Is Trump LOSING His Mind Or Is He Being Lied To? + Atomic Bowl: America Played FOOTBALL In Nagasaki After NUKING It

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello there, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
Have a really fun guest today and a great sort
of like history lesson about something you don't think about
very often, and a fun little sort of lost in
history episode. Did you know they played a ceremonial bowl game,
a college football all star game, right around Ground zero

(00:28):
just four months after they the United States dropped a
bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. This actually happened. It's called the
Atomic Bowl. Obviously, as I've come to you today, August
we are this is the eightieth anniversary of the United
States dropping not one but two bombs, one in Hiroshima,
which is the one we spend a lot of time on,

(00:50):
and a second one three days later on August ninth
on Nagasaki, Japan. My guest today is Greg Mitchell. He's
a long time historian, nuclear arms reporter and activists back
in the day, and he's written a book and done
a companion documentary about the Atomic Bowl. This football game

(01:13):
that the Occupation, the US occupation military leaders at the
time decided to do and hold. It included a Heisman
Trophy winner at this game, again on a field that
was at a middle school where hundreds died from the bombing,
never mind the potential radiation points, all those things that

(01:35):
you can think of. Right four months after the fact,
they hold a football game. Well, this was an event
basically lost in history, and Greg Mitchell does a great
job on earthing it. It's a terrific conversation. So I
hope you stick around for that. But in the meantime,
I want to empty what I call my political notebook
of sorts of interesting developments, mostly about the midterm elections.

(02:00):
But I got to start with President Trump's interview with
CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously Tuesday morning, obviously he's trying
desperately to reassure markets and reassure the business community that
he hasn't lost it. Well, I don't think this interview
did that. I mean, is it was. It would take

(02:23):
longer to fact check the interview than the interview itself.
I don't know if he said a single factual thing
that was correct when he just talked about whether it
was redistricting, talked about tariffs, talked about the Bureau of
Labor statistics. He there there were I'm sure there were
a couple of things we can claim we're factually correct,
but it's very difficult, and in fact, it was so

(02:45):
bizarre and meandering in some ways. You know, we have
the same issue with Trump that we had with Biden.
But Biden they didn't let talk to the press, right,
We never saw him, and the occasional times we did
would raise eyebrows like huh. With Trump, we hear and
see him all the time, so we're kind of numb
to the fact that he rarely speaks truth and really

(03:07):
doesn't seem very informed and doesn't and it's possible, and
I think the biggest thing we have to sort of
ask ourselves. In the same way that there was a
cocoon of people that were protecting Biden from the press
and protected in keeping the press away from Biden during
his term, there's clearly a group of people that feed
him false information to make him feel better. False information

(03:29):
about the polls, false information about the economy, like he
thinks the you know, the gas prices are lower than
they actually are, and he thinks his poll ratings are
higher than they actually are, and he thinks the economy
is in better shape than it actually is. Now you
could say, well, Donald Trump's been doing this forever and forever,
but yeah, he's the president of the United States, and
it does you know, you know, when you listen to him,
you can this is a different you know, it is

(03:51):
not you know, the I think it's a fair question.
Is he all there or is he not getting or
is he not being well served? Either way, it's just
as bad is what we experienced as a country with
Joe Biden and as a press corp. And we should
be equally alarmed for different ways and for different reasons.
But it's clear that he's either not getting information he

(04:15):
is he is being intentionally misled about the state of
the economy, intentionally misled about what's happened, you know, or
or he wants to intentionally mislead. Right, it doesn't matter
which which which it is. The outcome is the same.
And it's quite troubling, right. And the thing about the

(04:37):
beer of Labor statistics situation is that you know, this
is this is where it's the slippery soap, where he's
just poisoning all of government data. And maybe that's a
feature not a bug, right, Like, ultimately, uh, there are
there is, there are people in this movement. I think
there are genuine conservatives that support President Trump that also
believe in the democracy. But I think there's also people

(04:59):
who are exploited of that involved in this movement who
do want to destroy government and who do want to
de legitimize government data. And Donald Trump is carrying out
this mission and delegitimizing government data is how we will
get sicker children. Why measles has been spread? I mean
what obviously I said, I think the most alarming thing
that has happened is what's happening at HHS. You know,

(05:19):
this should be the five alarm fire that every media
organization is focused on, because data, you know, misleading Americans
on data is killing them. Heartstop. This is not this
is not a it is not a you know, it's
not a figure of figure of speech. It is a
literal thing that is happening when it comes to the
measles And this delegitimizing of economic data is is how

(05:45):
is how a modern Western economy can get destroyed. And
as I said previously, this is what Richard Nixon did,
and he caused basically the second worst economic downturn that
we had as a country for over a decade since,
you know, after the Great Depression. So this is this
is how danger it is but just to give you

(06:07):
a sense, and this is a small thing, and it
leads into like today, I'm emptying the political notebook. So
it's all things having to do with twenty twenty six.
So I'm gonna kick off with redistricting. And he was
asked about redistricting in this interview, and Trump said this.
I want to quote him exactly because it's important here.
He said, we have an opportunity in Texas to pick
up five seats, and then he goes on to claim
I got the highest vote in the history of Texas,

(06:27):
as you probably know, and we are entitled to five
more seats. And you're just sitting there, going, okay, Donald
Trump got fifty six percent of the vote in Texas,
and you're trying to sit there's the highest vote ever.
You know, it's not even the highest vote total for
a Republican in the twenty first century. It's not the highest.
It's not the fifth highest vote total since World War Two.

(06:49):
It's not in the top five at all. Right, no
matter what, I guess, if you use the metric of
this century, maybe you could say he's gotten the third
most of a Republican. But he claimed, by the way
in the history of Texas, and they actually went back
and forth. Right, Kernin knew he was probably full of it,
and Trump was like insisting and he was anyway. Well,

(07:13):
Kernin was saying he would get grief for not getting
fact checked, and Jose an old friend, Hi, Joe, Yes,
I'm fact checking you on this, so I'm helping you
out here. So just so you know, George W. Bush
and four got sixty one percent in Texas in two thousand.
Bush got fifty nine percent in nineteen eighty four, Reagan
got sixty three percent. Nixon in seventy two got sixty
six percent in Texas. Lbj in sixty four got sixty

(07:34):
three percent in Texas. Harry Truman in nineteen forty eight
got sixty six percent in Texas. That's just since World
War Two. So Donald Trump fifty six percent is seventh
since World War Two. Okay. And here's my favorite kicker,
the president he has emulated in history, the non consecutive
term president of Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland did better in

(07:56):
Texas both times that he won the presidency. He got
fifty seven percent the first time, in sixty nine percent
the second time. So that's sort of how absurd it is.
And now what's interesting about you know Trump and his
fifty six percent? So fifty six percent is would you

(08:19):
know if you if you know there's been this argument,
what do you do with what? What should be the
proper way a state should create its delegation? How much
should the statewide vote matter? Now, Look, I spend a
lot of time in my substack post this week, so
go check it out. I have this entire sort of
potential various ways we could create some actual metrics, so
we could sort of take politics out of the system

(08:41):
and sort of force some metrics to actually guide what's fair.
Because my biggest frustration about this fight over redistricting is
nobody wants to be fair in the process. Right. Donald
Trump is actively calling for an unfair map in Texas
in order to manipulate the mid term election so he
can salvage his House majority so he's not embarrassed and

(09:04):
his MAGA movement isn't put into the dustbin of history
because he can't hold Congress because it's a rejection of
his movement. So he wants to try to rig the
election in his favor by forcing this jerrymander. He's calling
for unfairness. And now the Democratic Party's response is to say, well,
if you're going to be unfair there, then we're going
to be unfair in California, and we're going to be

(09:24):
unfair in New York. And the Republicans are saying, fine,
we'll be unfair in Ohio, and we'll be unfair in Missouri.
You're unfair in Illinois. That was his argument there, and
it's true. Illinois is a huge gerrymandered state. And by
the way, little memo to the Texas Democrats, there's plenty
of places to escape Texas if you're trying to prevent
a quorum. And I understand that tactic. I might not
have gone to the state of Illinois, home of the

(09:46):
words gerrymander on the democratic side of the aisle. You
might have been better off going to a place like Colorado,
or going to a place like that you know, is
a democratic state and actually did it honestly and with
fairness involved, or something like that, so or virgin whatever.
There were other places to go. But I understand that
the governor of Illinois is paying the bill, so there

(10:08):
is some sense of that you have to go there.
But I do think that just optically, Illinois was a
bad choice, you know, in sort of the same way
that milk was a bad choice for ron Burgundy. But
but I digress. The so the issue on that, So
this idea that everybody's calling for unfairness and you're just
sitting there going where is anybody going to stand up

(10:30):
and say this is this is bad for the republic
right and that you know, I mean, you know Democrats
will argue, well, for ten years they were on the
side of trying to go for nonpartisan referendums. And it
passed in Ohio, and it passed in Virginia, and it
passed in California. And by the way, one of my
notebook items that I wanted to make sure you knew about,

(10:50):
Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to fight Gavin Newsom at the
ballot box if Gavin puts a remap and a redistricting
on the ballot in a special election this November. It
was Arnold Schwarzenegger's sort of crowning achievement as governor, where
these reforms he put in, he created, he got rid
of partisan primaries, he did the top two system, and
he created the citizen Commission. I would argue that these

(11:11):
reforms have actually been quite healthy for the California system.
It hasn't you know, Nope, it wasn't clear who was
going to benefit on a partisan nature. The assumption was
Republicans might benefit because they've been in the minority. And
guess what, it hasn't worked out that way. It has
just simply reflected the politics of the state, and the
politics of the state leans pretty heavily to the blue

(11:31):
side of the aisle. But it's been done with fairness,
it's been done with citizen commissions, and there's no doubt
this top two primary system is much healthier than the
partisan Shenanigan primaries that have been taking place. And we
just got to get rid of these partisan primaries. Partisan
primaries are what is breaking the republic. But I don't

(11:51):
want to go down that rabbit hole. So he's pledging
on fairness. Now. One of my proposals, in one of
the proposals that I think the courts could have ordered,
was creating sort of using you know, the average of
a statewide vote over a decade for the two parties
as sort of a guiding light. So if you take
Trump's fifty six percent in Texas, of the thirty If

(12:11):
if you said, okay, if you get fifty six percent
of the presidential vote, then you should make sure fifty
six percent of the congressional districts favor the Republicans. That
would mean twenty one they have twenty five. I would
say a twenty five thirteen split is actually within it's
a reasonable split, slight Jerrymander in favor of the Republicans,
but twenty five thirteen out of their thirty eight congressional

(12:33):
districts is a reasonable split. Right, it's sixty six percent
of the congressional districts lean Republican, thirty three percent with
the Democrats. Is that the worst outcome is that the
worst version of Jerry manner the usen Right. It's not Massachusetts,
that's for sure. So it's fairly fair. He wants to
add five. He thinks there's five seats. Now I'm gonna

(12:55):
I question whether he can get five. Certainly not in
a midterm year. I think in a presidential year, when
Trump's names on the ballot, maybe there's something to it.
But if you get to five, it becomes thirty to eight, right,
and at that point you're looking at at you know,
seventy nine. I believe it would be seventy nine percent
of those congressional districts would be leaning Republican. That obviously

(13:19):
would be an unfair cherrymanner. Now, look, I think there's
a variety of ways to fix this, but going down
this road of actively advocating for unfairness, I don't see
how this is healthy for the democracy. Right, the rationalization, right,
the rights rationalization to do this is, hey, they do
it over here. And now the left's rationalization for responding

(13:41):
to the Texas redistricting orders from from Trump is to
open the open it up in California, open it up
in New York, right, the whole fight fire with fire. Obviously,
I think this leads us down a path that you know,
when you're when you're when you're when you're making the
case that to save the democracy you have to behave

(14:01):
in an undemocratic way. What are you saving? So you know,
I'm sorry that there is not any more sort of
introspection on this on this front, but look, this is
I happen to think that the president's rhetoric about Latinos,
the president's rhetoric about African American voters in the inner city.
In this same interview with CNBC where he seemed to

(14:23):
connect it to farm workers, he really went down some
you know, fairly. Some might call it coded race beliefs.
Some may say he wasn't being very coded at all,
but it was I don't see how it was good politics.

(14:44):
And there's one other thing that I find fascinating about
this entire story, both on the BLS angle in this
actual elected Republicans are not defending the president on this.
You have the Texas Republicans who are saluting the magaflag
and doing this on the redistricting front, but nobody elected

(15:04):
Republicans who are who are not real MAGA right, who
are not the true believers. They know what is being
done with BLS, and what's being done here is bad.
They just don't have the guts to say it publicly.
But the silence, the fact that they can't say anything
in the affirmative and that they're hiding, right, Like every
Republican senator is absolutely hiding from having to respond about

(15:26):
the job's data situation. And I'm sure they're going to
come up with a convoluted well, the system is antiquated
and needs updating, you know, hide behind that issue, rather
than dealing with the damage that Donald Trump is going
to do to government data, which is going to be
hugely problematic. All right, let me just open up a

(15:46):
few things before we get to this. I'm telling you
you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Greg Mitchell
and this sort of an issue. You think you know
a little bit about the dropping the US dropping of
bombs atomic bombs on Japan, but there's so little that's
ever done on the fallout on that. So a few updates.
Steve Klubeck, the candidate for governor who some of you

(16:08):
may remember I interviewed a few months back. He is
now the first guy up with tv ads in California.
Now that Kamala Harris has decided not to run, I think, frankly,
I think she made the wise decision. I think maybe
she can win this race, but it would have been
a rough go and she would have been relitigating a
lot of the Biden stuff in ways that I don't

(16:29):
know if she was prepared to do. And I go
back to I think that, you know, there's a lesson
to be learned from Richard Nixon's decision to try to
seek the governorship after losing the presidential Literally two years
after losing the presidential California voters rejected him, and I
think part of the rejection simply was, don't treat us
like a consolation prize. And so I think that she

(16:50):
made the wise move politically, and she's preserved preserved the
possibility that she could run in twenty eight. Although I
will I'm still you know, look, I'm I will be
surprised if she runs. I think she only runs if
she thinks she will. She can basically walk in as
the front runner, and she can't walk in there's the

(17:10):
front runner if the donor community isn't ready to support
her as the front runner. So my guess is she
will make the rounds with donors over the next eighteen
months and assess that situation. And I'd be surprised if
she finds that she has the financial support network to
walk into this race as the front runner. So my

(17:31):
gut is she does not run in twenty eight and
I wouldn't if I were her. I'd wait, she's young
enough to run for governor in twenty thirty or president
in twenty thirty two, and you know, she'll still be
younger than Biden. And Trump in doing that. So but Cluebeck,
now that Kamala is out is out. What's interesting is
his first ad is all about Trump and Epstein. That's

(17:53):
the decision he made. And it goes through and it's
you don't even know it's an ad. You should take
a look at it. It's on YouTube. He bought it
in every media market in cable media market in California
plus New York City, Washington, DC, and West Palm Beach.
Meaning he was trying to get Donald Trump's attention with this.
But it's all about Trump's ties to Epstein, and it
goes through the various things, and then at the end

(18:15):
is you know, I'm you know, then he just announces
I'm Steve Kluebeck and I'm running for governor. So it
appears to be a way to boost his own name
ID and to put himself on the side of being
anti Trump. It's an interesting gambit. I kind of think
it's a tough bank shot to to make there. If
you're using that to be sort of your your this

(18:38):
is your introduction, introductory ad. Now, if you remember the
interview I had with Kluebec, he wants to be unconventional.
He sort of thinks that there are tactics of Trump
worth adopting, and that sometimes you just you know that
this and this may be how he views the Epstein situation.
I'm a skeptic, but I will tell you this, Klubec

(19:00):
is an unconventional Democrat in this primary, and I don't
think conventional is the way to go in the Democratic
Party in twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight. So
I'm not going to sit here and say this is
a bad call by him. I'm a little skeptical, but
follow the unconventional this year and this next year because

(19:20):
it may get you Senate Democrats they should feel good about.
Looks like they're going to convince Shared Brown to seek
to seek another chance at getting back to the US Senate.
He lost, of course, he lost his Senate seat in
twenty four in a presidential year. He had held it
in a midterm year in eighteen, was stood a Trump challenge,

(19:45):
could not withstand the Trump vote in twenty four. So
this is now here's the I'm mildly surprised Shared Brown
chose to run for Senate. You know, pears that he's
going to run, and this is a big coup for
the Look, Chuck Schumer needs to put more states in
play if he's going to get the Senate. If he
wants to find a way to find a path to

(20:05):
four seats in order to win the Senate, Ohio has
to be one of them. There was some talk that
Shared Brown was thinking about running for governor. I think politically,
and here's why I'm a little skeptical of Brown's chances.
It's hard for him to look like a challenger. Right,
He's served in the Senate longer than the incumbent senator.

(20:27):
He's going to be challenging in John Houston. Right. Houstead
is the appointed Senator to replace Jade Vance. By the way,
if Shared Brown wins, his reward is to have to
run two years later. And he's not young. Okay, So
I am, like I said, I am surprised he's choosing
to do this because winning means he's got to literally

(20:49):
be like a house guy, turn around and run for
reelection two years later. Because this is to fill the
remainder of the JD. Vance term. Jade Vance was elected
in twenty two, so the remainder goes twenty eight, so
this is a special in twenty six and then right
back on the bout in twenty eight. So that's why
I didn't think he was going to do it, because

(21:10):
agreeing to run really was signing up for potentially two
back to back one hundred million dollar campaigns. Because trust me,
if Shared Brown wins, He's going to be the number
one target for Republicans in twenty twenty eight. So I'm surprised.
I think it's a tough I think it's an uphill battle.

(21:30):
I know Sharon Brown's won plenty of elections. He will
benefit with Trump not being on the ballot. That should
lower the number. The history of appointed senators is not great,
so the you know, the best time to defeat an
incumbent senator who's never been elected statewide by the people,
although Houston has been elected statewide and down ballot, racis
just not as a US senator is in that first attempt.

(21:55):
And I also wonder how much of the tariff argument
Shared Brown can make right. It's not somebody who does
who just hates tariffs across the board, and he's, you know,
one of the things that has made him unique is
he's kind of you know, shared the outrage of outsourcing
and of what's happened to the manufacturing and that's sort
of why he survived longer than most Democrats did in

(22:18):
the industrial Midwest. So can he take advantage of what
might be the best issue to hit Trump on, which
is this terriff regime. So it's it's that said, this
is still the strongest candidate's Democrats can find, right, So
I gave you all the sort of reasons why this

(22:38):
is tough for him. At the same time, he's also
the best possible candidate they could have found in this seat.
So it is a big coup Forsumer to get this,
But I think it's a tough boy. You know, never
has forty seven percent been so easy to achieve for somebody,
and I think forty seven percent will be easy for

(23:00):
shared Brown to achieve. That last three points is going
to cost two hundred million dollars, and it may be
it still may be an impossible three points to get.
Speaking of trying to put Democrats trying to put more
Senate seat in play, they got another candidate in Iowa Senate.
We now have four announced candidates, essentially an Iowa Senate

(23:24):
Jackie Norris, who was one time the chief of staff
to Michelle Obama. Her husband ran for office previously. She's
been a long time Democratic operative. Trust me, any political
reporter that's been reporting for more than ten years nationally
has Jackie Norris in their contacts because she's been a
player in Iowa politics for that long. She's jumped in
the race on this There's already state Senator Zach Walls.

(23:49):
There's the former Knoxville Chamber of Commerce executive director Nathan Sage.
You've got the guy who ran against Steve King and
came close defeating him in Iowa. And that conservative fourth
district there, JD Schulten. He's also the minor league baseball player.
And there's another candidate that national Democrats have been trying

(24:10):
to get into this race, Josh Turek. He's a state
representative from Council Bluffs. So it is amazing that Iowa
went from a place that they look like Democrats were
abandoning and they have a major candidate for governor and
they got five on paper good candidates wanting to run

(24:30):
for Senate. Now keep this in mind, if this field
stays this crowded, Iowa has this weird quirk in its
primary roles. If no candidate breaks thirty five percent in
the primary, then it goes to a convention decide who
the nominee is, so it's not a runoff. But then
it becomes essentially an inside game, right who's got who

(24:53):
knows how to how to do that? And I will
tell you this, both Jackie Norris and JD. Shulten are
probably both better equipped to win that kind of knife
fight behind the scenes if nobody ends up with more
than thirty five percent of the primary vote. But yeah,
it's a weird quirk that Iowa has. But if no

(25:14):
primary candid gets thirty five percent in this case, it
would be a state convention basically about a month or
so later, will decide who the nominee is. But it
is Here's the thing, and I said this before, I
think Democrats are going to have a hard time clearing
primary fields this cycle. You know, in twenty eighteen, the
first midterm of Trump one point zero, Democrats had a

(25:38):
pretty good luck clearing the fields, keeping primary challenges from
happening in some of these places, you know. And I
think at that point there was still a little bit
of confidence in the Democratic leadership. Now, of course, nobody
has confidence in this current Democratic leadership. I think that
you're going to see you're not going to be able
to see people push people out of primary. Even two

(26:00):
years ago, Alyssa Slockton basically was able to avoid a
tough primary in Michigan. This time, the same group of
people want Haley Stevens to be the nominee there. But
they can't push out Molly mcmorro. They can't push out
the Bernie Sanders and Doors candidates. I eed, So all
of that is I think this is just the dynamic,
right of what's going to happen. And this is the

(26:21):
risk for Democrats. I think there's never been more people
wanting to run on their side of the aisle, but
they're not going to listen to what DC tells them
what to do, and it could create some fractious primaries
and you may end up with some people that are
bad general election candidates. But that is I don't I
think these crowded primaries are here to stay. I think

(26:41):
in a few places, maybe one or two get out
because they can't raise money. But we shall see. Here's
something that you may have missed. The governor of Hawaii,
Josh Green No, not my friend, who's the longtime reporter
at the Atlantic and Blueberg, who's done some great reporting
over the years and has been a guest on the
podcast a few times. Josh Green. That Josh Green. But
this is the governor of a Hawaii he's thinking about

(27:03):
running for president. He said this among governors, he goes,
this was at the governor's meeting recently, and he said
among governors. According to the Honolus Star Advertiser, I think there
are probably eight to ten of us who are elevating
in the public dialogue. I haven't made up my mind
about what the future holds. I'd be honored to help
whomever I might even become a potential candidate, but only
if I've actually done a good job. Still, that's I think.

(27:27):
You know, I've been trying to find, you know, who's
the candidate nobody's talking about that. We ought to be
care right, whether it was, you know, the guy Howard
Dean came from out of nowhere. It was the sitting
governor of Vermont, but no one took them seriously. This
is the sitting governor of Hawaii. You'd think, on paper,
should you take that candidate seriously? I think twenty eight
I go back to what I just said about these
crowded primaries. I take any Democrat who can get a

(27:50):
little bit of traction seriously, So you know this point,
I don't think the chances are zero that the state
rep Talarisco, the you know, Joe Rogan's favorite Texas Democrat.
I wouldn't rule that out at this point. I think
Democrats are in that kind of mood. Keep an eye
out in the state of Florida, as you know I
always do. There's a new candidate that may be jumping

(28:14):
into state wide races with a familiar last name. Jerry Demings,
who's been the longtime mayor of Orange County, is thinking
about running. The husband of Val Demings, former congresswoman, was
on the short list to be Vice president with along
with Kamala Harris during the during the twenty twenty election,

(28:37):
he's thinking about running for either governor or Senate. A
former congressman African American Congressan named al Lawson Juniors thinking
about running for governor, saying that David Jolly the current
and you do see an attempt by Florida Democrats to
rally around the former Republican congressman turned Democrat David Jolly.
You know Gwen Graham's already endorsed him. There is an

(28:57):
effort to try to try to clear the primary for him,
because I think there's some people that wonder if a
former Republican congress and can win a Democratic primary, right
that is really contested. And Al Lawson has raised the
a little bit of a of a warning shot at Jolly,
saying he's been disappointed so far in his outreached African
American voters. So at a minimum, it sounds like what

(29:18):
Lawson is saying is that Jolly has a little more
work to do with African American voters. Now. The entrance
of Jerry Demmings could be an interesting interesting development there.
You know, his office has been nonpartisan, and he made
that clear. You know, I don't think he can. I
don't think he would be people would view him as

(29:38):
an actual independent running for governor, considering that his wife
was a pretty high profile member of the House and
ran a pretty hard charging campaign against Marco Rubio for
the US Senate. So but it is it is, it
is clear that that quite isn't done. All right, Before
we get to my interview, I've one more little development
that I wanted to share. I'm i I'm a grocery

(30:01):
store junkie. So I spend a lot of time at
grocery stores because I just am I enjoy I enjoy cooking.
I just you know. And there's certain things that I
get at one store, then another store sells this thing,
sells that thing. It's kind of, you know, I when
my kids think I'm weird, my spouse, my wife thinks
I'm weird, it's sort of. I enjoy popping in a

(30:24):
podcast and roving the aisles looking for new sauces and
new spices. All right, that's where it is. But I
also that's where I go and I buy meat. I
always get my chicken at Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is
the cheapest chicken, and it's the same you know, everybody,
all these stories get their chicken from the same as
we all know, right, you're all getting it from the
same place. And Trader Joe's just consistently. Well it's really

(30:48):
interesting what they're doing. And it's a sign. And I
hope you guys, I would like to hear you guys
are running into this. So I was at the Trader
Joe's yesterday and I normally buy a four pack of
chicken thighs. They don't have four packs of chicken thighs anymore.
And by the way, a four pack of chicken thighs
usually was somewhere between three point thirty and three seventy
five'spending in the way, and just you know, always packed

(31:10):
in a four pack. They only had three thighs in
a package, and they were selling it for three to zero,
somewhere between three dollars and three thirty. So the price
was the same for my package of chicken thighs. Well,
we had essentially right, is it inflation or is it shrinkage?
What do you call it? Right? In this case? Right?
Does product shrinkage or is this a form of inflation?

(31:31):
The answer is both. Right, the cost of chicken has
clearly gone up. Trader Joe's has decided they don't want
to have sticker shock, so they just are selling less
in the package. It's now three thighs to a package. Well,
you know, it's kind of annoying, right, I was family
of four, right, four? You know, so now now I'm
buying two packages instead of one, so I'm buying six

(31:52):
and then, you know, then it's annoying. You're freezing all
that stuff. Look, those are those are small time problems.
But the point is, I find that Trader Joe's made
the decision. They didn't want to look like they were
hiking prices, so they went ahead and shrunk the amount
of chicken thives that they're offering in a package. I'm
curious if you guys are starting to see this at

(32:14):
your own grocery stores wherever you shop. You know, if
you're starting to see you know, because every store is
going to try different things. Right, if costs go up,
maybe they don't want to provide the sticker shock, so
they just sell less. So it is I just thought
i'd point that out, because this is the real world economy, right,
This is why Trump's Trump can try to gaslight all

(32:37):
he wants, but the real experience of the economy is
what people feel, right. You know, Joe Biden kept trying
to tell people that inflation was transitory. Donald Trump's trying
to is making the same mistake here, trying to tell
people that, hey, this is the golden age of the economy. Well,
in this golden age, the price of chicken has gone up,
pure and simple. There's no golden age in that. And

(33:00):
by the way, the impact of the price of chicken
has to do both with the president's immigration policies as well,
of course as what he's doing on tariffs themselves. All Right,
So with that, we'll take a we'll sneak in a
quick break. When we come back, you get to learn
about the Atomic Ball. You know, I'm a college football junkie.

(33:21):
Let's just say this is one college football game I'd
never heard about until my friend Greg Mitchell wrote about it.
So here it.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Is joining me now is one of my favorite authors
of two of my favorite all time political books, and
so it is ments that anything he does, I watch it,

(33:50):
I read it.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
The guest is Greg Mitchell, historian, author, sort of really
an expert on nuclear weapons and has spent a large
part of his career, who's the editor of the Nuclear Times.
At one point in fact, we're going to be talking
about a new documentary he has out called The Atomic Bowl,
about this bizarre military organized US occupation football game held

(34:18):
basically within a few miles of ground zero in Nagasaki,
Japan in nineteen forty six. And we're going to get
into that bizarreness in a minute. But the two books,
in case you're wondering that I've you know, that basically
were very formative for me in many ways. Tricky Dick
and the Pink Lady about Richard Nixon's nineteen fifty centate campaign.

(34:40):
I just think it's I've read it three times and
I always learned something more from it, Greg, and of
course more than I've read it, Yes, And Campaign of
the Century about Upton Sinclair's famous nineteen thirty two campaign
for California governor. I think thirty two, right, if I
have it? Thirty four, yeah, thirty four, excuse me. And
so you know Greg knows how much I love those books,

(35:02):
and he never and if you subscribe to a sub stack,
you also know he's a great music historian as well.
He loves his sixties rock and roll. And so there's
so many places we could go, Greg, but let's let's
start with before we get to the specifics of the
atomic bowl and all of that, explain your foray the

(35:27):
new into the nuclear weapons arena. Like, what got you
into this, because you've been you've been essentially, i'd say,
one of the core reporters and historians on this for decades.
What got you into it? Well?

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Thank you? Well, you know I as an older person
who grew up in the late nineteen fifties and the
mid fifties in the early sixties, I could hardly avoid
the subject. From Duck and Cover and you know, schools
to the Cuban missile crisis. Doctor strangeov was my favorite
movie from an early early age and then down through

(36:04):
the nineteen eight early nineteen eighties when the great anti
nuclear movement sparked by the so called Freeze campaign through
I was hired as the editor of Nuclear Times, which
was the bible of the movement. So it's really been
what how many years since then now about forty yeah,
a year, yeah, And I was but the kind of

(36:25):
a key turning point on the specific subject of the
atomic bombings. Now I've now written four books and directed
two films for PBS on the subject, and written hundreds
of articles. But it was I got a journalism grant
to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in nineteen eighty four
for a full month. Very rare for an American journalists

(36:46):
to be able to spend that much time in those
cities to this day. And you know, part of it
was a week in Nagasaki, which is hardly anyone ever does.
And you know, I was just quite struck by how
little was known about Nagasaki. They called it the forgotten
city when I was there, the inferior, a bomb city.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
They referred to it the Japanese themselves.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
So I've gone out of my way in the last
forty years in many articles and books and so forth,
to talk about Nagasaki in some way, one way or
another and bring it more to attention. But it's still
largely i'm gonna say, forgotten overlook today. And so I
was happy to do this new film, The Atomic Bowl,
and then the book. There's a companion book I also

(37:31):
called Atomic Bowl, finally really focusing on Nagasaki.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
You know, it's the timing of this after Oppenheimer. It's
got to be kind of helpful to bring a little
bit more attention on. You know, the movie itself got
mainstream attention. I was skeptical of how mainstream the movie
was going to get. Right. We don't right, we don't
do and you know, and you know, look, it was
just a well done movie, and it did capture the

(38:00):
zeitgeist at least to a degree, and I think sort
of it is. What's amazing is how little journalism was
done about those two cities, right, and you don't even
to this day. I mean, walk me through to are there.
To me, there should be a regular study of health
outcomes from Hiroshima, not regular study of what's happening to

(38:24):
the ecosystems, right, a regular study. And it does feel
as if the entire Western world, including Japan, just wants
to sleep all of this under the rug. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Well, right from the start, you know, in one of
the points of the film, which I think is pretty
wide ranging, is that the Atomic Bowl, which as you say,
was held on a killing field very near ground zero,
actually in on the school yard of a middle school
where one hundred and seventy five students and teachers have
been killed by the atomic bomb. So you know, four

(38:58):
months later they're playing in All Star, our US military
football game on that field, and it was much celebrated.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
At the time. Was it four months later or eighteen
months later? Now?

Speaker 3 (39:09):
For as January first, nineteen forty six and as January first,
forty six, okay, sorry, And as you know, back then,
the bowl games in the US, the college bowl games
were always played in January first. All those the Sugar Bowl,
Rose Bowl, all those bowls existed, done and they were
played on January four. I was it didn't care what
day of the week it was, you know. And of
course that's been bastardized in recent years and decades, but

(39:31):
back then, January first, so they had this all star
football game in Nagasaki outside the school on January first.
So of course the media, I'm not sure it was
the media or the military dubbed it the Atomic Bowl,
and right from the start, and it got a lot
of publicity leading up to it, got a lot of
coverage and the two days after, and then it was

(39:53):
totally forgotten, totally overlooked. The media never returned to it,
as if I don't know, as if shames in maybe
or just well that's what.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
It feels like, I love you led. Wasn't it until
like the early eighties that a participant finally wrote about it, like,
you know, there's no footage of this game.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Correct now, no footage. The only photos that were taken
by a few soldiers and the you know, the hero
of my film, who was a poet and professor and
writer for the New Yorker, who was an observer and
he was given photos by a Japanese journalist who gave
him the photos later, So a lot of the photos
in the film come from him or from the National Archives.

(40:32):
But there was no media coverage. There was nothing afterwards,
you know, after two days went in the kind of
a black hole in history, and whether you know, we
can talk about possible reasons for that. But so it's
not as if this subject has been covered widely in
the past, which I always love to do films or
books about subjects where the person kind of says, how

(40:55):
come I don't know about this, you know, or just
mind boggling I have I never heard of it. So
that's kind of a through line for most of my
most of my books and films, is you know, an
un untold story or largely untold. No.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
I mean, that's why I love your Nixon book. It's
all the there's so much literature on Nixon that Senate
race was never written about it in every way that
you know, and and and yet I find it to
be the single best book to understand McCarthy, the start
of McCarthyism, you know, I mean, you captured, right, you
captured a moment and frankly it it and Upton Sinclaire

(41:34):
same thing, right, where you know, this is one of
those you want to talk about ignorance. I read I
had to read Hupton Sinclair in high school, and I
didn't realize he'd run for governor until until I came
across your book and gave the first attack. Ads. Not
not to totally like get off track here, because I
want to stick to the nuclear story. But the beauty

(41:56):
of both of your books is it's also a history
political consulting, and in history of sort of the modern
political campaign was born in nineteen arguably born in nineteen fifty,
right with helicopter him barnstorming the state by helicopter, a hired,
paid political consultant, something that didn't happen. And of course

(42:16):
my favorite aspect of your book is Ronald Reagan supported
the Democrat and Joe Kennedy supported the Republicans. It was
like there was you know, up is down, left is right,
cats and dogs living together. But so you no, I
mean this is sort of your gift, right, which is
sort of surfacing something that an event everybody knows, maybe

(42:39):
a person everybody knows, but boy, you didn't know this,
this detail and Nagasaki and then you know Oppenheim, the
movie gets into this a little bit. Kybird's book gets
into it even more, which is why was it bombed
in the first place? Yeah, well we made our point.

(43:00):
Well how is it that we didn't think we made
the point with the first bonding?

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah? Well even Oppenheimer, he does. He does have Openheimer
mentioned Nagasaki I think twice for about ten seconds where
he just had almost I thought it almost was dubbed
after the film was done, where suddenly.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Somebody mentioned, hey, you don't mention Nagasaki.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Talking about Hiroshima, and he says, and Nagasaki, you know
it was dubbed. But of course that's my long stand
complained about this issue. But well, you know, Nagasaki to
me has you know, as many lessons for us today
as Hiroshima, which might surprise a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
For one, soone, aren't they the less are they the
same lessons or do you think they're different?

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Well, they're quite different. But I uh, I mean the
thing with Nagasaki was I mean one lesson is most
people don't know it was kind of automated in a way,
you know, when when Truman gave the order it basically
was which was a few weeks earlier was just okay.
Usually atomic weapons when they're ready, and after Hiroshima, the
Nagasaki bomb was ready three days later. Truman did not

(44:07):
make a separate decision. General leslie Grows, who's played by
Matt Damon Uh the movie, a little more sympathetically than
I would UH took control. He basically Truman was coming
back from Potsdam, uh and uh. You know the basically
leslie Grows wanted to use all the weapons that we
had from the Manhattan Project, and so he pushed, pushed,

(44:29):
pushed for the Nagasaki bomb sort of on his own.
He said, I even said, I never I didn't need
to hear from Truman on it. So it was a.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Weird Let me let me can you back up a second.
Why were those two cities singled out? Why were they
the ones to bomb?

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Well, they were the target list came down to uh,
cities that were had not been widely already bombed, which
didn't leave that many.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Because Tokyo had been bombed like crazy.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Yeah, so there was no you know, there was the
some people wanted to bomb the Emperor's palace for example
in Tokyo, you know, but you know, Horoshia was a
very large city. It had a military base, a large
military base, so it was largely not the military. And
then Kokkura was number two on the list. In Nagasaki
was number three. And on the day of the Nagasaki bombing,

(45:22):
of course Kokua was socked in by clouds, so they
went on to Nagasaki.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Nagasaki was right, bad because of good because of a
weather anomaly. Nagasaki gets bombed.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, yeah, but so I mean Hiroshima. I mean, you know,
we could talk for days about this. I don't I
don't boil it down too much, but you know, Hiroshia.
But in both cases, the targets were the center of
the cities, not the military. You know, Kroastima had a
major military base, but the target was the center of
the city so that more people would be killed. Nagasaki

(45:57):
the same thing. The target was the middle of the city.
Now it happened in Nagasaki for various reasons, because it
was also sucked in by clouds, and they dropped the
bomb anyway, and it landed more than a mile off target,
directly over the Catholic community. So fifteen thousand Catholics died.
A big community in the Far East. Because the bomb.
You know, they had to get rid of it. I

(46:20):
kind of liken it to a drone that's kind of
in modern day. A drone is sent out and it's
sort of okay, we got to get We're going to
drop this. We this payload, no matter where it is.
So I mean that's the basic thing. Now you say,
why why did they drop two bombs? And you know,
as I said, one reason was Truman had deferred to

(46:40):
so you know, in fact, when he came back from Potsdam,
he was surprised that the second bomb had been had
been used, and he immediately put a stop to any
more weapons. So we had one more weapon, and we're
going to have more, and he immediately put a stop
to the use of any more. So but as I said,
this was an automated kind of system, almost like AI

(47:04):
had taken over. And again I make the points in
the film about, you know, dangers of AI today, the
dangers of the US still having a first use policy
to use nuclear weapons. First, the dangers of having a president.
And then it was Truman who was not experienced. He
had just become president after FDR died. Today you have Trump,

(47:25):
whatever you think of him, The stability of the current
president having the ability, with the aid of AI, to
launch a strike at any time. So there's just a
lot of resonance and meaning lessons warnings from the atomic
bombings eighty years ago. It's not just a interesting historical case.

(47:49):
It's not just something you look at every year because
it's kind of incredible history, but it's also very extremely
relevant for to or what might happen today.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Look, this podcast is going to drop, I think, on
the anniversary of Hiroshima. Right, the sixth is Hiroshima. Yep,
the ninth is Nagasaki, correct, and so it is. It's
an interesting It's interesting to me how little attention this
gets now. Right, there was a time I felt like
in the twentieth century, this anniversary was paid a little

(48:25):
bit more national media attention. There was a little bit
more educational attention that went with it. Now it's you know,
it's like marking a big moment in the Civil War, Right,
it just doesn't happen anymore. And you've you've always been
trying to essentially, hey, let's not forget this, and we've not.

(48:45):
And I guess this gets it too. We spent a
lot of time on covering the decision to launch and
the decision to use. We've never focused on the fallout, right,
is that because it's the literal fallout or the literal
I mean the literal fallout, And this, to me is
what you've always been trying to do, Like, shouldn't we

(49:09):
understand the consequences of our actions and what it did? Well?

Speaker 3 (49:13):
You know, again, a part of this film is the
fact that the soldiers who went in I mean, I mean,
the entire issue of the occupation of Japan gets far, far,
far less attention than Europe. The occupation of Horoshima and
Nagasaki get even less. You know, there's you try to

(49:34):
think back how many books or films you've seen about
the occupation of Japan or specifically the atomic cities. So
it's that from the get go, it's and it's kind
of an interesting subject to me. And then of course
you have, well, we sent in hundreds of thousands of
soldiers into Hiroshima and Nagasaki within weeks several weeks of

(49:57):
the use of the bomb or a month. What happened
to them they're in this Do we have a record
of this? What is maybe they did studies that you know,
allegedly showed that the although radiation was elevated, it was
not dangerous. But of course we saw that throughout the
forties and the fifties and sixties with atomic tests and

(50:18):
Nevada soldiers told no problem, you can march under the
mushroom cloud. All the atomic tests, all the atomic experiments
that were held. So it's in the same vein of
assuring people based on very quick and maybe not the
best studies. And in fact, you know, some of the servicemen

(50:39):
in Nagasaki were sent out with radiation badges and they
they felt they didn't work, or they they never knew
what they found. So that's you know, although the film
focuses and then the book focuses on the football game
in the in the middle, there's a lot of build
up to the soldiers US military who were there and

(51:01):
then afterwards and a lot of them claiming health defects.
There's one person I focus on who is the public
address announcer for the game, who was one of those
atomic soldiers who later filed claims and had the cancer
and so forth. And among the many who claimed that
they were affected by you know, exposure to fall out,

(51:23):
exposure to radiation.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
We've had quite a few votes in Congress to help
compensate nine to eleven first responders. What has been the
government's response? What was the government's response in the sixties
and seventies.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
The Yeah, it took decades to recognize that this was
even a valid issue. We got into the nineteen eighties
and finally the so called atomic veterans, which included the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki veterans, filed claims and got media attention
about these claims along with well, we now all the

(52:00):
downwinders who lived in the path of the dozens of
US tests in the kind of lumped together, and so eventually,
as the film shows, late nineties, there finally was a
bill passed where these people would potentially get the compensation

(52:20):
if they could sort of prove or suggest the have
some evidence that their cancer may have been caused by
the exposure. And of course, by then most of the
veterans from Rosman Agazaki were already dead. But even that
was one of the few what I would say real

(52:42):
positives that came out of the Oppenheimer film was it
drew more attention to the downwinders who were many of
them are still alive, and in fact there was.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Bills more young kids right that lived at Los Alamos
with their parents who were working on the bomb.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Right, So there were there has been some action in
Congress for compensation. I think even in the so called
Big Beautiful Bill, there's a provision.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Isn't that the Josh Holliday thing.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Isn't that what he thought to So there'd be some
money to the survivors of in the US, the downwinders
for what they went through from the mainly in the
nineteen fifties. So, but the veterans of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, they
did not get much out of there, what happened to

(53:29):
them there.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Why do you think that has the Japanese government ever
asked for compensation?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
I mean for an explorers. I think they did years ago.
The other you mentioned at the start, And it's certainly
true the Japanese, like the US, wanted to turn the
page on World War Two and specifically the atomic bombings.
Japan certainly had a lot to answer for, and it
was certainly in their interest to look ahead and not back.

(53:58):
So Nagasaki particularly and the particularly the Catholic nature of
Nagasaki led them to not be as vocal as Hiroshima
in the decades ahead, so Hiroshima became the place.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Because Nagasaki had a minority religious group, it wasier for
the Jabar. I understand that, but the Japanese political leadership
felt it was okay to not worry about them.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Well, it was they was partly the Catholic Catholic that
the influential bishops in Nagasaki were. They I don't know
how much they really were sincere about it, but they
really they almost went, well, Nagasaki has paid for the
sins of Japan in the war, and so it's almost
like we're martyrs, and so we accept that, and it's

(54:45):
kind of I don't know if it's a Catholic thing
to do, but it's it's to be okay, we were
victimized by this, but we actually actually was a good
result that you know, the.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
War ended or whatever.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
So, but there was a lot of that in my film.
The as you mentioned, the leading observer, kind of the
hero of the film, who was the only one who
offered first hand accounts of the game, which I received
from one of his daughters and was given to him
by the Japanese journalist who covered it for the Japanese newspapers.

(55:21):
The Japanese reporter's story was very bland, and they wouldn't
use any of his photos. So there was the same
sense in Japan as in the US, like Okay, this happened,
let's let's bury it. You know it happened, then let's
move on, you know, because the message And again that's

(55:42):
a lot of people there may be from what I hear,
there's a lot of people who may even support the
use of the atomic bomb overt Nagasaki, But did this
story really shocks and gives them kind of a very
sick feeling because of the game beating played there and
on a killing field.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Well that's the whole thing, the game. So first of all,
when did you find out? When did you discover this
game took place? Did you know this early on in
your in your in your travels, or is this something
you've you came across sort of over time as you
got more interested, as you did more studies of these
two bombings.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Well, as you said, it was hardly written about by
anyone for decades, and I came across I think I
even maybe even mentioned it in one or two books
just in passing.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Because so little was known about it.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
What was What was known basically was that the two
stars were both I mean to show you the level
of this, were quite famous.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
At one time, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
One captain was Angelo Bertelli, who had just won the
Heisman Award, the best college player had not your Dame
of all places, and back then college football bigger than
pro football. You were the Heisman Trophy winner in college football,
you were you were the most famous football player in America.
Notre Dame quarterback. Yeah, a later member of the College
Football Hall of Fame. The other cap then the other

(57:00):
team was Bill Osmanski. It was a legendary great Chicago
Bears running back. He'd won a rushing title, three championship
championships teams for the Bears, and he was over there
actually kind of funny. He was part of the occupying
force in Nagasaki as a dentist. That was his training.
So yes, so they were the two captains, and then

(57:24):
they had various stars on their teams.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
So it's like a barnstorming event, like they got, hey,
we need to do we're trying to a good will.
Was it seen as some sort of good will gesture?

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Well, I mean that's an interesting point. Why did this happen. Now,
they were not part of a barnstorming team. They hadn't
played elsewhere. If they'd toured the Pacific, and you'd say, well,
this is their latest stop, and they got off the
boat and played this game. But this was a one off.
And so I mean there in the film and the book,
I present various possible notions. One was that this was

(58:00):
a way to first of all, to show the Japanese
our way of life in a way there was there
was a I have a clip in the film from
what was once a very famous short film shown to
every American who occupied Japan, which was actually written by
Theodore Gaisel, who later became doctor Seuss Doctor I love

(58:24):
that film. So then he was he wrote this basic,
this film of indoctrinating the US soldiers to come into Japan.
The one thing you need to do is show them
our way of life. Show them are the way we
live and the way we act and so forth. So
there was a lot of Americans, you know, playing, trying
to play sports or getting the Japanese engaged in sports

(58:46):
and show them that.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
We were trying to westernize Japan at that point.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Absolutely in fact, that they have have some things in
the film about about three months after the Atomic Bowl,
they the military sponsored a miss Atomic Bomb beauty pageant
and they had.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
This is the most more stomach if it could be
more stomach turning, it's the fact that they had a
beauty contest called.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Miss Atomic right, I mean, wow, So and the jet
for Japanese girls, and you know, and some of them
mostly I imagine most of them were widows maybe, but anyway,
they so it was a real it was a beauty
pageant in Nagasaki. That's all you can say. But so
there was something let's show them. Of course, baseball had
the big in Japan for about twenty five years, but

(59:33):
they didn't know football, so this was this is football,
another very American thing. I think there was a bit
someone was quoted as saying, you know, we didn't want
to celebrate the use of the bomb, but we also
remembered that so many of our fellow soldiers' friends had
died and they were not able to be here, and

(59:55):
so the game in a way was paid as a
tribute to the fallen soldiers who didn't make it to
make it to Japan. And I think there's also.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
There was it meant for the Japanese that I got
the impression that it was not intended for a Japanese audience.
The game is so it's hard.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
To say because say, I mean, very few attended. Obviously,
although there was in the I've never seen photos to
prove it. I mean there was. We do have photos
of a marching band. They had a marine marching band there.
But they had promised Japanese cheerleaders, Japanese girl cheerleaders, as
they said, so they had planned I don't know if

(01:00:34):
it actually happened, but the plans for the game included
recruiting Japanese girl.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Cheerleaders for the game.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
So, but in terms of a Japanese audio or fifteen
hundred or more soldiers that filled the bleachers and very
little evidence of Japanese and attendant. So it wasn't like,
you know, asking the Japanese and maybe they were invited
and very few attended.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Was this something that Washington knew about? You know? Was
this like or was this a a sort of an
idea that was conjured up by the commander in Nagasaki.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Yeah, well, I don't have the I couldn't get a
paper trail on that. I got a paper trail and
a lot of things. I've got the movie has footage
and dozens of photos that have never been published before.
They were found by my my research team and deep
in the archives. But but in terms of an order

(01:01:40):
coming from Washington, no, it was. It came from the
commander of the massive occupying forces in the Nagasaki region.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And so.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
We don't know if the Pentagon ordered it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I doubt if Truman ordered it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
But I don't know who was the who had the
brainstorm exactly to do this. Did you? Did the players
later in life reflect on it. No, that's the thing
that again, that's where the you kind of have to
speculate on why this ended.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Up in a dark hole in history.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
The players and I talked to the sons and daughters
of several players. He tracked down a lot survived, Yeah,
tracked down people. None of them ever heard their father.
It was one of those stories that Grandpa or dad
didn't talk about. I mean, as they never talked to
They wouldn't have known if.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
You were telling them the story for the first time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
Well not in most most cases, had they had some
they'd heard about it in some way. Okay, but you
know one one uh one fellow I like particularly was
the son of Angelo Bertelli, who never is a never
heard one word from his father's father lived till he
was eighty or something like that, never heard one word
from it, and the anyway, his son is just an

(01:03:04):
interesting sidelight, is Robert Bertelli, who has changed his name
to bob Bert and was a founding drummer of Sonic Youth,
the influential rock group of the nineteen So is bob
Bert still in touch with him?

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
By the way Sonic Youth? I mean, yeah, I'm just saying,
you know who knows.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Yeah, he loves the film. He thinks it's fantastic. All
the children I've talked to love the film. I was
frankly a little nervous that they might say, well, you're
in a way, are you're criticizing the players or you know,
the players who took part, and they're not getting that
at all. They are outraged by the fact that they were,
you know, forced to play in this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Again, what kind of you they were props? Yes, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
So. I actually the feedback from the children of the
players and the others others who organized the game has been,
you know, very very positive.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Any official feedback from anybody at the Pentagon.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
No, not not really. Like I said, this is, uh,
you know, kind of a arc story, I think. I mean,
the film I think is very lively. It's it's fifty
three minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Uh yeah, I look, it's as I think it's a good,
good watch.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah. And the book, you know, the book is very concise.
So it's it's not it's it's not the it's not
Doom and Gloom in the sense that every page is
just dripping with horror.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
It's basically tells the story of you know, the US
forces occupying and coming in, what the what they were doing,
how it led to this game, what happened in the
game itself, which has never come out, what happened after
the aftermath, what happened to some of the people, and
then the the the final third is about what has
happened in the US with nuclear weapons and the dangers

(01:04:43):
and threats and what it's and today and the you know,
the mass the killing of civilians, and the warst today
and the coming of AI and all all these things
that the arguably the Nagasaki bomb has contributed to h
to what's happening today.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
You know, There's always been this thesis that if you
have a memory of that, if you know, the more
visual the memory is of something like that, the less
likely you'll want to repeat it. The more you memory
hold something, the more likely said bad event may happen again, right,
you know, we we you know that there's a reason

(01:05:22):
why the Holocaust is something we try to put on
the front burner, right because we want to make sure
that as a society, as a civilization, we know the
warning signs and we don't let like you know, we
don't want something like that to happen again. And it
is interesting that you just I mean, just look at
how much effort is put into never forget, yeah, and

(01:05:43):
look at how much effort is putting into forgetting what
happened in Japan.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
Well, you know, of course we unlike with the Holocaust,
the US was not the principal player and causing that
or any player in it, right except not maybe trying
to bomb the rail lines and things like that. Of course,
using an atomic bomb was our decision. So it's a
it is a that's understandable in that. But you know,

(01:06:09):
you mentioned the visuals, and I think that that was
a real turning point for me, and the value of
going to Hirosia and Nagasaki was you get up there,
you stand on a hill and you look down and
you can look at the modern city and still okay,
from there to there, you see the wound you was
wiped out with one bomb, and then you also recognize
that the hydrogen bomb was you know, a thousand times

(01:06:30):
greater and today's It helps you imagine, you know, Boston
or New York City or Chicago just completely wiped out
by one bomb. But when you see it in person,
looking down at a you know, a valley or a bowl,
knowing that it was completely wiped out deliberately with one bomb,

(01:06:53):
it's something you do remember, you know, forty years later.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
In my case, is there a have younnnected with Japanese peers?
You know that are historians that have dug into this
and and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Is there a robust sort of community that continues to
want to write about what happened there? Or is or
is that sort of under the rug? Is that is that?
Is there not a big community of Japanese authors and historians.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
There's always been a community. I don't think it's it's
very robust and hasn't been. I mean, my previous book
in film, which was called Atomic Cover Up, which you
could also find on PBS, was just translated last year
into Japanese. There was some need to cover this. They
have my book translated into Japanese, so that may indicate something.

(01:07:51):
But you know, as you said, I think they did.
The Japanese, at least the elites there in the media,
they also they they I mean they cover are this
especially the anniversaries. You know, it's not that they don't
cover it and haven't covered it, but you know, the
issue was covered up by the US for so many

(01:08:11):
decades film footage and other things, and the Japanese kind
of then had to catch up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
Who monitors the health? Does the Japanese monitor the health
of those of those two cities to this day? Does
it monitor radiation levels? Is it still an issue? I mean,
you know, we've been told the half life of this
stuff is millions and millions of years. I mean, would
you live in Hiroshamar Nagasaki today, would you drink the
drinking water?

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
Yeah? Good question, But no, they monitored it. They monitored
it pretty closely for deca and I think they still do.
They had some sort of report just last week, a
report how many survivors there are now, how many are
still alive from them, and they've they've tracked them, and
of course they're they're children and birth defects and things

(01:08:57):
like that, so I can say they tracked it. But
I mean, I wanted to mention. One other thing I'm
talking about things that have come out recently, was that
there was a very interesting poll last week from Pew
Pere Survey. You know, in the past, the poles have
always found that a majority, maybe a slim majority, but

(01:09:19):
a majority of Americans have always supported the use of
the bomb against the oceanwall. They never asked about Nagazaki.
I've never seen a poll, so you've always had fifty
four percent or fifty eight percent or whatever. So peugh
finally did a new poll last last week, or reasoned
last week. I found that now it was down to
pretty much an even split, around thirty five percent, thirty percent,

(01:09:42):
you know, thirty percent saying they don't they don't have
an opinion or they don't know. And then they broke
it down to gender. Women much much more opposed, younger
people much much more opposed. So I don't know if
we're reaching this generational point where you know, the people
are taking a fresh look or or have never taken
a look at the atomic bombing, and so they you know,

(01:10:06):
they don't really have an opin.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
They don't know about it. So that Greg, I'm gonna
make us feel young. Both you and I were born
after those bombs were dropped. Oh absolutely, you know so,
And I wonder, I wonder does it become easier to
tell our elders they were wrong after they're buried.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Well, that's I mean, the dominant narrative of Hiroshima has
always been and again you could do a whole three
separate programs on this, but it was like, you know
that we that the bombs actually saved a million American liveser.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
That was That's been the right, It's always been definitely
going to have played.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
It was definitely going to happen, and my father would
have died or my grandfather or whatever, and very understandable
and and certainly a factor that has to be considered.
On the other hand, there's a lot of reasons to
you know, to counter that. But but the fact is
is that a great deal the narrative has been this
personal family history almost uh. And now of course that's

(01:11:02):
ending and I say, you have a clean slate, but
it's much more, it's much easier to look at the just.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
I would call it a dispassionate slate, not necessarily slate.
But you don't have that your own because look, I
heard this I had I had a grandfather that served
in Europe and his brother was in was in the Pacific,
and boy, they the debate about which was the worst
place to be at Warren, you know, what was the
tougher assignment would be a debate that they would have

(01:11:30):
that I vaguely remember, I'm, you know, going to sit
here or not, but you know, it is. It is
interesting to me that it even in my own family,
the European theater was was the if it was if
it was talked about about our families who served, it
was always on the European side, like the Pacific side

(01:11:51):
was always the oh and the Pacific.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
You know, well, well, how many listeners out there have
ever heard a story of a relative or anyone else
who was in occupied Japan or was specifically in Hirosham
or in Nagasaki. There are hundreds of thousands of there.
Why haven't we heard their story. Why, I you know,
my film is a revelation for so many Why is
it such a revelation.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Why is it?

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Oh oh yeah, we occupied those two cities, so I
guess I guess we had to. I didn't know that.
And why were the soldiers allowed to go into those
cities so quickly after the bomb? And then of course
why would they have a football game, you know, on Nagasaki.
But you know the fact that this seems like a
really fresh, new, untold story that's kind of more shocking

(01:12:39):
than anything after eighty years, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
But you just you pointed out the key factor here,
this was, you know, when do we not when do
we have less information about our own history when our
own government when it's when it's a potential criticism of
our own government's decision, right like those things. You know,
I have a feeling we're going to continue to discover

(01:13:03):
more things about our decision making on the Vietnam War
for another twenty years. Yeah, because so much gets suppressed
and because we're there's an embarrassment level, right, There's all
sorts of reasons you know for that. And so I
think now with some distance, you certainly I think you know,
and this is what's difficult as an historian. You don't

(01:13:23):
know for sure all because so little there was so
little uh first hand account. Right, we don't know why
they buried it, but we can speculate as to why.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Well, you just anything it's varied, you have to ask why,
you know, sort of like if it was if it
was such a clear cut decision, if it was such
if it really was the only thing that could end
the war, et cetera, et cetera, why not then have
it wide open? But you know, so, yeah, I get
suspicious once when anything gets buried. I get whether it's

(01:13:56):
any any subject. You know, you said, well, why was
it buried?

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Why was it hidden? It's such a if it's such
a good thing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
We're talking on August fifth, and that one of the
interesting headlines of the day that caught my eye before
I was interviewing you, was the acting administrator of NASA because,
of course, in the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Nuclear reactor on the moon.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
Is that nuclear reactor on the moon. What's your initial
reaction to a reactor on the moon.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Well, number one, I probably won't live to see it.
That I guess that's a positive. But yeah, you know,
there's enough debate over nuclear power plants in the US,
dangers of nuclear power plants in the US, the nuclear
waste that's still out there buried around the US. So

(01:14:45):
there's plenty of those things to worry about. So I
don't know, a nuclear reactor on the Moon. I guess
it's a good warning and st I mean what I mean,
what is the you know the nuclear energy debate?

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Right? It is clean, but it had but nobody wants
the radioactive waste in their backyard, you know, are we do?
You think the science just isn't there yet, and until
we can figure out how to do this without creating
the excess waste, that it might be too whiskey. I mean,
you've spent a lot of time on this issue, so

(01:15:15):
you know, I know you're not a scientist first, but
curious what you've what you've learned over the years from
the experts on this.

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
Well, it's just and I mean, the the probably the
leading argument now is as you mentioned clean. Just in
terms of how do we combat global warming, well, one
way is to use more nuclear and less coal and other.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
Okay, now, of course, if you want to say use
more nuclear, you should also be one thousand percent in
favor of more wind and more solar and absolutely, so
there's no consistency. We're going to do an all out
push the US and around the world to put to
forestall this. So we are going to get a little
more nuclear, We're going to have wind and so.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
But of course, describing Obama, that was Obama's actual policy,
which is why he greenlit the first nuclear power plant
to be built in thirty years. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
Yeah, But there's no coherence, there's all the hypocrisy and
everything else. So I would say, you know, everyone loves
nuclear power until there's a Chernobyl or a three mile
island or a near fukush or fucush. Yeah, yeah, near
miss something. Oh we we barely miss that. And you
know we may see that with AI now, you know,

(01:16:26):
you know, as I mentioned, the lessons of Nagasaki include
being more automated or having someone take over from the
president in a way in encouraging you know, AI supposedly
can it's not it's in all the nuclear systems now.
But supposedly it cannot launch a strike on its own

(01:16:48):
like a rogue AI. But it will it will filter
all the information to a president or a national security
team and that's that's very dangerous. And so you know,
we'll see. But I know they say in the film
it kind of all started with Nagasaki and uh, so
you know, we'll see what happens with with ai As

(01:17:10):
in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Here, I actually want to unpack a moment from the
movie Oppenheimer, which is a moment that Kai Bird's book
doesn't have a definitive answer to and has been speculated upon.
And I know you have an opinion on this, which
is when when Oppenheimer went to Truman to try to

(01:17:31):
he didn't want to used right. What what was you know,
what do you think was said in that Oval Office meeting? Well,
you know, of.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
Course it was after the bombing. Omber was was already
nervous about building bigger bombs. You know, Uh, the hydrogen
bomb was already discussed. I mean people, people know the
hydrogen bomb didn't appear right away, but it was already
on the on the drawing boards, you might say. And
so you know, the the story was Truman went in

(01:18:02):
there up and every went in and wrung his hands
and said, I had blood on my hands there very
Nixon supposedly says, no, I have, so either Truman said
almost nothing, or he waved handkerchief and offered it to him.
This is wildly different story.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
So well, that's what I mean. It's so different that
you're like, you know, was Truman an asshole here or
was the empathetic.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Right, like I mean, I think I mean Oppenheimer, as
you know from the film very well, Oppenheimer was a
complex character, and I think he could feel different things after,
especially after Nagasaki, which he was horrified by, which I
also show in the film that he he could both
feel kind of guilty and you know, what have we done?

(01:18:45):
And also feel well, I was pretty proud of what
we did. And he kept being put on committees to
help manage the bomb after and he kind of happily
served on them, and then he wasn't so happily serving
on them, And so I mean, he was a complex character.
So I think sometimes you look for a single answer

(01:19:06):
on Oppenheimer. He was racked with guilt for the rest
of his life, or he was mainly proud of the
scientific achievement and was paying possible both.

Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
Things could be true, That's right, depending on the mood
he was in. Right with him, Yeah, absolutely so, But yeah,
I mean that's I mean again, you could say that's symbolic.
But but you know, as the film shows Oppenheimer did
with a lot of the scientists.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Now I've known this for years. This wasn't a new revelation,
but there were they celebrated, as you see in Oppenheimer,
they kind of celebrated after the Irosham obombing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Because it worked. That's what they were celebrating, right, work,
and you knew it killed a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
Of people, but they did. Then, of course the footage
came in taken from the air showing the whole city
wiped out. Oh, I guess a lot of civilians must
have died. And then Nagasaki, which they really many of
the scientists said, oh my god, you know what.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
This What did you think of the portrayal? They that
was the decision Nolan made right too, you know, I
and you correct. You pointed this out first, and I
thought it was a fair critique. And it is one
of those like I understand, he's making a movie, Okay,

(01:20:22):
he's centered your your you know, and and maybe you
don't want to turn audiences off, Maybe you don't want
to make them sick to their stomach. I don't know,
but that was a glaring missing piece.

Speaker 3 (01:20:33):
Well, I showed at the time, and I still do
a daily somehow nearly daily free sub stacked newsletter.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
I'm a subscribe. By the way, you mostly lead with music,
which I think, but uh.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
As I showed right away from there because it rang
a bell to me. There was a great series in
the early nineteen eighties on PBS called Oppenheimer. Sam Waterston
Played Oppenheimer was a great series on PBS, and something
I recalled from that was that in that series in PBS,
again in a kind of a subtle way, they showed
Oppenheimer in a screening room after Roakeshaba watching the first

(01:21:14):
footage from Roshima on the ground, showing you some victims
and survivors. As a very quick scene, very tasteful. He's watching,
and then they show a few seconds from what he's watching,
and they show him getting kind of, let's say, stricken
by what he's watching. The show a few more seconds
from the screen and they cut back to him, and
you know, so you kind of get at least, dude,

(01:21:36):
it's a way to show the thirty seconds of the
survive of the victims, the exact same scene as in
Oppenheimer and he's in a screening room looking up at
the screen the same angle people around him, and all
it does is show the actor seeming to express surprise

(01:21:56):
or shock. You never see what's on the screen at all. Now,
some might say I was some more artistic choice made
the point, but you know, he could have could have
shown something there, for example, without anyone saying, oh my god,
he's just focusing too much on the survivors. So and
even in my film, like I said, my film Is

(01:22:17):
Not has has footage of victims of survivors mainly, but
it's a very very small part of the film. You
see it, it's very powerful, but most of the focus
is on the Americans. And that's been kind of my
from the beginning. I have focused on the American response.
I have not focused so much on the decision right,
not focused so much on the Japanese response or anything.

(01:22:39):
It's really what has the American response been, because that's
going to help dictate if we use the weapons again.
You know, what is the lesson of Roshima Nagasaki today?
Is there really a taboo? You know, I would argue
there isn't a taboo because the media and many historians
have always supported the use of the bomb, so.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
It was always under the it was always look I mean,
I think about how I felt like I was taught it. Well,
we did it because it would have taken We didn't
want another D Day, like you know, list of fatalities
going onto the shores of Japan.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
But there could be a scenario today. In fact, I
don't know if it occurred to you, because I presume
you're probably aware that the US has had for many
years now so called nuclear bunker busting bombs, and that's
the big threat today in a way, is that the
US modern it's so called modernizing our arsenal and the

(01:23:37):
Soviets that you can make the bombs more usable, because
it's not the idea, well, if we drop ten bombs,
it's going to be the end of the world. Right now,
they're being made more usable to a certain precision. This
idea that there is a precision or something the phrase
tactical nukes, right, I don't know if it exists, but
a lot of pretend that right now, we.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Claim that it does.

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):
Right, but it certainly occurred to me, and I maybe
just because of my obsession when Trump used the for
the first time ever. He's thirty thousand pounds bunker busting
conventional bombs against Iran, you know, six weeks ago now
right always referred to as bunker busting. That if that

(01:24:21):
hadn't worked, hadn't achieved what he wanted, would he have
considered using nuclear bunker busters, which were more powerful? And yeah,
I mean it's the same idea. It's bunker busting, it's
not mushroom cloud over a city. And it certainly occurred
to me, especially with Trump. You get frustrated Iran doesn't

(01:24:41):
back down. Maybe Iran's buying. Yeah, I would take you
attacks US force that was the big fear, right, ran
attack US forces in the Middle East. Okay, that doesn't
really happen, But what if it did happen. Well, I've
got these nuclear bunker I'll show them. So that's the
l of I keep coming back to. Is there a

(01:25:03):
taboo on using nuclear weapons? Well, nineteen forty five we
used two of them and it was judged judged quite
quite positively. And then we even had a football game
on a killing fieve but had a football stater you know,
Nagasaki beauty pageant. So I mean, is there a taboo
on using nuclear weapons against the cities. You know, you know,

(01:25:27):
a fallout, as you mentioned fallout and everything that would
come from it, So you know, is there a taboo?
I don't know. That's the question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Look, I think you made to me. You know you're
you're a good educator, and that you're like, Okay, how
do I get more people to pay attention to an
issue that maybe they're not paying attention to?

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Why don't I get people to come in on this
weird football game decision and maybe it'll get them to
want to learn more. I mean, this is what I
admire about your writing, about the way you go about things.
You don't You're not somebody that pounds your fist and
says you need to know this. You're like, all right,
let me come up with another way to educate you.
It's a nice gift that you have. Well, I appreciate that,

(01:26:12):
and I think you're probably correct, and you know, this
is the latest example. But yeah, that's what I've kind
of looked for. Stories that illustrate as opposed to this
is why something's wrong, or.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
You know, get on your on.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
You lead the horse to water, you don't shove the
water into the horse's mouth.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Yeah, I hope, so, I hope that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
Let me get you out of here at a question
I've always that I've been wanting to ask you. I
could just email your direct mail a direct message you,
but let me ask you here, which is what do
you think Upton Sinclair would be to day? What would he?
Is there somebody in the in the political culture today
that most resembles him? What kind of force do you

(01:26:56):
think he would have would be politically if Upton and Claire,
you know, we're reincarnated in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:27:03):
Wow, that's a tough question because he's, you combine a
writer and who's basically did people know about the John?
Of course there's probably sixty percent in your audience saying, well,
what who was? Who's Upton Sinclair?

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Wait? The junglar Is okay, yeah, No.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
No Is Sinclair. Lewis was include Lowis, he wrote The
Morgantry And but you know Upton Sinclair to Nutschall was
was became a very famous writer. He was a socialist,
he was a social activist, and then he ran for
office in this you know, as you mentioned, this incredible campaign.
So it's hard to think of someone who combines all

(01:27:38):
those things. Today, you know, it's like he was even
to the left of Bernie Sanders, if you want to say,
he's a mix of Bernie Sanders and yeah, whatever, I
don't know who a famous novelist would be, who's pretty
far left, who is also getting arrested in demonstrations.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
I mean, he's he was that doesn't really exist anymore, doesn't. Yeah,
it's kind of a one off. But I guess he
was kind of a journalists in his own right back then.
I mean that's the way journalists. I mean, I'm interested
in that, you know, Greg, I'm obsessed with that period
because I think we're reliving it, right. I think the
era that Upton Sinclair his formative years are now our
formative years.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
You'd sort of get Gilded age. You had sort of
a transition from the agrain economy to the industrial economy,
and what was happening to the labor force and what
was happening to people and and sort of and here
we are again, and this is a different sort of moment,
but in a similar moment. And oh, by the way,
we also had a media that wasn't very trustworthy back then, right,
A lot of partisan media. Well, we have a we

(01:28:35):
have the same sort of infrastructure today. That's why I
just think that there's a it's my way of plugging
the book, plugging that book, and just Upton Sinclair in general,
because I do think as you know better than most. Right,
we know history doesn't repeat, but it off but sure runs.

Speaker 3 (01:28:52):
Yeah, all right, that's right. Well let's hope we're not
heading into another great depression and that will be even
more although maybe we'd get a candidate like up the
Saint Claire who would run out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
I mean that would be my you know, well in
many ways, right that some of the look it takes well,
I think we know it takes sort of. Uh. I
always say that voters eventually get it right, but sometimes
they just need it need more time to figure it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:18):
Out well or get exposed to things. I think that's
the biggest And you're you know all about this, Yeah,
they are people do people have an open mind to
they can even be reached.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
And that's that's my biggest fear.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
You know, you can always say there are cycles, you know,
did anyone see Obama cover coming?

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Or even when Bill.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
Clinton got elected, it was like, wow, this is Arkansas
Governor I menagine him getting elect right, So funny things happen.
Of course, when Trump was elected it was not expected,
so unexpected things can happen. But but is our landscape
so different today that so few people are really open

(01:29:56):
to opposing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:57):
Well that's the we know fact well and the algorithmic influences, right,
is there any you know I my biggest complaint today
is it you and I don't control any distribution of information.
It's five tech companies do. Yeah, yeah, you know are
they going to is are they even going to know
that you wrote this book? Are they going to know

(01:30:19):
that you made this documentary? Right? Like? Unfortunately, you know
that's that's an open question now and that well you
years ago we would have said that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
Yeah, well, so I appreciate any talking about this.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
So I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:31):
I know you do add me on and uh, you know,
there'll be some people out there say you're interesting and
I'm going to look into this.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Yes, I will tell you this. You're a great follow
on substack. You're uh and if you if if you
want to get more of a taste of the great
Mitchell brain, definitely subscribed to such.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
Let me just mention that the film is besides showing
us on TBS PBS stations Yep, not every PBS station,
but it's streaming. It's streaming on PBS and you can
just go to PBS dot org. It's on all the
PBS apps.

Speaker 5 (01:31:06):
The people who have a yeah, I have an app,
You just go and it's there. You don't have to
check for your local list that you can check your
little list. You could just search Automic Bowl on the
PBS app. You have that on your Apple TV.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
And if anyone out there can watch it today if
they if they care, you know, buy the book or whatever.
But it's uh, it's out for everyone. It's not a
not something you have to look for popping up next
week or next month.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
Well, this is the uh eightieth eightieth anniversary.

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
I no, not so so.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
Here we are Greg Mitchell, congrats, great to talk with Nick.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
Look, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Greg, and
I do recommend both of his books, but especially Tricky
Dick and the Pink Lady. I think it is there's
so much That book actually is a great introduction to
the Red Scare and McCarthyism because that cycle of Senate

(01:32:11):
races in nineteen fifty, and this is what it was.
It was Richard Nixon's nineteen fifty Senate race is one
of the you know, it was all across the country
that all these red scares were happening. In my home
state of Florida, it was Claude Pepper in a Democratic
primary against a guy named George Smathers. Claude Pepper lost
that Senate seat because among other attacks on him was that,

(01:32:36):
you know, he had a sister who was a card
carrying thespian. Yes, that misuse of words. What you heard,
what you think you heard. He had a sister who
was an actor, but I don't think they were using
thespian in an attempt to try to declare an act.
So these were it is. And that was in a
Democratic primary back in the day. Because it was the South,

(01:32:57):
there was really no Republican Party back then and in
these Southern races, so the fights, the ideological fights, actually
took place in primaries. But in California you had two
very competitive parties back then, with the Republicans with a slight,
slight advantage there. But it's a terrific book, an easy read,
and I highly recommend it. But I'll tell you this.

(01:33:19):
I hope you do. Check out the documentary itself. I mean,
we don't we have memory hold a lot of things
having to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and this is
as good of a way of sort of reanimating that
conversation that should be had. Right, There's always more to
learn from our mistakes and our decisions. I don't want to,

(01:33:40):
you know, some people think it was a mistakes, some don't.
But there's always more to learn from controversial decisions we
made in our past. All right, with that, let's do
a few questions here, Little asked, Chuck, Ask Chuck. First
question comes from Donovan. He says, here from PG County.
I should probably say go Orioles, but my heart says

(01:34:01):
go next. Of course, PG County is d C. Is
a d C county, and it's not a Baltimore county.
All right, but I digress. Over the past decade, red
pill ideology, amplified by Trump and voices like Elon Musk,
has taken hold among many young men eighteen to forty
who feel disillusioned by shifting gender and economic dynamics. With
women reaching new heights in education and careers, seems some

(01:34:22):
men feel increasingly left behind and resentful. My question is
what can Democrats do to reconnect with young men who
feel culturally emotionally disconnected from modern progressive messaging? Donovan, this
is I think I think that party doesn't know how
the answer to this question yet, right, And I go back,
I've been thinking about sort of how did the party
get into the place it is right now with young

(01:34:43):
men and with you know, basically with all men under fifty,
under forty five. So it's millennial men and gen Z men,
but in some ways it's more acute among gen Z
men than it is millennial men right now. And I
think you identified the issue this sort of, you know,
I go back to an anecdote that a former producer
of mine, I'll know, we were watching a Hillary Clinton

(01:35:08):
rally and she was going to this is in twenty sixteen,
and she was like, and I want the votes of
gay Americans, and I want the votes of Black Americans,
and I want the votes of Asian Americans, and I
want the votes you know, went down the line. Never
said she wanted men, just straight wide men, right, And

(01:35:28):
he was like, well, she's not asking for my vote,
and so that was a point he felt alienated right there.
And I think just masculinity in general right has been
seen as just a negative across the board, whether masculinity
among white men, black men, as Banic men, and so

(01:35:49):
I think with young men it's created. Look, I have
two gen Z kids, one a daughter and a son,
and I even see it in there where I would say,
I don't want to say my son's been conditioned, but
he sort of knows, well, I can't say that, or
I can't do that, or I probably can't pursue that career.

(01:36:11):
I won't be hired. So I'm going to pursue this.
And it's just very he's very matter of fact about it,
and I have no doubt that some in that same
position would feel resentful on some of those things. So
I do think that the Democrats somehow got so and
I go back, it's like, did did they learn the
wrong lesson from Barack Obama's twenty twelve success? And it

(01:36:33):
seems as if the party decided, oh, Obama won because
of identity politics, when actually that isn't why he won.
But I think for a good decade they came to
the conclusion that that's why he won, that he didn't
win for other reasons. They didn't win because he had
earned the trust of the country. That he didn't win
because they thought he had, you know, sort of the

(01:36:54):
put the put the country back on track right after
the economic disaster that he was handed with the with
the Great Recession. And so, you know, I wonder if
the miss if that decision, you know, was all, well,

(01:37:15):
let's go with the identity politics, that just what that
did was it just sort of sidelined going after men
generally and speaking to men generally, And in fact, they
saw women in general as the base of the party,
as the and in many ways they have they are
the base of the party. And so it just sort

(01:37:36):
of it becomes the less you campaign for their vote,
the less you know how to message right. And then
all of a sudden, you think, well, the numbers support us,
you know, if you just if you succeed with identity politics,
the numbers favor the left over the right. But what
if you don't right, what if policy Trump's identity? And
I think by twenty twenty four, it's fair to say

(01:37:58):
plenty of people chose the pocket you know, looking at
the pocketbook or what their future looked like as opposed
to voting via identity group. And so that's the thesis
I have that this Democrats just learn the wrong lesson
from Obama's victory in twenty twelve, and we all sort
of echoed it that, oh, he won by a shoot.

(01:38:19):
Even the Republicans thought, you know, well, hey, the Democrats
have won Hispanic voters. They're going to they've you know,
and the Republicans got to learn to figure out how
to do this, right, So they sort of acknowledged that
it was viewed through the prism of identity rather than
where I think that Democrats need to focus is they

(01:38:40):
need to view the electorate through the prism of class,
of socioeconomics, right. And I think that that's where Republicans,
I think succeeded in messaging better on the economy, is
that they viewed the electorate via the electoral divides via
class rather than the electoral divides via identity. And I

(01:39:01):
think the irony is that the Democrats used to view
it through class, right, which is why they were the
quote party of the working class. You know, you think
about you know, one of my favorite reminders of the
March on Washington is it was actually about jobs. That's
why it was a coalition. It wasn't. Yes, it was.
It's known as a great civil rights event, and it was.

(01:39:21):
It was. It was the march and civil rights, but
it was a jobs event as well. That's why you
had white labor union people supportive of it. Right, it was,
it was. It was aligning on class as much it
was it was aligning on civil rights. And so that
would be that would be my diagnosis. And I think
if the Democratic Party starts to and I do think

(01:39:43):
you're seeing individual candidates realize that maybe they need to
you know that working class white, working class Black, and
working class Hispanic actually have a lot more problems in common,
and you can speak to them with one message rather
than trying to talk to them based on and their
identity group. And I think that that's what the Republicans

(01:40:03):
did better in twenty four than the Democrats. All right,
next question, Oh, this comes from overseas. Heinrich from Denmark. Hicheck,
thanks for the great podcast. Really appreciate the way you
dig into how policy and politics intersect. I'm writing from Denmark,
where we're following developments in the US housing market, with
affordability declining, interest rates rising, and generational inequality growing. How

(01:40:26):
much do you think these issues will shape younger voters
attitudes going into the twenty twenty six midterms and the
twenty eight presidential election. Do you see any signs that
frustrations over housing, especially from young men feeling locked out
of the market, could start to erode Donald Trump's appeal
despite his promises to make everything better and cheaper. Well,
look you get let me get the answer the last
part first, which I kind of have answered over the
last two podcasts, which is, I think I think that

(01:40:50):
you know, I think Donald Trump's coalition falls apart if
this economy doesn't get better. Right, if you think of
it as the game Jenga, Right, you know to me
the one you know, it isn't Epstein that takes Trump down.
It's the price of eggs and chicken at Trader Joe's
that will take them down. Right, Like, you know, this
is why Biden and Harris lost. Right, there's we can

(01:41:12):
you can go through. Look, the border had an impact,
but ultimately they lost because people didn't like the economy
in twenty four and it was in some ways they
were very normal, specifically in housing. I would say this,
I don't think anybody has had a good housing policy,
yet I haven't seen a good one on either side

(01:41:33):
of the aisle. The problem with with housing in our
in our country, and how why it's hard to make
it a federal campaign issue is that, you know, zoning
decisions are made on the local level, right, my my
home county here in Arlington County has been having a
huge fight over zoning and affordable housing, right and the

(01:41:54):
wealthier communities are afraid of of No, don't put townhouses here.
You're gonna lower or the value of our single family homes.
Oh my god, don't put an apartment building here. This
will lower the value of our single No duplexes and
all this stuff. I'm somebody who thinks that that isn't
going to be as impactful as people think. But it
is a heated debate, and it is really animated local elections.

(01:42:17):
The Feds have nothing to do with it, right, The
Feds can encourage, you know, basically incentivize state and local
governments to do to you know, maybe cut some red
tape or to do some different zoning laws that would
incentivize home building on that front, But it is it's

(01:42:39):
really hard to create, you know, to create a federal
policy and realistically sell it. That said, when I ask
a member of Congress, what's an issue we in the
press don't ask you about, but that you always get
asked about by your constituents, And it's this issue housing affordability.
So I do think it is It's just one of those.

(01:42:59):
I think there's two issues that don't get enough attention nationally,
but local voters are constantly concerned about it. One is
the fact that our public school system is just a mess.
All right. Public education in this country is a mess.
The laws that have created school choice have actually made
it worse in an attempt to try to make it better.
But this is a massive undertaking, and in some ways

(01:43:23):
it's so broken nobody wants to try to I don't
think there's any magic wand fix on a national scale.
But the other one is housing and housing affordability. So
I do think that if you know, interest rates remain
high and people feel as if home ownership is out
of reach for them, I just think that that's just

(01:43:43):
the add on, you know it. It creates the conditions
for why people feel negative about the economy, why they
feel like they can't make any progress. Sure, maybe they
can afford to buy groceries, but they can't afford to,
say for a home, or if they do, they've got
a move who've you know, fifty miles outside away from

(01:44:03):
their work in order to afford a home. I think
this stuff does have a cumulative negative impact on the
party in power, and right now the party and power
of the Republicans. And they've not done anything on housing
at all, and so that is an easy way of
Democrats can do that. But I just you know, what's
their plan, right and there's no obvious plan to sell

(01:44:27):
on a national basis other than identifying the problem and
figuring out how can we incentivize more. By the way,
nothing nothing raises the price of home ownership even more
than kicking out all the migrants. A lot of these
folks help build many of these homes, and it's only

(01:44:47):
by having fewer workers building homes you're only raising the
price and the cost of housing even more. Next question
comes from Dan E. Not Danny, but Dan E period.
By the way, Chuck, I was wondering if I could
convince you to answer my question on the Democrats' chances
strategy for twenty thirty two. Interesting. Obviously, it's super early.

(01:45:11):
It seems to me that the Democrats need to put
significant effort into turning Florida or Texas purple and doing
well in Pennsylvania. The Dems lose eleven ish electoral votes.
The blue wall is no longer enough to be credible
with national donors. They need to be able to sell
a path. I see where you're going here. This means
voter registration and winning statewide races in twenty six through
thirty without turning Florida or Texas purple. What is the path?

(01:45:31):
Or dem strategist worried or they just don't focus that
far out love your podcast, look you provide I mean
right now, when you've seen some of the reapportionment estimates, right,
Texas and Florida, I think both gained three or four
electoral votes each. Georgia likely gains. That's of course a
swing state, but it means that it puts that much
more importance on Georgia, that much more importance on Arizona,

(01:45:54):
who I think would gain a seat. California would lose
by the way in this round. Although you know it's
still early, there's still four more years of population growth
which could level things out here. And I Honestly, this deportation,
what Trump is doing, could have all sorts of unintended
consequences on our census, on our censes totals come twenty thirty.

(01:46:16):
So I just want to throw all those caveats aside.
But look, you're getting at something that I think the
Democrats have been The Republicans have been running circles around
the Democrats, and that is voter registration. There's never been
a consistent and long term effort in the state of Florida.
There's never been a consistent, long term effort in Texas.
The irony is that one of the few places where

(01:46:37):
there was a consistent effort to do it was in
the state of Georgia. And it took a long time,
but guess what it ended up paying dividends. Didn't get
Stacy Abrams elected, but her organization and all the efforts
she put into it is what created the conditions that
suddenly Democrats now are competitive. Yes, the growth of Atlanta matters,
but growth only matters if you're there. You know there's

(01:46:58):
the same voters are growing all over Florida, and they've
the Democrats have done a terrible job reaching out to
them and trying to add to their vote totals. Iowa
is another place where Democrats have just given up on
voted registration. I mean, here's what happened, Republicans. I mean,
this is the one thing. You know, a lot of
grief was given. You know, the Trump campaign wasn't a
very well run campaign in twenty sixteen, all right. It

(01:47:21):
was sort of seat of the pants, which makes the
Clinton loss to me look even worse. Right, they weren't.
They lost to the Keystone cops, but it's proof that
they weren't running against Trump campaign. They were running against
an environment that was tilted against them. But the one
thing that Trump folks came away with was, uh oh,
in order to stay competitive, we're going to have to

(01:47:44):
get you know, find more voters and get more of
these folks out and get them registered, have them become
more regular voters. And they made real efforts over the
last decade to increase their voter totals. And it pays.
It's paid dividends in Nevada, it's paid dividends in Ohio.
They basically took Iowa, Florida, and Ohio off the battleground
map with their voter registration campaigns. They made Pennsylvania, which

(01:48:05):
was starting to tilt more blue. Of all of the
blue Wall states, Pennsylvania looked like it was going to
become more likely to be semi permanent in the light
blue column. And it did not. In many ways, this
Republican registration effort yanked it right back into the purple category.
Did own the state of Michigan, and of course Wisconsin
is Wisconsin, and the Democrats' efforts on this for whatever reason,

(01:48:29):
and I think, you know, look, there's a great sub
stack out there of a deep dive on sort of
I think Democrats got addicted to two things, identity politics
and small donor fundraising, and they thought that was, you know,
somehow was better than voter registration. But they've not done
the blocking and tackling of party building that Barack Obama

(01:48:49):
did in six and seven on behalf of the party
that Obama did in twenty eleven to prepare for the
twenty twelve reelect. It is stunning to me how this
is atrophied on the Democratic side of the l They
used to be the party of voter registration. They were
the ones that were always with labor unions, would be
at the front lines of this and for a variety

(01:49:12):
of reasons. They just don't. This is just not part
of it is how money is sort of divvied up
in this dark money world somehow voter registration because it
can be paid for by you know, dark money, there's
less accountability. And I just think there's a lot of
ripoff artists. You know, there's dirty politicals. They're basically grifters

(01:49:36):
in both parties, and it's in the voter registration space
and in the phone space where the grifters are the
most prevalent. And I think that Democratic Party has been
robbed right by you know, there are these dark money
groups who are taken advantage of by consultants you've never
heard of, who have become wealthy, essentially bullshitting their way
and not performing the task that they've promised. You know,

(01:50:00):
effort voter registration efforts in South Carolina and Mississippi would
make both of those states a lot more competitive. But again,
you can't just do it in six months. It's it's
a it's got to be a ten year plan. So
your talk, But what you're bringing up is this larger
issue that the map continues with the alert. Now, electoral
maps evolve based on how good or bad the head

(01:50:21):
of your ticket is, right. I think the Democrats, you know,
thought the electoral college was running against them back in
the Clinton era, and the Republicans thought that the Democrats
had the electoral advantage in the in the Obama era.
So I do think, you know, that's a chicken and
egg which comes first, right, But if you're looking, you know,

(01:50:41):
at the general lean, I understand where you're coming from.
I think it means they've got to keep George in play.
They've got to put North Carolina in play, right if
they're going to respond if if the if Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Pennsylvania aren't enough, Okay, they've got to. It makes
it makes North Carolina more important. It's not an additive state.

(01:51:04):
It is a must state. Maybe North Carolina becomes the
next sort of ultimate swing state. I kind of have
a feeling at will for what it's worth. I mean,
I do think that North Carolina and Georgia are more
likely to be the two most important states to decide
presidential elections over and above Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. That
may be where this is headed after the twenty thirty census.

(01:51:28):
If you were to ask me, I think that they
ought to. They need to go back and get competitive
in Iowa. Again. I think that Kansas is a place
that with a little bit of party building efforts over
a six to eight year period, they could put Kansas
in play. But I do think that look, the Democrats,

(01:51:50):
the Republicans embrace being a fifty state party. The Democrats don't.
And for the brief period that the Democrats embraced being
a fifty state party, which Howard Dean did and Obama's
campaign did, guess what they got up to fifty nine sentences.
I mean, politics isn't difficult. You just have to have
the will and the leadership to do it. And it's

(01:52:14):
pretty clear this the current leadership of the Democratic Party
got captured by identity politics, believed their own hype, wrote
off rural Americans that they couldn't be won over. You know,
they've drawn themselves into this corner, and I think to
get out of it, they need, you know, they need
some new leadership, They need a new way of thinking.

(01:52:35):
But it isn't that hard. It's good old fashioned party
building efforts and it starts one state at a time,
and in those states, one county at a time. But
it's effort and it's not something you just parachute in
with a super pack and a couple of staffers six
months before an election. This has got to be a
six to ten year program. And unfortunately in politics, nobody

(01:52:55):
thinks that long term. I keep waiting for a donor
to think that long term. There's plenty of donors on
the right that do think long term like this. Leonard
Leos thinks that long term. He's sort of the godfather
of all this, of a lot of this money, right,
you know, and he a lot of these interest groups
are quietly funded mostly by money that he he he

(01:53:17):
that he controls. It's not technically his money, but it's
money from a from a from a dead donor that
he is that he's in control of. The Koch brothers
in the past have been have been helpful there. They
seem to be less interested in helping Trump these days.
But there's a lot of long term dark money donor
thinkers on the right, those folks outside of the Soros

(01:53:40):
network and who's been more focused on the information ecosystem
rather than this this issue of voter registration. I think
it's it's aftrophyed a bit on the left. All right,
there is UH, there's the uh I think we're I
think that's a lot of political science y, dorky questions

(01:54:02):
answers for me this week. Please check out the substack.
Like I said, it's a bit of a derivative of
something I've talked about before. But you know, if we
really want to fix this redistricting nonsense, there are a
couple of better ways to fix it than what we're
doing now. So please take a look at that. Other
than that, I will see in twenty four hours until
I upload again.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Is Trump LOSING His Mind Or Is He Being Lied To? + Atomic Bowl: America Played FOOTBALL In Nagasaki After NUKING It

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On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Is Trump LOSING His Mind Or Is He Being Lied To? + Atomic Bowl: America Played FOOTBALL In Nagasaki After NUKING It

Stuff You Should Know