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The US Literally Had Nazi Summer Camps · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. We're hearkening back in some
0:35
Speaker 1: ways to the days of nostalgia. Here with with our
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Speaker 1: one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. I'm Ben.
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Speaker 1: I wanted to start with a question. No, I don't
0:47
Speaker 1: know if we ever talked about this. Did you ever
0:49
Speaker 1: go to summer camp? Yeah? I grew up in the
0:51
Speaker 1: Methodist Church and my my dad was a choir master,
0:54
Speaker 1: music ministers what they call it officially, So I went
0:57
Speaker 1: to a lot of church summer camps, which you're similar,
1:00
Speaker 1: if mildly indoctrinating, UM. But they have you know, swimming
1:05
Speaker 1: and crafts and all the usual summer camp kind of
1:08
Speaker 1: activities that we think of. UM. But then there's also
1:11
Speaker 1: that undercurrent of kind of ideology that sort of plays
1:16
Speaker 1: into it, especially at an age where I wasn't sure
1:18
Speaker 1: which direction I was going in terms of like being
1:20
Speaker 1: a true believer or whatever. So I always kind of
1:23
Speaker 1: felt a little off, and now thinking back, it feels
1:25
Speaker 1: even more off. You know, I had the same experience
1:28
Speaker 1: because I went to a lot of camps that were
1:30
Speaker 1: in retrospect, because my boy Scout troop was a bunch
1:33
Speaker 1: of like X marines and ex or current police officers
1:38
Speaker 1: and military types. Looking back, the stuff they had us
1:42
Speaker 1: doing was pretty unsafe and probably somewhat illegal. But like you,
1:48
Speaker 1: I had a I I spent some time locked up
1:52
Speaker 1: in a church summer camp one year. I did not
1:54
Speaker 1: cotton to it. And I've just been thinking about all
1:58
Speaker 1: those activities because there are so many different kinds of
2:02
Speaker 1: summer camps, and I love that you pointed out that
2:04
Speaker 1: often in hindsight, we can see that there was an
2:07
Speaker 1: agenda to some of these things, even if the kids
2:11
Speaker 1: didn't really get it. Max, you and I were talking
2:14
Speaker 1: briefly off air about some of this. Were you a
2:16
Speaker 1: summer camp guy? Yeah, I mean kind of in the
2:19
Speaker 1: same way that Nol was. I mean, Alex and I,
2:22
Speaker 1: like our parents are really into the church, so into
2:24
Speaker 1: those like none of those like you know, oh, you're
2:26
Speaker 1: gonna go off to the woods for a few months
2:28
Speaker 1: and stay away like fabled summer camps of the nineteen
2:31
Speaker 1: fifties or something like that, But yeah, like, hey, go
2:36
Speaker 1: there and uh play volleyball and chess and learn about
2:41
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ type summer camps. And that's not you know,
2:45
Speaker 1: it's not too too far off from what we're talking
2:47
Speaker 1: about today. Um NPR has a really cool story where
2:52
Speaker 1: they include the description of a twenty five minutes silent,
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Speaker 1: black and white archival video from the U s. National
2:59
Speaker 1: Ark Hives that shows exactly we're describing. In ninety seven
3:03
Speaker 1: boys just frolicking and making braided bracelets and you know,
3:08
Speaker 1: archery and fun and all of this stuff, and the
3:10
Speaker 1: cats skills and mountain and upstate New York, you know,
3:14
Speaker 1: camping and horsing around in the mud and like you said, Max,
3:18
Speaker 1: playing chess and checkers and shooting guns and all that
3:21
Speaker 1: good stuff. And then oh, what's that a Nazi flag?
3:24
Speaker 1: You say? Okay, wait a minute, double check what's going
3:29
Speaker 1: on here in America? I understand, Ben, help us understand.
3:34
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah, so this is the thing. This is
3:37
Speaker 1: today's episode. We tricked you a little bit with the
3:39
Speaker 1: nostalgia of submery camps, but it is a true story,
3:44
Speaker 1: you know, and it's something that history often forgets. There
3:48
Speaker 1: was a lot of support, a surprising amount of support
3:51
Speaker 1: for Nazism in the US, and this was kind of
3:54
Speaker 1: normalized for some people in the thirties, in the kind
3:58
Speaker 1: of interwar years years after World War One, but before
4:02
Speaker 1: World War Two, a lot of people who lived in
4:07
Speaker 1: different countries but had German ancestry got into the idea
4:12
Speaker 1: of forming citizen groups that would spread what they euphemistically
4:17
Speaker 1: called German virtues around the world. And they were trying
4:21
Speaker 1: to get public support in their neck of the global
4:24
Speaker 1: woods for the goals of the Nazi Party and no
4:28
Speaker 1: help me out here, lean on your skills as a
4:31
Speaker 1: former young German boy. This had a name. It was
4:36
Speaker 1: the German American Bund in the US, formed in nineteen
4:39
Speaker 1: thirty six, but they had a German name as well.
4:43
Speaker 1: I asked the Amaica Deutsche Volksbundre, so you may recall
4:48
Speaker 1: then you and I participated in a really great interview
4:51
Speaker 1: with a journalist by the name of Jonathan Kats, not
4:55
Speaker 1: doctor Kats from from Comedy Central fame, who wrote a
4:58
Speaker 1: book about a guy named Smet Lee. Butler, Um, we're
5:01
Speaker 1: not to go into that now. It's a really cool story,
5:03
Speaker 1: I don't of itself. That may well be worth an
5:05
Speaker 1: episode of this show too. But um. He talks a
5:08
Speaker 1: lot about the Bund and how it in some small
5:11
Speaker 1: way led to the formation of the House un American
5:14
Speaker 1: Committee or who act we love a good acronym here
5:17
Speaker 1: on Ridiculous History, which of course was about ferreting out communists,
5:22
Speaker 1: uh and socialists you know, um hiding in plain sight.
5:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's true it was that was because of
5:27
Speaker 1: the idea of this insidious you know, outward influence that
5:33
Speaker 1: was potentially corrupting the youth. Yeah. Absolutely, there was a
5:37
Speaker 1: concern of the idea of a fifth column, whether that
5:42
Speaker 1: be Nazis, socialist communists. Weirdly enough, during this era of
5:47
Speaker 1: American history, a lot of people didn't have a problem
5:50
Speaker 1: with fascism. But you'll have to check out that interview.
5:53
Speaker 1: That's right. It was kind of the flavor of the
5:55
Speaker 1: week in a lot of ways. It was sort of
5:57
Speaker 1: like an alternative sort of uh not regress to that's
6:00
Speaker 1: definitely well. I mean it could have been seen that
6:02
Speaker 1: way by some that it was a you know, the
6:04
Speaker 1: idea that, um, the American dream and capitalism were sort
6:08
Speaker 1: of a failed experiment, and there were some looking to
6:11
Speaker 1: protect what was theirs and the super rich, that we're
6:14
Speaker 1: looking for another system that might safeguard those things. A
6:17
Speaker 1: k a their own money. Um. But that's again a
6:20
Speaker 1: discussion for another day. The goal, or at least the
6:24
Speaker 1: membership of the America Deutsche volks Bund was called the
6:27
Speaker 1: Bund moving Forward was um that it was described itself
6:31
Speaker 1: as an organization of patriotic Americans of German stock. And
6:35
Speaker 1: like you said, Ben, the goal was to proliferate what
6:38
Speaker 1: was it, German ideals or German virtue. That word is
6:43
Speaker 1: is interesting, Yeah, yeah, And they're not talking about postcards
6:47
Speaker 1: of Berlin or anything like that. They're talking about something
6:50
Speaker 1: much more dangerous. Yeah. The WHO Act was looking for
6:55
Speaker 1: so called fifth columns of fifth columns kind of Cold
6:59
Speaker 1: War term, a group within a country at war who
7:02
Speaker 1: are sympathetic to or working for the enemies. But that
7:06
Speaker 1: haddn't quite reached a boil yet. Adolf Hitler thirties, you
7:11
Speaker 1: know who he is. We don't need to give an
7:12
Speaker 1: intro on that particular super villain. Uh. He was over
7:16
Speaker 1: across the pond in Germany at this time. He was
7:19
Speaker 1: trying to fire up the population of Germany to be
7:23
Speaker 1: more agro right to other nations to start invading and
7:28
Speaker 1: persecuting minorities in Germany itself. And Nazis were already doing
7:34
Speaker 1: horrific things in the country, but there were Nazi sympathizers
7:39
Speaker 1: in the Bund in the US who had started these
7:42
Speaker 1: summer camps because they wanted Nazism to be like Wu Tang.
7:46
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be for the kids and as right.
7:51
Speaker 1: And that clip that we we mentioned at the top
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Speaker 1: is footage of an actual Nazi youth camp, Nazi summer
7:57
Speaker 1: camp in Wyndham, New York. And this was just one
8:02
Speaker 1: of several that came out across the country. They were
8:05
Speaker 1: sponsored by German loyalists, especially like the leader of the Bund,
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Speaker 1: a man named Fritz koon Uh. And you know, we'll
8:13
Speaker 1: get into we'll get into some of their numbers, but
8:18
Speaker 1: just know, like with any extremist group, there's a lot
8:21
Speaker 1: of debate on how many people were actually members versus
8:24
Speaker 1: how many people the Bund claimed were members. Well let's
8:28
Speaker 1: not forget I mean, if anything positive could be said
8:32
Speaker 1: of Hitler, now that's not how we want to frame
8:34
Speaker 1: that at all. He was a really good marketer, you
8:37
Speaker 1: know him and his you know Gebals and his whole team.
8:40
Speaker 1: They understood how to change hearts and minds, you know,
8:44
Speaker 1: like your description the idea of them firing up their
8:46
Speaker 1: base in a country that had been ravaged by the
8:48
Speaker 1: First World War. They were sort of right for the
8:51
Speaker 1: picking to sort of create these nationalistic ideas. Uh, they
8:54
Speaker 1: were a little bit of an easier target and a
8:56
Speaker 1: lot of bit of an easier target. But let's not
8:58
Speaker 1: forget that Hitler was thinking egg. He wanted to take
9:01
Speaker 1: over the world, and in order to do that, he
9:03
Speaker 1: needed to change hearts and minds. And what better way
9:05
Speaker 1: to do that than with the kiddies, Uh, with the
9:08
Speaker 1: artifice of beated necklaces and bracelets and archery and swimming
9:13
Speaker 1: and fun and Nazi salutes on us soil right and
9:18
Speaker 1: learning uh, pro Nazi songs, propaganda stuff like that. There
9:24
Speaker 1: was a post on the National Archives which describes how
9:29
Speaker 1: the bund grew to include more than seventy local chapters,
9:34
Speaker 1: and they also say that the probably one of the
9:37
Speaker 1: best known examples of the organization's activities, or one of
9:40
Speaker 1: their biggest things they did, was a pro Nazi rally
9:45
Speaker 1: in nine nine at Madison Square Garden. Twenty thousand people
9:52
Speaker 1: showed up and they just you know, were on one
9:56
Speaker 1: level or another sympathetic to the aims of the Nazi Party,
9:59
Speaker 1: and this is happening while uh, this is happening while
10:03
Speaker 1: Hitler declares war on Poland and then also as on
10:07
Speaker 1: some funk around and find out with Britain and France. Well,
10:10
Speaker 1: and I mean, I think you know, correct me. If
10:12
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, then you're the international affairs guy. But I
10:15
Speaker 1: mean the US and after World War One had kind
10:18
Speaker 1: of decided to take a step back a little bit
10:20
Speaker 1: and maybe be a little more isolationist, and was gonna
10:23
Speaker 1: be hard pressed to jump right in to, you know,
10:25
Speaker 1: come to the aid of these other countries unless it
10:28
Speaker 1: was just like dire and what it ultimately became, which
10:31
Speaker 1: was a humanity. They they just could not do something
10:34
Speaker 1: at the once we discovered what was really going on
10:36
Speaker 1: in Germany. So at this point, America's sort of turning
10:40
Speaker 1: a bit of a blind guy. Unless I'm oversimplifying. Well,
10:43
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you're oversimplifying too much, man,
10:45
Speaker 1: Because there were there was a stark division. There were
10:49
Speaker 1: people saying, let's get our own house in order before
10:52
Speaker 1: we start sending American citizens to die overseas in foreign countries.
10:58
Speaker 1: And then there were other people were saying, well, this
11:00
Speaker 1: is a matter of moral compulsion. We as a moral
11:05
Speaker 1: and just society must fight injustice. And as we know,
11:09
Speaker 1: that changed, especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But
11:14
Speaker 1: this is before then. This is before then, when there
11:16
Speaker 1: are still a lot of people were kind of doing
11:19
Speaker 1: a sort of dithering dance of centrism when they're saying, well,
11:23
Speaker 1: you know it's not we can't be so quick to judge.
11:27
Speaker 1: And these folks would end up sending their kids to
11:31
Speaker 1: these camps. There would be anywhere between I think eight
11:36
Speaker 1: eight would be the youngest you would have a kid there.
11:38
Speaker 1: There were camps for boys and girls. Uh, the kids
11:41
Speaker 1: would be like eight to eighteen or so. And it's
11:44
Speaker 1: really chilling. It looks like an alternate reality. It reminds
11:49
Speaker 1: me of the man in the High Castle. To see
11:52
Speaker 1: this footage of these kids in official uniforms waving banners
11:57
Speaker 1: for Hitler Youth. It's it strange because it makes you
12:01
Speaker 1: wonder how history could have played out differently. It does,
12:04
Speaker 1: and it also brings to mind the excellent movie Jojo
12:08
Speaker 1: Rabbit Um that shows the kind of Hitler youth camps
12:12
Speaker 1: in Germany, which you know wouldn't have been that remarkably
12:15
Speaker 1: different from these, maybe a little bit heavier handed in
12:19
Speaker 1: terms of like you know, pushing the narrative and the
12:22
Speaker 1: indoctrination levels and all that. And also like the way
12:24
Speaker 1: they depicted in the movie, they're like throwing handgarnaids and
12:26
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I don't know that these camps were
12:28
Speaker 1: full on boot camps where they were doing like weapons drills.
12:31
Speaker 1: These they would have had to I think hide it
12:33
Speaker 1: a little more than that in these American versions, but
12:37
Speaker 1: the ulterior motive still holds true. And we started to
12:41
Speaker 1: see these pop up all over the place because, as
12:43
Speaker 1: you said, we had seventy chapters of the Buon across
12:46
Speaker 1: the United States, and so we started to see these
12:49
Speaker 1: chapters of these camps popping up kind of near the
12:51
Speaker 1: major metro area hubs, you know, across the US. UM
12:55
Speaker 1: we had Camp Hindenburg and Grafton, Wisconsin near Milwaukee, UM,
13:00
Speaker 1: which was another Nazi youth family camps when they referred
13:04
Speaker 1: to as UM and kids were in fact dressed in
13:07
Speaker 1: not of uniforms and they were doing some military type
13:10
Speaker 1: drills and marching and formations and you know, inspections and
13:14
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, and these flag raising ceremonies. So
13:17
Speaker 1: I might have been soft selling a little bit and
13:19
Speaker 1: may well have looked a lot like what it looked
13:21
Speaker 1: like in Jojo Rabbit. Yeah, and shout out of course
13:24
Speaker 1: to take out Watt, who is, by far and large,
13:29
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen Jojo Rabbit, the best represent the
13:33
Speaker 1: like the best actor to play that role. I it
13:37
Speaker 1: was such a third rail play that role, and he
13:40
Speaker 1: handed handled it beautifully. It managed to be funny and
13:43
Speaker 1: sad and beautiful and also paint if stylized, a pretty
13:47
Speaker 1: real picture of what it was like in that country
13:50
Speaker 1: at that time in history through the eyes of a child. Yeah.
13:53
Speaker 1: This this is interesting because the Bund knew there would
13:57
Speaker 1: be a limit to how far they could go before
14:00
Speaker 1: or they were regarded as like um the way you
14:03
Speaker 1: would regard ass secessionist militia, or like domestic terrorism, although
14:07
Speaker 1: they may not have used that word at the time.
14:09
Speaker 1: So the Bund denied that they were teaching these kids
14:12
Speaker 1: Nazi ideology. Again, they hid behind the linguistic pr shield
14:17
Speaker 1: of German virtues, but they were they were teaching the
14:21
Speaker 1: Nazi stuff. So if you look at just the broad
14:23
Speaker 1: strokes of this before we dig in a little more,
14:26
Speaker 1: you'll see that by the time World War two broke
14:30
Speaker 1: out and these camps and retreats or whatever you want
14:33
Speaker 1: to call them were shut down. There were at least
14:37
Speaker 1: sixteen that we know about in the historical record, and
14:41
Speaker 1: they were all over the place, from l A to
14:44
Speaker 1: New Jersey, you name it. And there was this crazy moment.
14:48
Speaker 1: You can find this mentioned in Unwritten Record dot blogs,
14:52
Speaker 1: dot archives dot gov. In the National Archives. One of
14:55
Speaker 1: these films has a little intertitle kind of thing, interstitil
15:01
Speaker 1: thing that pops up where it has the line German
15:04
Speaker 1: boy who also belonged to us? But ben I was
15:14
Speaker 1: once this young German boy belonged to them. No, no,
15:18
Speaker 1: because you weren't born born in the three Thank God
15:21
Speaker 1: gave me a fright. Yeah, it's super, super, super sinister
15:25
Speaker 1: and unsettling. By the way, I wanted to backtrack to
15:27
Speaker 1: something you mentioned a little while ago about that um
15:30
Speaker 1: what do you call rally? I guess at Madison Square
15:32
Speaker 1: garden Um that was attended by I think twenty plus people.
15:36
Speaker 1: They Nazi saluted to a giant likeness of George Washington.
15:42
Speaker 1: Uh considered, well he was. He was beloved by the Nazis,
15:47
Speaker 1: and I didn't know that he was considered to be
15:49
Speaker 1: like a fascist by the Nazi Party in a fascist
15:54
Speaker 1: is a compliment is a compliment from them. But why
15:56
Speaker 1: would they have thought that Ben Is it because of
15:58
Speaker 1: the idea of imperialism him or like was he a
16:00
Speaker 1: little bit more hawkish? Like what about George Washington could
16:04
Speaker 1: be construed with fascism. That's interesting because you can see
16:09
Speaker 1: a great code switch program on this. Uh. They ran
16:14
Speaker 1: a piece on this back in twenty nine about that
16:17
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden rally. It's called when Nazis took Manhattan.
16:22
Speaker 1: I think it was on all things considered, And I
16:25
Speaker 1: was also confused by this because they definitely they definitely
16:30
Speaker 1: were praising Hitler, and they were definitely saying crazy anti
16:35
Speaker 1: Semitic stuff like stop Jewish domination of Christian like all
16:39
Speaker 1: the racist stuff you would imagine Nazis would do. They
16:43
Speaker 1: were doing that at the time. But I'm I think
16:46
Speaker 1: what they were maybe doing, and this is an opinion
16:49
Speaker 1: code switch has as well. I think what they were
16:51
Speaker 1: doing was trying to have some slick branding and trying
16:55
Speaker 1: to make people think, well, this is actually what the
16:58
Speaker 1: founding fathers would have always wanted. So since George Washington
17:04
Speaker 1: can't come back from the grave and say, you guys
17:07
Speaker 1: are nuts and bananas. They're just trying to put that
17:11
Speaker 1: ideology upon him. I see that does make a lot
17:14
Speaker 1: more sense, because I mean, I know he was an
17:16
Speaker 1: imperfect dude and the slave owner and all that, and
17:18
Speaker 1: you know, I had real bad teeth, but I have
17:20
Speaker 1: never really gotten any whiffs of of fascism from the guy.
17:25
Speaker 1: You know, I also don't believe he would have understood
17:29
Speaker 1: the term right. He would have understood dictatorship maybe, or
17:32
Speaker 1: absolute monarchy. But be that as me, who was not
17:36
Speaker 1: there to disagree with disagree with him, and this was
17:40
Speaker 1: powerful branding for them. At this point, we have to
17:43
Speaker 1: introduce a wonderful author, Arnie Bernstein, who wrote a book
17:49
Speaker 1: called Swastika Nation, Fritz Kohn and the Rise and Fall
17:52
Speaker 1: of the German American Bund. And Bernstein is one of
17:56
Speaker 1: the researchers who points out the discrepping see in enrollment
18:01
Speaker 1: because according to Bernstein's work, Bund membership never got higher
18:07
Speaker 1: than twenty five thousand people, but the entire time the
18:10
Speaker 1: organization claimed it was much much bigger. Yeah, that's pretty common. Um.
18:14
Speaker 1: He also goes on to say that the majority of
18:16
Speaker 1: the kids that were attending these camps were the grandchildren
18:20
Speaker 1: or children of German immigrants and naturalized American citizens who
18:24
Speaker 1: were themselves members of the bonds. And you know, again
18:28
Speaker 1: it was kind of a community thing, right. It was like, Hey,
18:32
Speaker 1: send your kids to camp, get them out of your
18:34
Speaker 1: hair for the summer. I mean in the same way
18:36
Speaker 1: that the church camps are that way, while still having
18:39
Speaker 1: this underlying kind of purpose. Yeah, I mean not jumping here.
18:42
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you kind of like you know,
18:44
Speaker 1: advertised it as being like, oh, yeah, like kids gain skills,
18:48
Speaker 1: you know, have fun, building relationships, might believe enough theism,
18:51
Speaker 1: but great, right, and that you know that happens sometimes,
18:55
Speaker 1: like I had been in the past, I've been in
18:59
Speaker 1: things that were weakened outings where you get to do
19:04
Speaker 1: stuff that kids think is cool, like oh, we're gonna
19:06
Speaker 1: get to go to a shooting range, we're gonna shoot guns.
19:09
Speaker 1: You're gonna learn all this fast cars, danger, fire and
19:12
Speaker 1: knives stuff, And then part way through you're like, I
19:16
Speaker 1: think these folks might be a militia. I think that's
19:19
Speaker 1: a lot of camo and that that's happened to me.
19:22
Speaker 1: And I was, you know, I was a kid. I
19:23
Speaker 1: had no idea what their larger ideological motives are. And
19:26
Speaker 1: we have to say cultural, this is so weird. This
19:30
Speaker 1: is not a defensive Nazi summer camps. Cultural summer camps
19:34
Speaker 1: continue to be a thing in the US and across
19:37
Speaker 1: the world. Like it's like, imagine if you are if
19:41
Speaker 1: you if you have a kid who's interested in learning Japanese,
19:45
Speaker 1: you can send them to a Japanese summer camp and
19:48
Speaker 1: they'll have this awesome language immersion opportunity. These things aren't
19:52
Speaker 1: necessarily evil, but what the Bund was doing was tremendously manipulative,
19:58
Speaker 1: and it shows us that history sometimes is on a
20:02
Speaker 1: knife edge. Of these things. I said it earlier, but
20:05
Speaker 1: they could have played out entirely differently. If you went
20:08
Speaker 1: to one and let's say you're some kind of like inspector, right,
20:13
Speaker 1: and you're Uncle Sam has sent you there to make
20:15
Speaker 1: sure there's just German values, no like Nazi stuff, you
20:20
Speaker 1: would you would have first see a place that just
20:22
Speaker 1: had regular summer camp things. You know, you're making friendship bracelets,
20:27
Speaker 1: you're building fires, you're telling stories. You gotta you gotta
20:30
Speaker 1: swim buddy for safety and all that. But the express
20:36
Speaker 1: purpose of this, even though the Bund did not state
20:38
Speaker 1: it publicly, the express primary purpose of this was indoctrination
20:44
Speaker 1: to make kids good little arians, loyal first to the Bund,
20:48
Speaker 1: but then all sort of Fritz Kon, the leader of
20:50
Speaker 1: the Bund, and then of course to Adolf Hitler. Yeah,
20:54
Speaker 1: by by proxy, I guess right. It's like a chain
20:57
Speaker 1: of loyalty, you know. Um, one kind of feeds into
21:00
Speaker 1: the next, and you know, with what's the thing we
21:02
Speaker 1: always say, ben like usually in terms of social media,
21:04
Speaker 1: if you're not paying for something, chances are you're the product,
21:07
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like that, these kids are
21:09
Speaker 1: a product. They're being turned out essentially under the guise
21:13
Speaker 1: of free summer camp. And again, I'm sure a lot
21:16
Speaker 1: of the parents that sent their kids knew exactly what
21:18
Speaker 1: was going on, but some probably didn't. And at the time,
21:21
Speaker 1: Nazism didn't have the sting that it does now because
21:25
Speaker 1: you know, with the Holocaust and Germany under this regime
21:28
Speaker 1: in general, there's a lot of questions about who knew
21:31
Speaker 1: what when, um, and and a lot of people that
21:33
Speaker 1: could have easily talked themselves into believing it was just uh,
21:36
Speaker 1: you know about loyalty to their country without realizing the
21:39
Speaker 1: atrocities that were going on, even though you know, it
21:42
Speaker 1: became more and more clear as time went on, even
21:44
Speaker 1: when people wanted to bury their heads in the sand,
21:48
Speaker 1: which Ostriches don't actually do. Ostrich facts. So so there's
21:54
Speaker 1: this reminds me of something. It's a little bit of
21:56
Speaker 1: a tangent, but I think it's um informative for a
22:00
Speaker 1: conversation today. In the like nineteen sixties, probably even more recently,
22:08
Speaker 1: the clan, the ku Klux Klan would try to indoctrinate
22:12
Speaker 1: people by having public events and giving them hot dogs,
22:19
Speaker 1: like you would you would go to a And I
22:21
Speaker 1: know this because people have experienced it have told me.
22:24
Speaker 1: You would hear these stories where you know, like picture
22:28
Speaker 1: there's a small town somewhere in Middle America, and there's
22:30
Speaker 1: a big to do because there's gonna be a gathering
22:34
Speaker 1: from a group of local concerned citizens who are not
22:37
Speaker 1: going to tell you they're the clan. Into like you
22:40
Speaker 1: get there and I'm like, I like hot dogs. Dogs
22:44
Speaker 1: are delicious. All you have to do is sign up
22:47
Speaker 1: to support, sign up to show your support for these
22:50
Speaker 1: concerned citizens, and then boom, you can have all the
22:53
Speaker 1: hot dogs what seems like a fair trade to me. Ben, Yeah,
22:56
Speaker 1: until you try to join the military or something and
23:00
Speaker 1: you're on record as being a member of an extreme
23:03
Speaker 1: supremacy disorganization. So like, people can be tricked. And it's
23:07
Speaker 1: very important to note that a lot of these children,
23:11
Speaker 1: I would argue the majority these children didn't really have
23:13
Speaker 1: agency in these decisions. Right. The tale as old as time.
23:17
Speaker 1: Kids don't want to go to summer camp, and their
23:19
Speaker 1: parents make them, even though even though they typically forged
23:23
Speaker 1: some of the most long lasting friendships of their lives
23:27
Speaker 1: and experienced first love, you know, and learned a couple
23:30
Speaker 1: of skills while they're at it. So, you know, kids
23:32
Speaker 1: go to summer camp and just not Nazi summer camp. Yeah,
23:35
Speaker 1: just camp. Do whatever you want kids, I don't care,
23:39
Speaker 1: it's summer. Do what you want. Yeah. Um, And if
23:42
Speaker 1: your parents give you a tough time, tell him, Ben Nolan.
23:46
Speaker 1: Max said it was fine. I'll write a note. I
23:49
Speaker 1: don't know, just just bends that. It's fine. Max said
23:52
Speaker 1: it's fine. Max said it's his favorite thing. He said
23:54
Speaker 1: it with his body language. Said it was fine. There
23:57
Speaker 1: we go. Okay. Strickland at heart Radio dot com. Yes, Yes,
24:03
Speaker 1: our Complaint Department, the media, who cares, who knows. It's
24:07
Speaker 1: a mystery. But what's not a mystery is what ended
24:09
Speaker 1: up happening with these camps. We already I mean, it's
24:12
Speaker 1: kind of not really much of a surprise that they
24:14
Speaker 1: ended up being completely shut down, you know, once all
24:17
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we're talking about kind of came
24:19
Speaker 1: to light in terms of Hitler's mission, Yeah yeah, and
24:23
Speaker 1: dirty stuff about the camps came out themselves, even Nazism
24:27
Speaker 1: aside um. Bernstein shows that the intended the attendees, like
24:32
Speaker 1: the kids, were sometimes physically abused. They were used for
24:37
Speaker 1: physical labor without their agreement, and this didn't come to
24:40
Speaker 1: light until those congressional hearings, which you can learn more
24:44
Speaker 1: about in that MPR article. The only I mentioned at
24:47
Speaker 1: the top. So, as you said, no, people are starting
24:51
Speaker 1: to get some bad vibes about this whole Nazi thing,
24:55
Speaker 1: and they're starting to think, I don't know, man, maybe
24:58
Speaker 1: that's not white what George Washington would have wanted. You know,
25:04
Speaker 1: they're they're thinking of it in those terms. And this
25:07
Speaker 1: is where we see this connection because as the US
25:11
Speaker 1: began to think more and more of Nazi Germany, as
25:14
Speaker 1: this dangerous global power that needed to be stopped. They
25:19
Speaker 1: also started saying, well, do we have our own foxes
25:24
Speaker 1: in the hen house here? Because you know, these summer
25:28
Speaker 1: camps are teaching people to be Nazis. Are Nazis not
25:31
Speaker 1: our enemies. And that's what leads to the inception or
25:36
Speaker 1: the creation of the House on American Activities Committee, who
25:39
Speaker 1: act uh. And ultimately McCarthy is m with the Red
25:44
Speaker 1: Scare and all that stuff, McCarthy ism of the Red
25:46
Speaker 1: Scare fame. Indeed, um, by the way, just total miniature tangent.
25:51
Speaker 1: I recently subscribed to the Criterion channel. UM, and I've
25:55
Speaker 1: just been going down these amazing, you know, old weird
25:58
Speaker 1: art movie rabbit holes, and I watched an interview with
26:01
Speaker 1: the actor Sterling Hayden, who played General Ripper in Doctor
26:06
Speaker 1: Strange Love. He was in Kubrick's first or one of
26:08
Speaker 1: Kubrick's first films, The Killing. I've been a bunch of
26:11
Speaker 1: other stuff like John Houston movies and all that. But
26:13
Speaker 1: there's a really cool little interview with him. It's like
26:15
Speaker 1: twenty five minute interview with him, like in his you know,
26:17
Speaker 1: he's probably in the seventies standing on a balcony and
26:19
Speaker 1: I think San Francisco. But he was one of the people,
26:22
Speaker 1: one of the actors who informed on fellow actors. He
26:27
Speaker 1: was himself a socialist and like actually named names, and
26:31
Speaker 1: he talks about that in this interview, about how much
26:33
Speaker 1: shame he felt for that and all of this stuff.
26:35
Speaker 1: So really interesting view into the uh to that period
26:38
Speaker 1: and into like kind of the mind of like this,
26:40
Speaker 1: you know, big old Hollywood kind of luminary criterion is awesome.
26:45
Speaker 1: As as the templar said to Indie, you have chosen wisely,
26:50
Speaker 1: so many different paths to go down whatever you're into.
26:52
Speaker 1: I've been on a bit of a noir kick lately.
26:55
Speaker 1: I will tell you they have an amazing copy of
26:57
Speaker 1: Carnival Souls. I've never seen that actually, and I know
27:00
Speaker 1: that's when my favorite film has been so I gotta
27:01
Speaker 1: I gotta put that on my list next. You know,
27:03
Speaker 1: I know a lot about I know. I listened to
27:06
Speaker 1: your episode on Ephemeral. It was one of my favorites
27:09
Speaker 1: that you guys have done. Also, the trash episode is
27:11
Speaker 1: really good. I forgot to tell you that. Um, but yes,
27:14
Speaker 1: Carnival Souls is actually one of the reasons that I
27:17
Speaker 1: finally ponied up the cash for criteria. Um. Everyone, Ephemeral,
27:22
Speaker 1: it is an amazing podcast. You can get it wherever
27:25
Speaker 1: you get your podcast from always be closed. Yeah you can.
27:28
Speaker 1: We're fans, and I think, um, I think we've we've
27:31
Speaker 1: all max works on it, We've all appeared at some point,
27:33
Speaker 1: and maybe one day Ephemeral will explore the homegrown Nazism. Dude,
27:40
Speaker 1: this is the most cinematic of stories that we've covered
27:43
Speaker 1: in recently. I'm surprised there's not a film based in
27:46
Speaker 1: one of these weird American Nazi summer camps. It just
27:49
Speaker 1: feels listen to feel like an incredible setting for like
27:52
Speaker 1: a narrative film. I mean, a documentary be cool too,
27:54
Speaker 1: but I feel like there's so many stories that could
27:56
Speaker 1: be told. And picture the bullying and the horrible behavior
28:00
Speaker 1: you know that these kids would have exhibited, likely towards
28:03
Speaker 1: one another, because that's one thing that you're kind of
28:05
Speaker 1: almost forced to be the hardest one. It's almost like
28:08
Speaker 1: a prison environment. In some of these cases we mentioned
28:12
Speaker 1: the abuse, they were also forced to do like hard labor, right, Yeah,
28:16
Speaker 1: and imagine what these kids are taking with them back
28:18
Speaker 1: to school, like for the ridiculous History movie Studio. I
28:23
Speaker 1: think stories do occur here. Actually, maybe I'll write a
28:25
Speaker 1: short story of a summer camp here um because I've
28:29
Speaker 1: got the Bernstein book. But but this is a much
28:33
Speaker 1: darker film, I think already than the Trans Siberian ostrich Heist,
28:38
Speaker 1: which I still think it's just our Oceans eleven. But
28:42
Speaker 1: what we what we see here is that the Bund
28:46
Speaker 1: was getting less and less popular in the public eye.
28:52
Speaker 1: People were still participating in things, but they weren't talking
28:55
Speaker 1: about it because it was no longer, you know, just
28:58
Speaker 1: an eccentric thing to be a Nazi. What you were
29:02
Speaker 1: the enemy and rightly so. And Bernstein says that the
29:07
Speaker 1: big moment, the big death knell of the Bund, was
29:12
Speaker 1: the arrest of Fritz Kun the leader, in nineteen thirty nine.
29:23
Speaker 1: He got thrown in not for like ideological stuff, not
29:27
Speaker 1: for being a Nazi. He got put into prison for
29:30
Speaker 1: forgery and embezzlement. So class act all around, Mr k. Yeah,
29:35
Speaker 1: and with that, you know, sounded the death knell more
29:39
Speaker 1: or less of the Bund. And uh, the summer camps
29:43
Speaker 1: um as it all kind of went hand in hand
29:45
Speaker 1: with you know, these stories that were trickling out and Uh,
29:49
Speaker 1: the days and weeks and months leading up to American
29:52
Speaker 1: involvement in World War Two, the writing had been on
29:54
Speaker 1: the wall for a minute. And so of course, even
29:57
Speaker 1: before the camps themselves were shut down, people who were
30:01
Speaker 1: members of the Bund who maybe again we don't know
30:04
Speaker 1: what people knew when they knew it, weren't wise to
30:06
Speaker 1: what was going on back home UH in Germany. Um.
30:09
Speaker 1: And as the reputation of Nazism started taking a dive,
30:13
Speaker 1: they started leaving the Bund in droves, and consequently their
30:17
Speaker 1: kids went along with them. Of course, yeah, yeah, And
30:20
Speaker 1: so membership is declining. You could say that they ended
30:25
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty, but they've kind of continued into nineteen
30:28
Speaker 1: forty one. And by the time they ended, these were
30:31
Speaker 1: the only people left were like, the hardcore died in
30:35
Speaker 1: the wool Nazis, the loyalists, and the Bund officially disbanded
30:40
Speaker 1: just a couple of days after the bombing of Pearl
30:42
Speaker 1: Harbor and the moment that Germany declared war against the
30:46
Speaker 1: United States, which makes sense because there's only so much
30:51
Speaker 1: you can spin with good pr and UH being a
30:55
Speaker 1: fan club of a country that has just gone to
30:58
Speaker 1: war with your country it's not a good look. It's
31:02
Speaker 1: not a good look. But if you do want a
31:03
Speaker 1: good look at the chops, you can see some of
31:07
Speaker 1: the ruins of these today. There's one, Um, there's one
31:10
Speaker 1: in particular in Wayne, New Jersey. Right, there's a guy
31:14
Speaker 1: who's who's photographed the what's left of the camps and
31:17
Speaker 1: you can you can see them now. They don't look
31:19
Speaker 1: particularly um well kept. Uh, Wayne, New Jersey, home of
31:25
Speaker 1: Sopranos filming location Fountains of Wayne, which is a fountain store,
31:29
Speaker 1: also the place that the band Fountains of Wayne named
31:32
Speaker 1: themselves after. Um. And it's interesting we have, like you said,
31:36
Speaker 1: there's uh some posts on a website that guy Bill
31:39
Speaker 1: Maloney has and on the website he comments on what
31:41
Speaker 1: it felt like walking through the kind of weird, overgrown
31:44
Speaker 1: ruins of this site, and he described it as puzzlement
31:48
Speaker 1: and discomfort that a Hitler youth camp could be in
31:50
Speaker 1: any way acceptable in the US, even before the war.
31:53
Speaker 1: It is especially disturbing that it is so close to
31:55
Speaker 1: home and that the people involved would have been our neighbors.
31:58
Speaker 1: Maybe some still are. Uh. And this is also from
32:01
Speaker 1: that NPR piece that you mentioned. And if you want
32:03
Speaker 1: to see pictures of uh some of these sites back
32:07
Speaker 1: in the day at the height of their powers. Check
32:10
Speaker 1: out this article on the Atlantic American Nazis in the
32:13
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties the German American Bund by Alan Taylor m
32:17
Speaker 1: And As for what happened to those campers, you know,
32:21
Speaker 1: many are lost to history. You can understand why. It's
32:23
Speaker 1: not something a bunch of people were drag about, right,
32:27
Speaker 1: I don't think that's like a sid a grandpa's knee
32:30
Speaker 1: and hear about the Nazi camp story. But we know
32:33
Speaker 1: a few things about the more famous or infamous members
32:38
Speaker 1: of the German American Bund, such as Gustav Wilhelm character
32:43
Speaker 1: who worked as a power plant designer in New York City.
32:47
Speaker 1: He was a member of the Bund. He had been
32:50
Speaker 1: one of the leaders at a camp in New York,
32:52
Speaker 1: and in nineteen forty two, the FBI arrested him for
32:56
Speaker 1: being a German spy. When people tell you who they are,
33:00
Speaker 1: you should believe them, you know. Yeah, Well, it's funny
33:03
Speaker 1: you mentioned the whole fifth Column thing and the fact
33:06
Speaker 1: that this whole Bund, you know, largely led to the
33:09
Speaker 1: formation of the House on American Committee because they were
33:12
Speaker 1: looking for people like that that we're trying to dismantle
33:15
Speaker 1: our system from within. And it wasn't complete paranoid delusion.
33:20
Speaker 1: You know, there were people out to do harm. But
33:22
Speaker 1: the problem is when you paint with too broad a
33:24
Speaker 1: brush and you create an environment of like informing on
33:28
Speaker 1: your neighbor and this sort of like you know, super
33:30
Speaker 1: hostile paranoia, you get a lot of like um collateral damage,
33:35
Speaker 1: even if even if your heart, your heart or whatever
33:38
Speaker 1: is in the right place in trying to seek out
33:40
Speaker 1: these elements that are in fact very toxic and damaging
33:43
Speaker 1: to you know, American life. And as we know, McCarthy
33:47
Speaker 1: was far from a perfect person. But yeah, you you're
33:50
Speaker 1: making a great point. There is a complex situation. And
33:53
Speaker 1: then what happened to Fritz kun Well in nine As
33:57
Speaker 1: he said, he was convicted of embezzlement, He went to prison.
34:02
Speaker 1: While he was in prison, the US provoked his American citizenship.
34:07
Speaker 1: He was interned at a camp in Texas, a federal camp,
34:11
Speaker 1: not a Nazi summer camp, and then he was later
34:14
Speaker 1: deported to Germany. In so he made it out. But
34:20
Speaker 1: a lot of these folks who attended these family retreats
34:22
Speaker 1: or these um summer camps as children. We don't know
34:26
Speaker 1: who they are, and we may never know because we
34:29
Speaker 1: still don't know exactly other than like estimates from people
34:33
Speaker 1: like Bernstein, we don't know exactly how many people were
34:37
Speaker 1: members of the Bund. But at this point, I think
34:40
Speaker 1: we can all safely say Nazism is very bad. I
34:44
Speaker 1: don't think that's I hope that's not a hot take anymore.
34:47
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I would I would like to think
34:50
Speaker 1: not as well, my friend. But I think we can
34:52
Speaker 1: also say that we're very fortunate in the US that
34:56
Speaker 1: the public, uh and the government is imperfect as they
35:00
Speaker 1: may be recognized the threat that this kind of stuff
35:04
Speaker 1: could uh, this kind of stuff could hold. And now
35:07
Speaker 1: you know, it's a question of a pendulum how far
35:10
Speaker 1: is too far to swing because we've also you know,
35:12
Speaker 1: we saw how HUAC went out of control, and we
35:16
Speaker 1: know that there's been great debate before about the presence
35:21
Speaker 1: of like militias or what this what kind of ideology
35:25
Speaker 1: is someone's right to have versus when it becomes dangerous
35:30
Speaker 1: or indeed seditious, you know, And I think that's a
35:33
Speaker 1: conversation that continues today. Yeah, certainly, as like you always say,
35:36
Speaker 1: been history as a flat circle. No way, palmssed. Yes,
35:41
Speaker 1: history is a palimpsessed. Tell him, tell us initiated what
35:45
Speaker 1: that word means? You can write over? So a pal
35:48
Speaker 1: obsessed comes from the days of your when paper or
35:53
Speaker 1: parchment or whatever you'd be writing on was like much
35:56
Speaker 1: more expensive. Right there weren't drug stores. You can't just
35:58
Speaker 1: go buy a college ruled notebook. Also, college ruled over,
36:02
Speaker 1: wide ruled forever. I said it, uh take, we'll see um. So,
36:08
Speaker 1: if you were working in an industry or you know,
36:12
Speaker 1: this happened a lot in religious orders. You would write
36:16
Speaker 1: something and you would need to find some more paper
36:20
Speaker 1: to write something at a later day in time. What
36:22
Speaker 1: you would do is you would remove the ink from
36:26
Speaker 1: the thing you had already written on and make it
36:28
Speaker 1: look like a blank page, and then you would just
36:30
Speaker 1: right over where that old writing used to be. But
36:34
Speaker 1: the impressions made by the original act of putting the
36:37
Speaker 1: quill into the paper remains, so you could read the
36:41
Speaker 1: message beneath it. And I think that's a wonderful analogy
36:43
Speaker 1: for the evolution of history, kind of like in a
36:47
Speaker 1: detective film where like the detective, you know, it takes
36:49
Speaker 1: the notepad and the hotel room and scribbles on it
36:52
Speaker 1: with pencil lightly so you can see the indentations of
36:56
Speaker 1: what was written on the piece of paper above the
36:58
Speaker 1: one that still remains. Absolutely yeah, yeah, the noir stuff
37:02
Speaker 1: is paying off. This really is, man, This is where
37:05
Speaker 1: oh wait, Max, Max, you gets something on your mind?
37:08
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I'm just thinking of a text message you
37:10
Speaker 1: sent Nolan. I. I don't know if I can say
37:12
Speaker 1: it on air, but earliest week about invisible ink, people
37:17
Speaker 1: producing their own ink, and I don't think we can
37:20
Speaker 1: go there yet. It's like it's like people are becoming
37:23
Speaker 1: human squids. Let's just leave it at that. It's yeah, well,
37:28
Speaker 1: spycraft is really out of the box. We'll just have
37:31
Speaker 1: to say is if you figure in a spire tradecraft situation,
37:36
Speaker 1: check the smell of the things you get sent. Okay,
37:40
Speaker 1: we've gotta Yeah, this is a family show, so uh
37:43
Speaker 1: I I suggest that we we call it a day.
37:46
Speaker 1: We give a shout out to everybody who's been to
37:49
Speaker 1: a weird summer camp. I'd love to hear some of
37:53
Speaker 1: the strangest ones. You know. I was always I don't
37:56
Speaker 1: know about you guys, but to your point about people
37:58
Speaker 1: making friends, I was always low key envious of some
38:02
Speaker 1: of my friends who grew up as Unitarian Universalists and
38:07
Speaker 1: they all hung out with each other at this UU
38:10
Speaker 1: camp and they're still all friends, and I'm like the
38:13
Speaker 1: one guy who didn't go. You know, if I ever
38:15
Speaker 1: had like a brush with religion in my younger days,
38:18
Speaker 1: it was because I had some friends that went to
38:20
Speaker 1: the Unitarian Church and they would like host like hardcore
38:23
Speaker 1: shows and like you know, kind of alternative local rock
38:26
Speaker 1: bands would play there, and it was just so cool
38:30
Speaker 1: and everyone was so nice. I almost borderline wanted to
38:33
Speaker 1: like be in that club, but I just can't make
38:35
Speaker 1: the full buy in, even though it's like, you know,
38:37
Speaker 1: it's one of these religions that kind of takes bits
38:39
Speaker 1: and pieces from lots of different faiths and stuff, and
38:42
Speaker 1: some people look at it more as like a philosophy
38:44
Speaker 1: rather than like a full on, you know, hardcore religious beliefs.
38:47
Speaker 1: So I always like to folks too, and lots of
38:50
Speaker 1: atheist and agnostics who attend UH Unitarian Universalist precisely. Yeah,
38:57
Speaker 1: and uh, we want to hear your stories of strange
38:59
Speaker 1: summer camp experiences. Drop us a line ridiculous that I
39:02
Speaker 1: heart media dot Com. Thanks as always to the one
39:05
Speaker 1: and only Mr Max Williams. Thanks of course to Casey
39:09
Speaker 1: pegram Le Bush, who has been in contact with us
39:13
Speaker 1: regarding his activities and is doing quite well and can't
39:17
Speaker 1: wait to chat with us on the air suit. That's
39:20
Speaker 1: gonna happen sooner than later. Used thanks to Alex Williams
39:24
Speaker 1: who composed this theme. Christopher Osciodas eaves, Jeff Coates here
39:26
Speaker 1: in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the notorious and dubious quister. It's
39:31
Speaker 1: been a while since he's zoom bombed us, so um,
39:35
Speaker 1: maybe we'll like, uh, you know, write our intentions on
39:38
Speaker 1: a piece of paper and light it on fire and
39:40
Speaker 1: put it in like, you know, some sort of ceremonial
39:42
Speaker 1: vessel and see if he materialized. I kind of missed
39:45
Speaker 1: the guy. Yeah yeah. Likewise, he and I are still
39:50
Speaker 1: still taking shots at each other on Twitter. To check
39:53
Speaker 1: that out, And uh, where can people view these Twitter
39:56
Speaker 1: shots that are being fired? Ben? Oh? Yeah you can.
39:59
Speaker 1: You can learn more about the research I'm doing for
40:01
Speaker 1: any kind of secret adventures as well as misadventures over
40:05
Speaker 1: on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bowling hs W dot com.
40:08
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram where I'm at Ben
40:10
Speaker 1: Bowling b O W L I N N. Noel, you
40:13
Speaker 1: have an Instagram as well. I do. I have a Twitter.
40:16
Speaker 1: It's at Embryonical. But I'm a lurker. I never post
40:19
Speaker 1: um but I just figured I would say this, But
40:21
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm a total lud eye. Now. I'm
40:23
Speaker 1: mainly active on Instagram right, like to post lots of
40:25
Speaker 1: memes and music crap that I'm working on and all
40:29
Speaker 1: of that good stuff. And you can find that at
40:31
Speaker 1: how Now Noel Brown, Maximilian, how about you, my man?
40:36
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm on Twitter mostly lurking and trolling Ben
40:39
Speaker 1: in the background, but I am at a t L
40:43
Speaker 1: underscore Max Williams. He's a sinister Internet fellow. We'll see
40:48
Speaker 1: you next time. Flix. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
40:57
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or where
41:00
Speaker 1: ever you listen to your favorite shows.