fall apart and all the ups and downs that occur, that these moments where we look at it as, oh, sure, the assassination of an archduke. How could that not lead to revolution? Right. Is that what's surprising to you as you delve into these.

Unknown Speaker (51:04)

Well, I mean, surprised isn't the right word because, I mean, I got into revolutions after, you know, like doing the entire history of the Roman Empire, which is, again, like, those aren't necessarily revolutions, but you can definitely see how nothing is inevitable. And there's. There are times in history where it just feels like every single thing is locking into place to make a revolution happen. And the revolution is going to explode. And then just like nothing Happens, it fizzles out. There's, you know, if you look at what was going on between, like, 1955 and 1968 in the United States States, like, there's every reason to believe there was going to be a full blown revolution in the United States at that time.

Mike Duncan (51:43)

There's a lot of the people, the 20s and 30s. I look at the anarchists of the 20s, the absolute economic collapse of the late 20s and the early 30s, it's almost stunning that there's not a revolution.

John Stewart (51:57)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (51:57)

And then there are times, like, in French history, there was damn near a revolution in France in the early 1820s that was basically called on account of rain. Like, everybody started getting, like, in Paris, like, everybody starts getting together, and it just rained so hard that day, like, literally that people were not as able to get together and storm out into the streets. Whereas In February of 1917, the opposite happened. Like I said, when the women went out, it just so happened to be like a very balmy spring day after a long winter. And so, like, everybody was like, yeah, let's go out into the streets. Let's do a thing. And then that becomes the revolution. And then there are other times where nobody expects a revolution to break out. Nobody thinks anything is gonna happen. And then the next thing you know, things start running away from it. Like, I wrote this biography of Lafayette, and there's a really funny moment where they're having all these battles with King Charles in early 1830. Like, he's annulled elections, he's rewriting election laws, he's canceling free press. And they're like, we're gonna have these battles with him, but, like, we're gonna come back for the fall session and do all this stuff. And there's a note from Lafayette saying, like, I'm gonna leave Paris and I'm gonna go back home to Lagrange, because, like, nothing's gonna happen over the summer. And then, like, literally 36 hours later, people are manning the barricades in Paris and Charles is on his way to being overthrown. And, like, Lafayette has to immediately turn around and come back to Paris because the revolution he did not think was gonna happen suddenly broke out, contrary to anybody's expectations. So that stuff is the stuff of history, and nothing is ever inevitable. Like, nothing is written. And you might think it is, but it is not. And then things will happen that will surprise you, and things that you absolutely are dead certain will happen just do not happen at all.

Mike Duncan (53:43)

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Mike Duncan (54:47)

So Tony creates these incredibly just layered plays of behavior and things that, and how people become these revolutionaries and what they have to do to do it. And you're looking at the different ingredients that went into these things. But we all live in the present and it's really difficult. I have a hard time doing this, not looking at the present and gathering up those ingredients that you guys put into that. Tony, you put into this, you know, brilliant show about a revolutionary and Mike, you put into deconstructing and not look at the ingredients in this moment and think, boy, we, we are in a tinderbox. There's, there's not an ingredient.

Unknown Speaker (55:39)

Yeah, we're in it. We're in it. Well, that's like, oh yeah, don't even.

Mike Duncan (55:45)

Worry about that, man.

Unknown Speaker (55:46)

Oh yeah, people are, people are flicking matches at a tinderbox right now. Now whether or not it's going to go off, nobody knows. But dude, yeah, we're, dude, we're there. We've been there for years.

John Stewart (55:55)

Where has all the karma gone? I mean, that's what I want to know. Really, man. No, I mean, I think I wondered if this question was going to come up because it is.

Mike Duncan (56:06)

That's what I've been leading up to, for God's sake.

John Stewart (56:08)

The inert sort of muffled response that we've just had that sort of stunned past six months is just, it would be, I'd be really interesting to hear Mike's podcast in 75 years about this Moment. What it would be like, how he would cover, you know, for like six months. It's just like nothing happened. I mean, people just. So. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it is getting packed, man. It's packed.

Unknown Speaker (56:43)

We're current. We're currently in about, I don't know, episode 13 or 14 of a treatment of, you know, the revolutionary upheavals of the, you know, middle 21st century.

John Stewart (56:53)

It may be.

Unknown Speaker (56:54)

Yeah, like we would be if. Basically like my point is that if something broke out tomorrow, it would be the easiest thing in the world to explain the big major structural forces and like individual incidents that brought us to this point. It would be very easy to tell that story.

John Stewart (57:10)

And it's not hard to predict what the. I mean, if I was. People talk about the predictive quality of the show. Oh, the show is like. And we're even. I mean, we were. You know, I've been ducking those questions for four months while we've been out selling. I'm a little bit more, I'm a little bit more freed up at this point. But I mean, the, the, you know, as the show started to click out, all these things started to happen. We have Gorman and the. And the mineral rights. And that happens right when Greenland happens. And we have the immigration issues. We have ICE and we have, we have the senator from Iran arrested from the Senate at the same time that Padilla is being arrested from the Right. And we're like, oh my God, you know, all right, so if we're so predictive, it's really, you know, it's not hard to predict a couple things that are going to definitely happen. I mean, I shocked that there has not been an immigration Kent State moment at this point. I mean, that just seems inevitable. Something bad is absolutely going to happen at an ICE and an ICE conflict. And whether it's false flag or whether it's an accident or whether it's fully motivated that's going to happen. That's going to trigger martial law or an attempt. Totally.

Mike Duncan (58:21)

And we always forget and you think about Kent State and you think, oh, that's the moment that the revolution. But in truth, public opinion, and we had talked about this previously, I think with the. Another guest. The public opinion after Kent State was those students.

John Stewart (58:35)

Yeah.

Mike Duncan (58:35)

And there was the hard hat generally in this country. There were. Nixon played that. There were the hard hat riots in, in New York where.

John Stewart (58:45)

Yeah, but I think it hardened each side. It hardened each side. I would harden each side. I mean, I was, you know what.

Mike Duncan (58:52)

You would Think is it would have. It would have lit a fire under a popular uprising in a way that didn't occur because of the view that law and order was under attack and that Kent State represented chaos that the society led in there. And that's, you know, when I look at MacArthur park, you see a tank and a bunch of guys rolling through there. When I look at what's happening to press freedom and those other things, it's hard to contextualize it in the pantheon of moments that lead to revolution. Like, Mike, is the bar to revolution in a society like ours higher than it was in the 1800s, where society is maybe not as industrialized, not as developed? Was it easier to inflame revolution then?

Unknown Speaker (59:50)

I don't know if it was easier or less easier or harder. By comparison, the United States of America right now does not seem particularly primed for a giant revolution. Honestly, I think the thing that we are dealing with right now is not like, are we on the verge of revolutionary upheaval? I don't see that. Are we on the verge of civil conflict? Yes. Are we on the verge of a regime actually succeeding at planting itself in an authoritarian way and just getting away with that? Yeah, that's absolutely the thing that I'm most afraid of because I don't see the kind of large scale aggressive action that would make me think that a revolution is on the way. I certainly do not see the disaffected elites being willing to do anything outside of their comfort zone, which is something that I think is essential for any revolutionary project. And that's, you know, Tony nailed this one, you know, with, with the Mon Mothmas of the world. Like, what are the Mon Mothmas of the world right now? They're certainly not engaged in revolutionary upheaval. We just had a guy get elected who's about to be elected as mayor of New York, and everybody just like, wanting to turn on him and like, talk about his SAT scores. Because one of the great obsessions going. Speaking of Kent State and one of.

Mike Duncan (61:04)

The greatest obsessions of America, one of the.

Unknown Speaker (61:07)

One of the great obsessions of American elites is. Is like elite college admissions. Like, it's so crazy how obsessed people are with like, elite college behavior.

Mike Duncan (61:16)

Right? Talk about that. That's interesting, Tony. Talk about Monmouth, because what a crucial figure. Revolutions were sort of steeped in this mythology that revolutions are from the ground up, but it really isn't that way without the elites.

John Stewart (61:31)

I was also really fascinated she start. I mean, I was also really fascinated with the, you know, the early Christians that That started, you know, bringing down the Roman Empire, who began to be elites, who began to believe in Christianity and became undermining the power structure. I thought the batter Meinhof group was always really interesting. I thought Red Brigade and wealth and I, I. The idea of also money. I really wanted to get very initially, revolutions really need money. I have a question for Mike, though. I'm really curious what you just said before. Do you think. I see. I'm curious whether it seems to me there's two authoritarian efforts going on simultaneously. It seems to me that you have the one that you know about with the Emperor Palpatine in the White House. But it seems to me that there's a Tech Reich that's simultaneously on a parallel track that's using him as a host organism and using that clown car of all these other idiots and just sort of quietly cooking along everything they want. And I don't know whether I can think of another comp on his list of revolutions where you have a shadow authority that's really actually more frightening probably than the idiots that are. I still adhere to the clown car idiot, stumble, bum. I don't think they're in charge of anything other than staying out of jail. But the other thing is really terrifying. This Tech Reich that's just. They have wide open field now. Is there a comp in history where there's been two? I don't know, man.

Unknown Speaker (63:09)

That's a really good question. But I completely. I mean, Peter Thiel is more frightening than anybody else that's out there.

Mike Duncan (63:15)

Did you see his interview with Ross Dothat of the Times where he said he asked him, should humanity survive? And there's this really long. They're talking about how Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist. And there's all these other things and they say, should humanity survive? And there's kind of a heavy silence. And in that moment you're just like, oh my God, this is the guy. We just gave his company all of our data. What are we.

John Stewart (63:39)

Yep, this is the guy who eats Bond villains, man. He is like, he is because.

Unknown Speaker (63:44)

And that's. And that's the. So that's the social and economic world that we all live in, right? We're all attached to our phones, we're all attached to the Internet. Like everything runs through them. And yeah, Silicon Valley, there's a wing of Silicon Valley that is developing and has developed a deeply anti democratic and deeply anti human ideology that they just want to kind of like float above it all and they do not care what happens to the Rest of us, transhumanism.

Mike Duncan (64:10)

Let's go to Mars.

Unknown Speaker (64:11)

Yeah, man.

John Stewart (64:12)

So maybe they want a revolution. Maybe it's in their best interest that in two years there is a revolution. You know, maybe it is in their interest.

Mike Duncan (64:19)

Which goes back to kind of our original. Talk about cynicism. Who's conducting? You know.

John Stewart (64:23)

Yeah, okay, I'll write my next season then. Yeah, the next season is that the Kent State happens on the eve of the elections and he cancels the elections and he declares martial law. And who's really happy is. Is. Is. You know, the guy owns Palantir, you know.

Mike Duncan (64:38)

Right. Mike, is there. Do you find in these moments of revolution, what do changes in either technology or, you know, the way that we go from agrarian societies to, you know, industrialized societies to. We go from lack of communication to a printing press. What do these kinds of really transformational moments in the way that we live, does that sow a certain instability and create more opportunity for these revolutions? More opportunity for people to weaponize these new technologies or these new industrials? What have you seen with that?

Unknown Speaker (65:18)

Oh, yeah, 100. I mean, because it can be big stuff. Like. I mean, industrialization is transferring, like, agrarian and old feudal societies into something new. And that creates different incentives. It creates different elites. Right? That's one of the big ones. It creates a whole new set of elites who are making money off something that they used to not be able to make money off of before.

Mike Duncan (65:39)

And narrows the. And narrows it.

Unknown Speaker (65:41)

Yep. And then you have people living in completely different environments than their parents were. And usually the first run of things is going to be very exploitive towards, like, you know, the peasants who are coming into the factories. Like, is it better? A little bit, yeah. You make a little bit more money, but, like, it's awful, it's brutal, it's exploitive. And so those things. Yeah, those. That churns discontentment and that churns chaos inside of the society. That's the big stuff. And then also, like, you know, changes in communications technology.

Mike Duncan (66:11)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (66:11)

The way. The way that we spread ideas, the way that we share ideas, like, if you don't have a printing press, and then you do have a printing press, the big thing about this is when you get that first wave of the printing press, like, things are just hitting the market, things are just being said and thrown out there, and ideas that you've never been able to confront or think about before are suddenly in front of your face. The French Revolution with, you know, basically invents daily journalism. Right. That didn't really exist. Before the French Revolution, which, you know, people are just trying to chronicle events in real time and spread, you know, pamphlets and newsletters, but because there was something new happening, like every single single day, there was always something to comment on and nobody had ever dealt with that kind of flood of paper before. Right. And you can't censor that, you can't control that as the regime. And so what we find in basically all states and really if you start getting down to like, what are the, like the, the basic causes of revolution, and a lot of it is a state's inability to adapt to changing circumstances. And if the state can adapt to the changing circumstances, if it can co opt these new elites, if it can maybe ameliorate a little bit the suffering of these people, if it can make this change, if, okay, there's a, there's a, like in Britain, there's a huge middle class that isn't allowed to vote and they're starting to get really restless. So let's give them the vote. And those changes are the things that really head off like revolution or a really big mistake.

John Stewart (67:36)

Or a really big mistake. I mean, that's right. There are some.

Mike Duncan (67:40)

Elaborate on that, Tony. Right.

John Stewart (67:42)

Well, I mean, Mike can give the historical comps, but like a breakout virus in February that we didn't prepare for because we have Captain Crunch is the head of the fda.

Mike Duncan (67:57)

Right. Something could light the box.

John Stewart (67:59)

Yeah. I mean, good luck then. You'll have a revolution. There are comps. I'm trying to think what. I mean, all these are filled with so many mistakes. All these people, I mean, and I mean the czars and I mean they all just, I mean, but a big mistake. World War I was a mistake for Russia, right?

Unknown Speaker (68:14)

Yeah. Oh, sure it was.

John Stewart (68:16)

I mean if they didn't do that, if Russia stayed out, they would have been cool, everything would have been fine.

Unknown Speaker (68:20)

And this is, and this is like the big, like the big takeaway from revolutions that people know is my great idiot theory of revolution.

Mike Duncan (68:27)

Yes.

Unknown Speaker (68:28)

Which is. Right. Which is not the great man theory.

Mike Duncan (68:30)

But like, yes, the great idiot.

Unknown Speaker (68:31)

It does take a certain kind of moron to like actually blow it so bad that you get overthrown. These are, these are some of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met in my life.

Mike Duncan (68:42)

Well, watching when, when you listen to your podcast on, on Rome, watching in slow motion the romans destroying this 100 year period of more egalitarian, more democratic, more to, to watch them destroy it by just taking away farmland. And you're just, you're watching it in slow motion going, why would you do that?

Unknown Speaker (68:59)

Why are you doing this? And Charles, I mean, Charles the first. Who's the, the first sort of. And he wind up. Up being the sort of prototype for all my future leaders that get overthrown. This is during like the Cromwell era in England. Like, nobody wanted to chop his head off. Like, nobody wanted to kill him. They just wanted some reforms. All they wanted was like, we just want Parliament to control the budget and maybe like have a veto over war and peace.

Mike Duncan (69:21)

And he said, we're not looking to decapitate.

Unknown Speaker (69:23)

Yeah. Like, I can't do that. So, like they had to chop his head off.

John Stewart (69:26)

In the end, he takes the cake. He really does.

Unknown Speaker (69:29)

Oh, yeah, yeah, he does. And then, and then when I. And then it was cool because that was the very first season. And then I see that behavior like over and over and over again. Like the Revolution of 1830, which is, you know, that's another Charles, like, don't have King Charles's. It's like one of the, One of the, One of the lessons. One of the lessons. One of the, One of the lessons of Revelations was don't have Charles. But like, there was no reason for him to get overthrown. He drops these four ordinances like in the middle of the night, basically, like nullifying the election and canceling free speech. And really what gets Paris going in 1830 is like the printers have all just been put out of a job and they're the ones who are the most pissed off and the ones who are going into the streets. The British government that is running the North American colonies, like after the Seven Years War just fumbled away those colonies, like, there is no reason for them to have been so obtuse politically that they wind up losing control of the Eastern seaboard of North America.

Mike Duncan (70:30)

How do you not know?

Unknown Speaker (70:30)

We don't like tea?

Mike Duncan (70:32)

Love tea. Like, how do you not.

Unknown Speaker (70:33)

These are.

Mike Duncan (70:33)

Why would you make it more expensive?

Unknown Speaker (70:35)

Yeah. Like, these are mistakes that are being made. And so you don't get revolutions usually against some hyper competent, tyrannical government. It's not just the fact of that they're a dictatorship or there's a lot of oppression that's going on. It's because that you need that structure and also somebody who's running it really badly. So much so that the elites inside of that, because as long as the elites are together, like, there's not going to be a revolution. But if you get somebody who's really doing a bad job, then other elites are going to be like, we are really frustrated with you. And we would like you to go now, please.

Mike Duncan (71:07)

And it is, in some ways it is like watching a movie, Tony, in that. Or even a horror movie where you're just like, don't go in the house. Like, don't drop those ordinances. Don't. Please don't consolidate the farmland. Like you're just shouting at these dudes not to do that. But I wonder, in a parallel to now, isn't there anybody within the government going, don't militarize our cities. Don't. Just because you need vindication over those you don't think voted for you, don't. This revenge fantasy is going to. That's how I feel right now. Like we're watching this in slow motion.

John Stewart (71:52)

I, I do not know how, as sophisticated as I may appear and as educated or not, I still, you'd be shocked at how baffled I am by. I still do not understand people who do things that they know are wrong when the cost is not like your children's hand or something. I don't understand. I don't understand the lack of. And collective and not. It's not collective now. It's like a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's just, it's stadiums full of people doing what they know is wrong and just doing it and going along and nobody's standing up. And I'm just fascinated by that. I don't know how to package that. I don't know if that's. I. It's hard to see an historical comp for that because I've never seen anything in any other show that's like, like that's on that scale. But there's an entire city now. All of our, I mean, so many people in America are doing things that they actually know are wrong. They know it.

Mike Duncan (72:56)

And yet, Mike, does that, does that stem from as you watch through history, as long as they're doing it to the right people, as long as the bad actions are being exercised on the so called deserving enemies of the state.

Unknown Speaker (73:15)

Yep.

Mike Duncan (73:15)

Is that how this tends to propagate?

John Stewart (73:18)

I hope that's the answer.

Unknown Speaker (73:20)

I mean, I mean, dude, it sure. It sure. It sure seems like it because, you know, like I'm, I'm not too far off because I have studied all of this history and yet, you know, I've come into the last like 10, 15 years of politics and you know, like I, you know, I cut my teeth during the Bush years and during.

Mike Duncan (73:33)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (73:34)

The build, like selling of the Iraq war and like watching People just like a country and.

Mike Duncan (73:39)

Oh, that. Let's.

Unknown Speaker (73:40)

Let's just. Let's just haul off, right? Let's just haul off, invade and occupy an entire country and let's just do it. And, like, this is getting, like, 90% approval. Like, I. Yeah, people will buy into those things and they will go along with them. And I think that, like, you know, to be like, not. Not to be a downer, but, like, if he had never. If Trump had never gotten into the tariff business and really started poking at, like, the economic parts of the Empire, if he had stuck strictly, which I think he's doing now, if he'd stuck strictly to just like. Like, let's just culturalize, terrorize and drive out all of the people who are Hispanic or people who are Muslim and just target them. America was going along with that. American elites were going along with that. The American public was going along with that. And it would have worked pretty seamlessly. And then if they had. If they were not doing. If they. If they slow rolled this a little bit more, if they had waited before they started going after the ice cream vendor who's been there, there for 30 years.

Mike Duncan (74:36)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (74:36)

And all these other, like, beloved parts of the community. I think the United States of America goes along with it. And, like, in total.

Mike Duncan (74:43)

Yeah. Approval. I've always. And then today, they didn't vote for foreign wars, they voted for civil war. I mean, in many respects, that's what they're after.

Unknown Speaker (74:54)

And to. To andor, you know, we can. We can kind of tie these things together. Like, Palpatine is being a great idiot. Like, when he gets going on the Death Star. The Death Star is stupid. Like, the Death Star does not need to be there. I think that the Empire as such could have insidiously moved from system to system a little bit here, a little bit there, built it up. The next thing you know, like, you're paying taxes to the Empire. You're paying taxes to the Empire. But he gets going on this, like, huge dramatic fantasy of, like, having a big orb in space that, like, blows up planets, right? And that's what leads to, like, like the Gorman massacre. And one of those little bits of point, like, at the canon along the way is that the Gorman Massacre triggers these systems to go into revolt, and it creates a dramatic moment that did not need to happen. And I was skeptical, I think, early on of how quickly the Empire was supposed to take place between the prequel movies and the original trilogy. I was like, that's such a short amount of time. It's only like, 19 years. It felt in the first movie like they'd been around forever. And now, having watched andor at the same time that I'm watching what's going on in the United States, I'm like, oh, 19 years. No, that tracks.

Mike Duncan (76:03)

Yeah, it's actually two decades is a.

Unknown Speaker (76:06)

One that's actually kind of a long time. Yeah, it's a bit of a long time.

Mike Duncan (76:09)

And that's the weird thing about history. When you deconstruct it, if you look at it on the overall, you think, oh, it's. But if you take core samples, there's really only. The only core samples that you'll get is like. Like seven to eight years of peace and stability in a moment. Like, if the. The moment you widen out the time horizon, you see that these things happen really quickly and really violently. And I want to end it with. You know, we talked about kind of deconstructing revolution, reconstructing them for art. You've done that now, Mike, with the Martian Revolution. And I thought, what. What was so brilliant about that is it's fiction, but it's almost more predictive now that your. Your fiction predicts the time we're living in now in a really prescient way. And I wanted you to talk about that a little bit. Just. And you, too, Tony, of. Are you surprised at the works that you've both created out of examining behavior and out of examining the way that people might be turned into something that's different from who they were? The journey that their characters might be taking is actually more predictive of the moment we're living in than the news.

Unknown Speaker (77:33)

Well, yeah, and when I was right. So I wrote the Martian Revolution. It's 29 episodes long, and I started it back in October and then was coming out with early episodes of stuff that I'd plotted out kind of for years. Like, things that I wanted to happen mostly because I wanted to, like, critique, as you said, like, the tech oligarch part of society that I'm really scared of. And so there's like. There's a Monopoly corporation and there's an idiot that's running it. That's things.

Mike Duncan (77:57)

But there.

Unknown Speaker (77:58)

There was meant to be inside of this. Like, one of the things those guys do is they just come in, like, you know, like Private Equity style, and they just buy something and then they just fire a bunch of people.

Mike Duncan (78:08)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (78:08)

And so that's a part of what's going on on Mars is like, mass indiscri firings that they don't know, like, who does what how or why they do it and that.

Mike Duncan (78:17)

And then it's like a Doge. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (78:19)

And then. And then, I mean, literally like three weeks later, they're starting up Doge. And I'm like, I do not like this at all. And then there was also meant to be like. And again, I started this project. Like, I did not look, I did not think Trump was going to win that election. I had, I guess, one last shred of naive hope that we wouldn't do this. And so once all those people get fired on Mars, there's a mass deportation business to all of this where they are coming around and they are rounding up these people because if you don't have a job on Mars, you got to get off of Mars. And so, like, mass deportations are a part of it. And then several weeks after I dropped those episodes, suddenly we're doing, you know, mass deportations in America. So I did not enjoy controlling the lathe of heaven. I know how Tony felt about it. Like, I certainly.

John Stewart (79:02)

I certainly started writing dips on things.

Mike Duncan (79:05)

I was, Tony, Tony. I was. I'm literally watching Andor's mining resources underneath Gorman, the materials that they need to fuel the Death Star as they're signing the mineral agreement in Ukraine. It's happening as I'm watching it.

John Stewart (79:25)

I mean, you're asking how it. I mean, mostly it makes me. My overwhelming feeling over the past three months and going out and sell the show is really. Is. It's sadness. I mean, it's sad. There's a really. There's a. Tolkien had a whole thing about. He didn't like allegory, he didn't like people making comps to his work, to world. But he. But he was really into applicability. He wanted it to be applicable to your life. So I'm not exactly sure how wide that he takes that term, but to me, it's been shocking to go around the world. We went around the world selling the show and every place we went because I really didn't wanna, particularly in the beginning, I didn't wanna have the show get ghettoized by being left or right or political or whatever. I was really. We were really surfing through. But every journalist, every interview that we did, everywhere we went, people were finding ways to take things the same incident and make it applicable for them. Oh, this is Gaza. This is Ukraine. This is Northern Ireland. This is this, this is me, man. This is me. This is us. And it's very sad. I do worry, as I said before, I do worry that we're into a different situation. With tech, I wonder if our fallacy is that we've been going along, going, oh, here's all these revolutions, and we know everything about a revolution, and Mike's done all these shows about it, and Tony's written all this stuff and it's all. All. It's all codified. And you just pick one from column A, from column B. I wonder if there isn't another page in the book that we haven't seen. And that's the book. That's the page that we're on now. And that's the one that worries me the most of all. Then the tech side of it, the AI side of it, and the lack of any kind of accountability to that. That's what would keep me up at night more than anything.

Mike Duncan (81:23)

I think you're absolutely right. And I think like we talked about earlier, these new communications and these new technologies are wildly disruptive. And I think if I were going to take maybe a hopeful sign of it, it's that to me and maybe to you guys, I don't know how you interact with it. It is novel and it is alien. And I find it discomforting in a way that surprises me. But my hope is that for my kids, and maybe even for their kids, their adaptation to it, that it will be native and it will be less destructive that their brains, that the human instinct will be. You know, when we talk about the printing press comes in and everybody thinks. And that ushered in the enlightenment, but what they forget is it actually ushered in 100 years of, like, killing witches. Like, it. It just. It ramped up people into all kinds of prejudices. But the hope is, is that people's brains.

Unknown Speaker (82:26)

Yeah, dude. Mike and Tony just both he. Huge size. Like, is that how we're gonna end this? Just the two of us being like, come on, man. Okay.

John Stewart (82:36)

You know, Mike and I are gonna start. We have to go. We have some prepping to do. We have to go back to our prepper.

Unknown Speaker (82:42)

Yeah, yeah, I gotta. I gotta work on my bunker.

John Stewart (82:44)

I gotta go to the bunker.

Mike Duncan (82:45)

I'm talking about our ability to evolve.

Unknown Speaker (82:48)

Come on. Yeah. Look, I will. I will say one thing, though, because one of the things. I mean, we didn't touch on this, but like, and. Or dropped into this moment that is talking about resistance to a creeping authoritarian regime.

Mike Duncan (83:00)

Yes.

Unknown Speaker (83:00)

That text becomes a part of this political moment. Right. The fact that that was given to people right now in this moment, like, however few or many actually read it and hear it, people are processing what is happening right now through andor like, I Go to protests and I see signs that say I have friends everywhere. Like that stuff is. It's out there and you do see it. And I got friends everywhere.

John Stewart (83:26)

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll go with that. Hope.

Mike Duncan (83:30)

There you go, Tony, your show and Mike, your podcast become part of my kids brain's ability to evolve to this moment in a more resilient way. I truly mean that. I'm not trying to like, I hope so kiss your ass here, but like, you sure. I truly believe that the work that you're doing, Tony, and the work that you're doing, Mike, goes into their brains and it does change the way that they interact with tech in this moment. Well, and it's. And it's. And it's a positive.

John Stewart (84:04)

I'm glad I was young, when I was young.

Mike Duncan (84:07)

That's. That's a good point. Point. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (84:09)

The nineties. The nineties. The ninies were good. It was, it was a good time.

Mike Duncan (84:12)

The 90s were good. But remember too. And, and this is the thing we forget. We thought the world was spinning out of control. No, I know, man, I, I grew up. Every good person this country produced got shot in the head.

John Stewart (84:23)

Oh, I know.

Mike Duncan (84:25)

You know, look, we, we have to remain that, that strong. And I so appreciate you guys doing the work that you do. It's so engrossing and such a pleasure to watch. And it's so just thorough and all encompassing and real and not contrived. And I just appreciate you both, really, truly, tremendously. And thank you both for adding good things into this sickly soup. But we're honored to have Tony Gilroy, who obviously created andor. And so many other wonderful things. Mike Duncan, bestselling author, creator, History of Rome Revolutions podcast. Guys, guys, thank you so much for, for spending the time. I really appreciate it.

John Stewart (85:10)

A pleasure.

Unknown Speaker (85:10)

Thanks very much. Yeah.

Mike Duncan (85:15)

Damn, I, I love those guys.

Tony Gilroy (85:17)

Oh, good.

Mike Duncan (85:18)

It's. What. It's wild to, to. To see how intentional they are about everything that they layer into their work. How carefully.

Tony Gilroy (85:28)

Tablespoon by tablespoon, as they said.

Mike Duncan (85:30)

Yeah, I, I think it might even be teaspoon by teaspoon. I think it might even be smaller. I think a tablespoon is almost a cudgel.

Tony Gilroy (85:37)

A little heavy handed.

Mike Duncan (85:38)

Yeah, it's a little heavy. It's a little heavy handed. But how about. I don't even know if this was on the air, but like at the end they were both like exchanging numbers.

Tony Gilroy (85:49)

You set them up, John.

Mike Duncan (85:50)

I set them up.

Tony Gilroy (85:51)

You're a matchmaker. Give yourself a little credit.

John Stewart (85:55)

Me Next.

Unknown Speaker (85:56)

Yeah.

Mike Duncan (85:57)

But so good and so interesting. And so interesting how? You know, I think for Tony, like, I think he's so used to like, selling andor as. Yes. The character, like, so to get an opportunity to like, hang with. With Mike, talk about it as an allegory.

Tony Gilroy (86:15)

Yes.

Mike Duncan (86:16)

And to talk about it through history. It seemed to like. He seemed pleased.

Tony Gilroy (86:20)

Yeah, he did.

Unknown Speaker (86:21)

Yeah.

Tony Gilroy (86:21)

I mean, that was so. The show obviously resonated so much with, you know, everyone wants to kind of apply it to the moment that you're in. But just hearing them zoom out too and like. Like what a student of history they both are. It was so satisfying, I guess, just to hear them sort of like build that narrative, layer it on top of all of these, like, very real things that have happened.

Mike Duncan (86:47)

That's right.

Tony Gilroy (86:47)

And to hear from them exactly why their work seems predictive to us is because it's not new. Because there are these patterns.

Mike Duncan (86:55)

But I also love how precise they are. Like when you say to him, like. Like when you think about their motivations and he's like, eh. Not motivations, behavior. Like they're really. I think whenever I talk to people whose work I really admire, I'm always struck by the precision in which they operate.

Tony Gilroy (87:15)

Yeah. And that comes through in both of their work so clearly.

Mike Duncan (87:18)

Right. Yeah. No. Fantastic. I was. I was so glad to get a chance to do that. I don't know who put them to get. Probably Katie Gray. Her and her. Putting people together.

Tony Gilroy (87:30)

She's a matchmaker.

Mike Duncan (87:31)

Brittany, what do we got for our questions today?

Tony Gilroy (87:35)

John, you once compared Dick Cheney to Darth Vader.

Mike Duncan (87:40)

Yeah.

Tony Gilroy (87:41)

What Star wars character would Stephen Miller be?

Mike Duncan (87:45)

Oh, Jesus. I don't even know if there's a. I don't know that that universe has conjured up. I think it would probably be, you know, kind of one of those characters that they mentioned. But you like Darth Sidious, like one of those. That's like. And my teacher taught me. Taught me the power of a life and death. His name was Sidious. You know, it's one of. And would be a sibilant. There'd always be that, like in one of those characters. It'd be. Yeah.

Tony Gilroy (88:17)

That I feel like.

John Stewart (88:18)

Yeah.

Tony Gilroy (88:18)

When Tony said, like, the characters that are interesting to write, you know, the Nazis that are like the clock punchers and stuff, like Stephen Miller. You're not interesting enough to write. I don't think you're too despicable.

Mike Duncan (88:29)

Yeah. And also too. Almost too much two dimensional.

Tony Gilroy (88:32)

Yeah.

Mike Duncan (88:33)

You can't even see him in Inglourious. Basterds, where he's like, wait, wait, we have to wait for the cream for the strudel. You know what I mean? Like, you can't even do that shit. Like it just. All right, what else we got?

Tony Gilroy (88:44)

All right. The Democrats launched plans for Project 2029. Do you think they finally figured out how to win? Copycatting and going on podcasts because their.

Mike Duncan (88:55)

2029 is so fucking idiotic. And it's the same idiots that put together all the plans that haven't worked out in the first place. They're not understanding where the energy and the desire rests in this country. They have no idea they are looking in the wrong place. And their project 2029 is going to be a rehash of all the consultant driven, careful nonsense that has put them in this place of that. In a moment when the Republican Congress is passing one of the most devastating bills that we have seen in this country in forever, to just put out pictures of Hakeem Jeffries from an angle that makes him look six years old holding a baseball bat and you're like, it doesn't look like you're going to fight, it looks like you're going to T ball. And that's where they're all going. So at, you know, hopefully this project 2029 that they've done is, is just a draft on a Google Doc that they can put into edit mode and have people go in there and, and make some real changes and hopefully understand the desperation of the moment that people are feeling.

Tony Gilroy (90:12)

Because right now, do you think anyone's getting it right?

Mike Duncan (90:18)

Yeah, I think, I think there are a lot of young people whose much more populous campaigns. I mean, obviously Donnie is getting all the attention in New York and for very good reasons, but there's a lot of young candidates that are. It's not even about the savvy in which they use social media or the way that they've gotten attention. It's the burning, I think, authenticity of how they feel about the inequities and upside down nature of the society that we're building. Like we talked about in the podcast, you know, when you start consolidating and taking people's farmland and just creating more and more elites with larger and larger farmland, that's a recipe for stupidity. And so seeing the bottom up energy of some of these candidates, I think they're getting it right.

John Stewart (91:10)

Right.

Mike Duncan (91:11)

They're not being, I think, in any way nurtured or helped by the party elites. In fact, I think they're being resisted. And I think it's stupidity and suicidal on the part of the party elites. I think they're making a huge mistake.

Tony Gilroy (91:28)

It's. Yeah, it's both shocking and unsurprising to watch the Democrats respond to all of this this way.

Mike Duncan (91:34)

Right. I mean, they're. They're trying to discredit it.

Tony Gilroy (91:38)

Yeah. But there's such a shocking disparity between the authenticity. Like you're juxtaposing, let's say, Mamdani speaking to camera, talking with so much expertise and feeling about things that affect the city like a plate of food. How much does this cost? And juxtapose that with a single picture that was canned and I don't know, it's not produced. There's just a stark difference between even the message and how it's being said, not just the capturing on social media, even.

Mike Duncan (92:11)

Well, it's like anything else. The Project 29 they're doing and the party elites smack of what is so inauthentic about, like, taglines on movies. Like, you know, and people feel it. It's not of a reality. It's of a process that is put into place by people who don't experience reality to try and describe what they think will be a winning message as opposed to taking in the reality of the emotions and channeling those into positive, you know, change for people. And I think you're exactly right, Lauren, about the specificity of. Of Mamdani when he talks. It's not just platitudes about affordability. It's really deconstructing how that in affordability has been created and how we might battle back.

Tony Gilroy (93:07)

Yeah, it just shows people how their city works more. I think there's a point to that. Yeah. Policies he understands and believes in. Who would have thought that would be a winning recipe, as they say?

Mike Duncan (93:19)

So you're saying the strategy is authenticity? I like it. I like the cut of your jib. Very, very nice program. Thank you guys, as always, for putting together just a banger. I really love talking to those guys. Lead producer Lauren Walker. Producer Brittany Mamedovic. Video editor and engineer Rob Votolo. Audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear. Executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray. And we will see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions.

John Stewart (94:16)

Paramount Podcasts.