Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Boy Scouts are a Bastard
Episode Date: November 4, 2021Robert is joined again by Matt Lieb to continue to discuss the Boy Scouts of America. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy i...nformation.
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you get your podcasts and we're all of that Chris every little bit of that goes
into the episode I'm Robert Evans are you hi this is behind the bastards with
Matt Leib yep hi I'm back how are you feeling learning all this fun stuff
about the Boy Scouts of America oh I'm you know remember earlier when I was
saying I always felt like I missed out and not being a Boy Scout yeah yeah yeah
I'm feeling that that was that was God just looking out for me because there's
gonna get dark it is it's so fucked up like again not to like center my own
experience like in this but it is weird to me that like again I know I've spent
all of this time writing 20 pages on how fucked up the Boy Scouts are I
personally have like nothing but positive memories of my time in the
Scouts and it was it was weird like I didn't start to recognize because there
was we're not talking about a lot of the other stuff that's fucked up about the
Boy Scouts like everyone knows like they for decades would not let you be gay or
trans or whatnot in the boys right out if you came out you couldn't be an
atheist you had you didn't have to be a specific religion but you had to you
had to acknowledge the existence of a higher power there's like other stuff
that they've been attacked for and I get part of the reason why I'm not really
focusing on that is that like that's bad that is not something that would render
an organization founded in 1910 fundamentally unsalvageable right a
lot of organizations that old had weird attitudes to the bad attitudes towards
gay people even racist attitudes and can change over time be like well yeah the
people who founded us believe these things the fundamentals of our
organization are good teaching people how to camp where we've grown right that
all I think that the Boy Scouts could have grown past you know the anti-LGBT
thing and they have started accepting kids who are gay and trans I think they
could have grown past the restriction to just boys because now they do accept
girls they could have grown past a number of the problematic things what you
cannot grow past is enabling the rape of tens of thousands of boys that that
cannot be redeemed that seems that seems systemic yeah it's one of those
things like yeah an organization founded in 1910 people who made it probably had
some weird beliefs on race and gender and like yeah you can you can the
organization I think can move past that as long as it acknowledges the flaws of
its past and it confronts them head-on which I'm not saying the Boy Scouts did
like they they delayed way too long right reforming on that stuff but I think
that it were it like the thing that makes them unsalvageable the reason I
think the Boy Scouts just needs to be destroyed as an organization is is the
mass rape of children like that's yeah you can't there's no no getting past that
yeah it's yeah if not for the mass rape of children I feel like it would be you
know an organization that could make do some reform move past its past yeah but
it's not that little thing where they was a mass rape of children the tens of
thousands potentially hundreds of thousands of boys raped yeah yeah yeah
and and that's also creating a cycle of abuse and predation due to the nature of
you know early childhood sexual violence like that alone probably grounds
they should destroy their organization I don't feel differently about the
Catholic Church in fairness it is weird like I can say because then I grew up
very conservative as I said it said a number of times if I had been like 16
in 2014 I might have wound up like alt right for a while I was really right
wing right right one of like the first cracks in that armors when I was not
sure if I was 17 or 18 I think it was my senior year of high school it was an
academic decathlon which is like a nerd thing we had our own little like
classroom and if you were on the team you could hang out in that classroom in
between classes or during lunch which as a nerdy kid who just wanted to read his
Warhammer books that was nice to do and so I'm in there one day with another kid
on the team who was in the Boy Scouts we were in different troops but he was he
was and he was I think I actually quit the because I quit the Boy Scouts at
like 16 15 or 16 he was still in the Boy Scouts and was like either 18 or
almost 18 it was very close to getting his eagle and you know he and I were
friends we were sitting in the classroom one day and kind of in the middle of
just sort of like we're both reading separate books quietly alone in this room
he just looks up at me and tells me that he's gay and this is the first person I
ever met who like I knew was gay who would like that I like had talked to me
about it right yeah and I said oh okay and and he
immediately after that because it just like I think he just had to tell
somebody just burst out of him immediately after they said please don't
tell anybody like I did the most important thing in the world to me is
finishing my Eagle Scout is like getting my Eagle Scout like damn and they
won't let me and that was that was like I'm for me a moment of less like that's
really fucked up actually yeah that this kids this kid who clearly loves the
Boy Scouts is dedicated to like what this organization stands for is
terrified of being kicked out for just like something like it was just very
obvious in that moment like oh yeah that's clearly not a choice like the way
he told me about it was just like this he had to let somebody know it was this
thing that was I don't know that was a moment for me sure and like a just a I
know that's when I first started to think really critically about the Boy
Scouts as an organization because again I grew up in this right wing you know
bubble I guess I think it's like that one way or another for a lot of people
like you live in this kind of ideological bubble until you like meet
someone who's you care about whose life experience contradicts the things that
you just never thought about before yeah absolutely oh I'm wrong about some
really important shit yeah sometimes it just takes that you know having an
actual one-on-one or just a human experience to get you outside of like
kind of the the strict dogmatism of your like inherited ideology where you're
just like you know of course I'm a libertarian my dad's a libertarian and
he raised me to be libertarian you know and then and then you you know you live
life and you meet people who you know in which the government was actually a
necessary entity in their life and you're like oh shit like you you know
people who just grow up in a bubble I think as soon as they have that you
know bubble bursts a little bit then they can kind of move past whatever you
know dog yeah ideology they have yep yep it is that thing where like you the
Republican politicians who have like a life experience that doesn't fit in with
conservatism are like the ones who have these very public like John McCain
arch republican and everything but torture because he was tortured right
it's very consistently like no we can't this is not okay yeah Dick Cheney
arch republican and everything but gay rights because his daughter's gay and
he's like yeah it's just yeah I mean that's just how people are I guess so the
Boy Scouts of America began operating what they called an ineligible volunteer
file system in 1919 so they didn't pal still alive when they this is like they
they and this is not just even primate this is not primarily about sexual
assault this is obviously you've got this growing organization a bunch of men
join it and for one reason or another they do not meet the standards that the
BSA does have for adult volunteers and they're not screening people but people
who do the job and are bad at it and I think most of these people again are not
molesting kids they're like they get some kid killed on a hike or some shit
right like they're they're irresponsible you know like there's a lot of ways to
be bad at being a scout master you know you're taking kids into the woods a
number of things can go awry yeah yeah usually pedophilia isn't the first
problem when you're stranded alone in the woods with an adult yeah you would
think up yeah and I think most of the men in the ineligible volunteer files had
not purposefully harmed a child they had just like fucked up in some way
probably some way that's like still deplorable but like not they're not
trying to harm anybody right a subset though of the ineligible volunteer list
are men who had been caught or at least accused of molesting the children in
their care this subset of the ineligible volunteer system were dubbed the P files
or perversion files yeah that's that's the P word yeah yeah not pedophile
pedarist I mean it's not rape yeah yeah yeah yeah so this starts in like the
20 problematic files I'm sorry the problem so when baiting pals alive they
they do like attempt to and again they don't attempt to by screening people
beforehand but they do attempt to be like oh we should if a guy gets kicked
out for raping a kid we should probably put his name in a file somewhere we
should we should probably write this down huh which is the minimum you know
minimum like the barest minimum I just want to remember his name you never
list of the guys who who fucked the kids in our care I can also get their phone
numbers just so we can talk and just see if they have photos yeah exactly yeah
do you want to go to the lake
no baby pal so in 1975 the list was computerized but there still existed a
hard copy and there is still one today which reportedly fills 15 file cabinets
at the BSA headquarters in Irving Texas only a handful of men at the very top
of the organization can access them in the BSA is the Boy Scouts of America so
you're right I should know when we talk about this this is all focused on the
BSA which is not technically the organization baiting pal founded because
it's very decentralized there's like the different countries they're different
like organizations right effectively right kind of corporations almost and
they're all kind of like linked and related to each other and they do jam
really people get together from different countries but I mean the BSA is
made in the image of what baiting pal talks about I'm sure there is a lot on
like abuses in like England and great in the UK and in like other countries the
vast majority of the documentation on abuse with the Boy Scouts is within the
BSA so that's what we're focusing on here today so for decades the files were
either entirely unknown or at most a rumor to those outside the organization
they would occasionally make appearances though by the time Lord Baden
Powell died in 1941 there had already been multiple cases of child molesters
who had been caught and convicted for what they'd done as Boy Scout leaders
this pattern continued up to the present day and when those cases would end in
criminal charges and trials files on the perpetrator would often be admitted into
evidence usually under seal this most frequently happened in the latter half
of the 20th and early 21st century when boys and groups of boys began to
allege that what had happened to them the abuse they had suffered was not an
isolated incident but was instead the result of a pattern of abuse within the
organization the files contain often harrowing firsthand accounts from
victims like this interview with a 10-year-old scout in 1972 the victim of
a sexual assault by Georgia troop leader Samuel Max de Bois Jr quote I was
crying and I reached around and hit Max in the face and said I was going to quit
the troop until my daddy then we heard the others coming back and Max said put
your pants back on yeah that's like one of the less harrowing ones I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna read in detail but we will discuss what happened like I'm gonna
read detailed accounts of kids getting molested here thank you but you do need
to know like what broadly occurred you know yeah cases that is important the
P files at least were something so it's better than certainly doing nothing at
all but as a barrier to the assault of boys and care of the Boy Scouts of
America they were incredibly porous to illustrate this let's start with an
illustrative case of abuse among the Boy Scouts from a little more than a
generation after Baden Powell's death Steven Field was a troop leader in
Southern California the BSA started investigating him in 1971 after a scout
in Santa Monica reported that he'd been sexually abused by Field a troop
committee which included parents BSA officials and a psychiatrist so that's
good right you're bringing like not just parents but a professional in that's a
positive way to look at things right this feels like the doctor thing for
last episode I don't trust it not quite okay this this committee is convened and
they look at the evidence and they conclude that the story was true this
kid had been abused what Field had done with sexual abuse their investigation
in fact found not only to abuse this kid but he had a pattern of what could
credibly be called criminally sexual behavior including forcing his Boy
Scouts to play strip poker and run around naked after losing games which is
not ever like there's there's that's not even a like a gray area yeah strip
poker is not really inside the Boy Scouts milieu you know yeah and also like
running around naked is not part of it that's never you know you can play well
I mean it kind of was from the start actually but I'm just finding new and
clever ways to get kids to run around naked yeah that is what it is when we
talk about like naked swimming running around naked like I believe very
strongly that like it nudities there's nothing wrong or inherently sexual about
nudity right be like this thing where the idea that like people are doing things
naked is like lascivious right clearly Baden Powell and a number of like the
men and like found it lascivious and so that's a problem like yeah it ended up
being one of their favorite things yeah that's an issue that's gonna be an
issue you know yeah so they find out this guy not only molests this kid but
he has a history of very like criminal I I suspect it is illegal to make children
play strip poker like I think that is a crime yeah not a law knower but that
seems crimey yeah that seems not legal that seems like like a thing you would
use that seems like a thing we don't allow like I have to think that's against
some law it's gotta be in there somewhere yeah probably a lot of delinquency of a
minor or something I don't know whatever some something not right about that but
the Boy Scouts don't report him to the police they don't report him to anyone
in fact they remove him they kick him out of the Boy Scouts but the only
report they make about this is from a regional Boy Scouts employee who fills
out a form on field and sends it to headquarters and that form is placed in
the P files so that's all that happens national officials told the regional
official that this meant that fields would never be able to work in or
volunteer for the Boy Scouts again and yet from a report in the Los Angeles times
quote he was involved with several Southern California troops over the
next 17 years according to his file contacted recently by the times field
explained that after he failed a lie detector test required by the Santa
Monica troop committee he was encouraged to transfer to another troop in the city
where he served a scout master for four years god they said it fails a lie
detector and they're like you just got to go to another troop brah my god what
the fuck just do what they do at the corner liquor store when someone has
fucking put a picture of him up on the wall picture on the wall just say not
that guy right that's it's so easy dude oh my god your job is protecting children
show at least as much care as a liquor store clerk over a bounced check
what the fuck so the fucking field tells the Los Angeles times they said it had
all been cleared up with the scouts like I don't how do you clear this out in
Valencia he joined his brother-in-law's troop but left after a parent intercepted
a love letter he had written to a scout the file shows at one point the file
says field was caught watching pornography with naked scouts in his
jacuzzi Jesus fuck yeah you know 20 years later he changed his name and his
identity and moved across the country and he just shows up one group is like
yeah you failed the I promise not to molest kids part of the lie detector
here go to this other group bring your jacuzzi with you yeah you're out of the
Silmar chapter yeah of the scouts but you know what Glendale's recruiting oh my
god super fucked up like again there are in its height like seven million boys
in the Boy Scouts some of them were all way and then I'm not being callous here
it is inevitable in any population of seven million boys some of them will get
molested by adults right the fact that this is a thing that happens is not
inherently the fall of the Boy Scouts but as this example shows they are
criminally irresponsible in taking any attempts to stop it that's the problem
it's not that like there are some bad apples it's that they're kind of like
the cops they just like they enable the bad apples no yeah it's like they
literally have a basket of like with a with a foundation of poison and they're
going on some of these apples are bad it's like you are po you've poisoned the
fucking bastard yeah you poured cyanide into an apple basket yeah and then you
pissed in it this is directly your fault yeah now among other things that story
is why I think jacuzzi ownership should require a license but you know beside
that's another two-parter now despite the fact that this guy had repeatedly
engaged I think we can agree it's pretty outrageous and public abuse of children
yeah yes a national office didn't realize he'd snuck back into the
organization until 1988 again almost 20 years and they only realized this because
another local scouting official reported that Steve Field who was at that point
chairman of a local troop committee had been arrested for masturbating in front
of a child so he doesn't get kicked out by the Boy Scouts he gets arrested by the
cops and a local scout is like oh hey you guys should know this guy turns out
he was a child molester this local official doesn't know this guy is a
record but he sends this in to report this guy and the people who run the
p-files are like oh Steve Field is the same as Steven Field how could we have
known his ingenious criminal mind
they're just like the cop comes in goes like all this you know this guy he's
got arrested you know for masturbation and they're like oh you mean creepy Steve
oh he's been doing that he's been doing that for a while yeah oh wacky Steve
don't leave him alone with your kids anyway he's in charge of the kids
so for what it's worth once the sheriff's department actually got involved
with Steve's case which should have fallen into their lap around 20 years
earlier they launched a serious investigation and again all of the
police aside one of the things they have a better record of taking seriously
although not a perfect one because a lot of cops are child molesters generally
detectives who find out the kids are being raped are like well this is
probably important yeah like yeah it's just the thing even if you're a fucking
cop most people you hear a child is being abused and you're like well yeah we
gotta do some about this yeah yeah most cops you know obviously a cab but not a
you know all cops do not deliberately enable child molestation whatever that
acronym spells they hear about this guy and generally this is the case like
20 years in like with these abusive adults and that's when finally shit
happens this guy gets arrested and it's because like the the bsa can't hide it
anymore right um child pornography was found in fields as home photos he'd
taken of nude boys nude Boy Scouts as far back as 15 years ago are found and
when the cops realized this guy has been preying on Boy Scouts for more than a
decade they asked the National Office do you have a file on this guy and the
bsa sends the p-file for fields to the order for field to them but they send
it along with a request and here's the a cab part because the cops abide by this
request we hope you will use this information with discretion since we
have tried to maintain our files they cannot be subpoenaed in any legal action
wow if again if you're of cops are better people than they are if you're a
decent person my first question would be this guy raped kids why don't you want
this subpoenaed like why why why why why any why are you not like throwing your
doors open to right to this like why why not let this be he's raping kids like
god I mean so the cops they abided yeah yeah just an arbitrary like oh if you
could do us a favor and like they're probably all Boy Scouts oh fuck a lot
of cops in half of Congress people were Boy Scouts I have congressmen or whatever
like a huge percentage like all almost all of our recent presidents have been
either Boy Scouts or Eagle Scouts like it actually does mean a lot to a lot of
it so like sure story that could have gone badly for my childhood when I was a
kid I think like 13 or 14 I would go every Saturday I would go with my
friends to a hobby store and we'd play Warhammer and then we had one point
started wanting to play D&D which I'd started playing in the Scouts and like
the people who we found to play with us were this guy was like 19 at the time he
just graduated high school was in college and a dude who was almost 30 who's
like a an engineer and that dude invites us all like well on Saturday night since
the hobby shop closes like five just come over to my house and we'll all play
D&D until like midnight and like my parents hear this and they're like okay
well that's a little quite he's like yeah almost 30 like this concerns us and
this other guy's an adult too but both of them were Eagle Scouts so my parents
were like okay yeah and it was like they were like there was fine like nothing
like those people were huge positive influences on me like I don't want to
like I'm trying they were both very positive parts of you but like that's
why my parents trusted them as they were right there's an intrinsic trust in
like oh these people are part of this organization that I have nothing but
yeah my dad was an Eagle Scout you know right um yeah so anyway just culturally
this I think this is part of why the cops play ball with the BSA for so long
and don't make more of an issue about this is that like a lot of them were
probably boys get someone they were probably fucking troop leaders you know
yeah yeah you know there were a bunch of like cop kids and stuff and boy scouts
when I was in the scouts obviously but I mean it's it's kids getting fucked it's
like that's why yes yeah but I think from the cops pursuit is like well we're
getting this guy and we don't like to we don't want to tarnish because they're
cops like they protect organizations from shitty they're like cops right are
often horrified at things other cops do they just cover it up because they
believe in the institution I think so I think they're they're they're willing to
do that for the Boy Scouts but they have so much room for it just it's like it's
one of those things it's like I'm not defending it I'm just explaining the
thought process I'm just thinking about it's like if I'm a cop and I'm like okay
I'm gonna I'm gonna back up all these cops no matter fucking what and then
someone throws out another organization like oh yeah this is like the rape
organization like all right I have room in my moral compass for one more
organization to defend it is worth noting that at this point they're not
thinking about this is the rape organization this is the 70s this is the
Boy Scouts this we don't want to let another this is already terrible we
don't want to also defame this beautiful organization and you know there's a lot
of good at the same time yeah it is not until I think the first really big
academic quality work on abuse sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts is that
book we've been quoting from Scouts Honor which we'll have LinkedIn that the whole
book is available online right now it was published in 1994 by a guy named
Patrick Boyle and it was I mean it was I don't think it did super well at the
time obviously I think he got a lot of shit for publishing it but it is not a
fun read of the heroes in the story one of them has to be Patrick Boyle for
being in 1994 like people need to know that this is a systemic problem and you
know it was not until three or four years ago that it became mainstream
knowledge how systemic the problem was he's well yeah yeah cuz I started
hearing about the stuff with the you know Boy Scouts right yeah yeah and the
fact that this book came out in 93 is crazy to me yeah yeah and you know what
else is ahead of the curve this is the products the products and services that
support this podcast way ahead of the curve the Patrick Boyle's of their day
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trial on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts we're back so fields or field gets arrested for abusing two 13 year
old boys and sentenced to 12 years in prison when the LA Times found him
because he's out of prison by the time these LA Times articles are very
recent we'll talk about why and I'm reading from a bunch of different LA
Times articles because they have done as far as I can find the best journalistic
reporting on on abuse within the Boy Scouts so when they they find this guy
right because he's he's out of prison now he's working I think he's a fucking
lawyer or something no might have been in finance I forget exactly but they
find him he's like out in free and like working and they interviewed him and he
admitted to abusing the kids he'd been convicted of abusing but the night
allegations that he'd abused any other kids even though absolutely yeah of
course other kids yeah yeah the Times informed him that he'd been on a black
list since 1971 in the Boy Scouts and hit when they said like did you know the
Boy Scouts had a file blacklisting you he's told them like no I had no idea
that's surprising because I was able to stay in the Boy Scouts for like 20
years yeah the child molester told them it's like a no-fly list if your name is
on the no-fly list you shouldn't be able to get on a plane like the pedophile is
baffled by how easy it was for him to get back into the Boy Scouts like yeah
they really shouldn't have allowed this you're not wrong pedophile but like yeah
you're not wrong yeah as the guy who raped those kids you have
adequately accurately identified the issue or molested like I don't know like
so yeah and it is that really like that goes to show how fucked up the BSA is
because when the pedophile your organization allowed to repeatedly
harm children in your care throws shade on you for your irresponsibility and
letting him in that's a that's a that's an epic fuck up like you have failed so
comprehensively I don't have a word for it yeah that's a there's a signal there
yeah yeah yeah yeah that times article goes on to tell the story of scout master
Alan C. Dunlap of Fresno, California who was arrested in 1973 on suspicion of
having abused several children Dunlap pled guilty to four counts of molestation
and was committed to a psychiatric hospital the Scouts created yet another
p-file on him 13 years later in 1986 Dunlap was out of the hospital and
registered as a scout volunteer in Brian Texas god damn it yeah you're gonna be
saying that a lot my friend it does not appear that anyone even checked the
blacklist before registering him which gets at the chief problem with the whole
system the BSA actually did a pretty good job of documenting guys who had been
caught or accused of sexual assault right they're very thorough in like when
stuff gets in they they do put it all in this file but there's still no I can
remember Baden Powell doesn't want there to be a big barrier to entry there's for
most of this period the 60s 70s 80s there's no real screening process right
most again as we said like that one scout troop had like they chose to do
like a polygraph test which polygraphs are problematic and obviously they just
said I'm doing other troops like it did yeah there are there are though it's
worth noting individual because it's a very decentralized organization some
troops do have really good like you know policies in order to screen people
right nationally there's nothing and this blacklist only a handful of people
at the top have access to it and they don't run every name through it like
there's no right you when a guy joins a scout troop in fucking Texas they don't
or in fucking like I don't know that main they don't send his name in to the
national file to scan it they do nothing they only find out afterwards so it's
useless it's fucking you other than like as documentation that a lot of guys are
repeatedly molesting kids in the Boy Scouts it's just a fun way to get a nice
list going but there's nothing you can possibly do nothing to protect children
or very close the boys guys they will know there's actually this X number of
men that we stopped because they were in the blacklist and someone recognized
it not to say it never happened but like clearly it was not an effective
protecting system and they knew it at the time so yeah of course so after this
guy gets you know this this dude is arrested and kicked out of the scouts
in 73 after abusing some children 13 years later he becomes a scout volunteer
in Brian Texas and he immediately gets back to sexually assaulting children he
was eventually caught and pled guilty to abusing a nine-year-old cub scout he
was sentenced to 12 years in prison a local official learned this and called
the National BSA office to report Dunlap so he could be added to the P files and
the National Office realized they already had a file on the guy probably
different guy here's what they do actually it's even worse than that they
just add a note to his file four words convicted again dash child molestation
addendum he done it again we might have a problem here please oh my god this is
all pretty bad but it gets worse worse both of those actually the LA Times
writes quote in some instances the Boy Scouts of America chose to give alleged
molesters a second chance in a 1992 deposition Ernst then keeper of the
national file testified that alleged abusers were given probation which
required periodic updates on the person's behavior only if evidence of
molestation was quote extremely weak an individual's confidential file was
generally destroyed after probation was completed but the file sometimes survived
when the men went on to abuse again several of those cases suggest the
initial evidence of abuse was strong again the BSA policy is err on the side
of believing the child molester when he denies having molested the kid oh my
god my fucking god yeah and I'm sure that you could find there's there have
to be statistically millions of people a couple of cases of kids who lied because
they were angry at it I'm sure it happened statistically we have thousand
like hundred minimum hundreds and hundreds and all and probably like by
some accounts thousands of cases of people molesting kids repeatedly within
the Boy Scouts like there but again they err on the side of protecting the
adult not the children and their entire job should be to protect these children
right I mean literally what their job is it's teaching them how to fend for
themselves yeah fucking I mean I get my my scout master who was a I mean he was
a great scout master he did something horrible for Raytheon that we don't know
entirely what like a bunch of the guys who taught me how to camp role Raytheon
engineers it's like Plano like that's yeah but anyway he like his attitude was
my only job is to stop kids from dying so like you go out there he'll teach you
to he would teach us anything we wanted to learn he would help us learn but he
didn't do anything for you so if you were miserable for days if you fucked up
if your shit got soaked if you let your tent on fire like hey you can camp out
under the stars or whatever like my only job is to stop you from dying right
about self-reliance but he's still very he took safety like a physical health
very seriously and that's not what the Boy Scouts are protecting the adults
about children like the organization nationally and again I had a lot of great
scout leaders who while they may have been war criminals always put the safety
of the kids in the boy scouts American kids I didn't know what Raytheon was at
the time not the Iraqi kids yeah I mean good god only knows what they were
actually like working on but yeah you can only care about so many kids Robert
yeah you can look so for an example of how the Boy Scouts would protect and
give second chances to child molesters let's talk about Mark F. Bumgarner he
was a 21 year old assistant scout master in North Carolina in September 1978 he
was at Camp Shield helping to manage a camp with several other adult leaders
late one night after most scouts and adults had went to bed he struck up a
conversation with another boy I think they're just like sitting around a camp
fire and they talk for a while everybody else goes to sleep and quite
suddenly when they're alone Bumgarner sticks his hand into the boys pants and
fondles his genitals the boy tells him to stop so Bumgarner says the cartilage in
your penis is similar to your nose and I can break it Jesus yeah yeah so I mean
like I try not to get on the whole like you know vengeance side of things but
just shoot that guy yeah just shoot that guy we don't need that guy
that is just like you know sometimes you fantasize about a righteous kill you
know yeah yeah I would be one yeah just just little little little shallow grave
in the woods you know just like that's all that guy needs the earth just the
planet yeah benefits a little bit yeah this one I think when you threaten to
break a child's penis when your hand if he tells about you molesting him you
don't deserve to live anymore you don't know that's that's the that's the end of
your right to exist I argue yeah my opinion I yeah it's funny cuz like
before this podcast I never thought there were levels of pedophilia in which
I would that's that's a high one right yeah that's one is like oh he's like I
mean yeah pedophilia is evil but he's like evil and evil yeah pedophiles are
disgusted by that like yeah not yeah anyway like that he that's like the
worst level probably of pedophilia the that I can imagine is that that kind of
thing yeah that's that's the top of the pedophile pyramid yeah so after this
terrifying experience the kid went to his father who reported this to the Boy
Scouts rather than to the police the BSA investigated the matter and after what
the National Office described as considerable discussion decided that
bumgarner deserved a second chance because again it would be still bad but
different if it was like well he was caught you know massaging a boy in his
jacuzzi and the boy's shirt was often like whatever like that's bad to let
that go on he threatened to break a child's penis
how do you give a second chance to that yeah the reason why is because
bumgarner was an Eagle Scout and the son of the pastor whose church sponsored
the troop yeah there it is yeah there it is so he kept working for the Boy Scouts
spending time in close proximity with children absolutely unmonitored he was
arrested several months later for sexually abusing two Scouts during a
camp out he pled guilty and was expelled by the National Office who added yet
another name to the P files six years later oh yeah you thought this was done
you thought we were done with bumgarner come on six years later bumgarner gets
out of jail and back into the Boy Scouts he moves from North Carolina to
Virginia and he becomes assistant district commissioner to the Fairfax
Boy Scouts this was 1984 it was two years later 1986 before the National
Organization realized that this pedophile had gotten back in they didn't find it
on their own convicted convicted pedophile yeah and they only find out
that he's gotten back in because he gets convicted again he gets caught
sexually battering two boys and sentenced to six years in prison just like
well just this how could we have known how could we have known every single
time yeah the Los Angeles Times continues probation was also given to
Floyd David slusher a 19-year-old staffer at a Boy Scout camp in Germany who was
caught abusing a Scout in 1972 and sent home to the United States even after he
was caught they had to physically restrain him from attempting to visit
the Scout he was molesting a Scouts official wrote to headquarters a file
was opened but slusher was allowed to continue working with Scouts so again
another Boy Scout leader is like this guy is such fucking pedophile that we had
to physically stop him from going after this kid after we caught him like it's
like a cartoon of a pedophile yeah yeah and the Boy Scouts are like this guy
deserves a second chance yeah like when did the second chance program started
this is because you hear that like oh they gave a second chance you assume it's
something like like oh he like showed them some weird pictures and they decided
there was plausible which again is not okay but no right these guys are like
this is hardcore shit these are convicted fucking child rapists yeah and
they're just like yeah I feel like we give him a second chance we had to see
we had to physically restrain the guy from doing more molestation yeah like
come on let me go they're like it was romantic so slusher also shouldn't let a
guy named slusher do damn near anything absolutely name that's not an okay name
so he's allowed to keep working with the Scouts and he goes on to molest at
least eight boys in a Boulder Colorado troop threatening to kill them if they
told anybody according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Department yeah yeah yeah
the detective in Boulder County wrote quote almost every Boy Scout in troops
75 and troops 73 has been approached sexually by slusher on one time or
another adding that the victims are too numerous to interview the thing is like
I can't interview all the kids he molested because like I don't have that
kind of time the Boulder police don't have the time to talk to all of this
guy's victims we're not authorizing any OT right now so we can investigate this
single person I mean in fairness they probably had plenty to put him away and
he pleads guilty to one account of sexually assaulting a child the Boy
Scouts continued the practice of offering probation and suspension to
prominent men accused of abuse until 1988 as the result of a high-profile
abuse case in San Mateo, California Richard Stingler was the adult head of a
sea scouts unit which is kind of like a for older boys closer to adulthood like
elite like you're doing like boat shit right like oh yeah cool stuff it actually
was the thing I wanted to do but Texas is not as easy to do that yeah so like
the Boy Scout Navy yeah the Boy Scout Navy yeah you gotta that's always a
red flag when your organization starts a sea or when they have a Navy it's
especially a red flag for the Navy yeah I think all the Marines in the audience
would agree with that you know there's the Goop crews like you know it's like
when you take to see probably an issue you know someone says you know good
people don't take to see by the way I'm crowdfunding to buy a yacht all of my
followers to live on we're gonna sail around the ocean we're gonna look for
gold it's international waters anything international waters baby any there's no
laws in international waters make our own society our civilization stop it
Sophie come on all right well no fun here's some ads
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the problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that
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won't let me won't let me Hubbard nope all right well okay so this guy Richard
Stingler in 1971 is the the head of a sea scouts unit and in 71 he gets
charged with tying up and groping three boys this was the thing I alluded to in
the first episode with the restraints is that like a knot did you get a merit
badge for yeah I mean it's unfortunate to say this but a boy scout troop leaders
probably in the the most able to tie up a boy because he's probably pretty good
at knots that really makes that merit badge a lot darker it does it does it's
not great it's not great so he gets convicted and sent in 71 in sentence to
three years of probation which I might argue the court system failed there too
because I think tying up and groping boys probably more than three years
probation longer for like smoking pot for like pot yeah yeah anyway the
scouts suspended him during this period but they didn't kick him out when his
probation ended a local scout executive and a number of parents lobbied for his
suspension to be lifted so clearly this guy had some sort of charisma was good
at like convincing parents I don't know what he fucking told them maybe like it
was a merit badge thing gone wrong but parents lobby for this guy which is
settling I mean this is not again we this is not an unheard of kind of
situation like this this occurs in other organizations and whatnot sure it's
just like I mean yeah to me the Catholic Church you know not yeah I'm not
excusing it one of them yeah but but but I understand a little bit more having
like basically the the guy who talks to God being an important figure in your
life and yeah and like like standing up for the organization in the church and
maybe even a specific priest in the church who's been accused of something
because you're like that dude talks to God who am I to question that guy these
are fucking volunteer scout master these are doing like cosplaying teaching
you how to whittle and they're just like no but he's a good dude yeah he's
fucking good dude like it I mean there's actually a just a tremendous amount in
common with like the Boy Scouts and how this works and like and the Catholic
Church yeah yeah yeah okay all right Jesus Christ let's get back into this so
so this guy after tying up and molesting several boys does three years
probation and when it ends he gets successfully reinstituted to the Boy
Scouts the local scout officer who lobbied for him being brought back in
wrote quote I feel quite confident that no further problems will arise just
fucking just an organization of marks everyone is a fucking mark yeah 14 years
later in 1989 a parent reported that Stinger had padlocked her 11 year old
boy in a harness and watched as he hung in the air during a boat trip so that's
good that's fine the BSA called the police and the police go to Stinger's
home and they search it and they find dozens of restraints and an enormous
cache of child pornography naked photos that he took of boys that he had
blindfolded and like tied to things at least one is a picture of a naked
six-year-old boy that he blindfolded and tied to a bed like profound child
abuse on a yeah yeah and again they catch him 14 years later he's doing this
the whole time that's what the photos show that he'd been the whole time he
gets back in he's just tying up and molesting kids so they call they call
the cops when he what did he do to the kid he like tied him up he yeah he I
don't even know if this was sexual if he was just like being a dick probably both
but he'd like padlocked an 11 year old boy in a harness and hung him in the air
during a boat trip so his mom is just like that's physical it be I don't think
she called it in a sexual issue she's like that's a salt that's when they
call the cops there yeah I mean his mom calls the cops like this is probably the
first she's aware anything's wrong and she immediately is like yeah we need to
deal with this shit search his house and find out that he has been tying up and
restraining and molesting kids for 14 years and has tons of pictures of it
Jesus so this guy's like both like a sexual abuser and just a literal fucking
psychopath yeah yeah not that there's not bits of both but dangerous dangerous
person yeah fucking shit so when all this dropped more than 24 former and
current scouts came forward to report that they'd been abused by Stenger some
had been victimized as early as 1958 up until 2015 the chief scout executive
effectively the head of Boy Scouts was a guy named Wayne Brock Wayne got that
August position in 2012 after a four-year stint as the deputy chief scout
executive before he held this national position in 1987 Wayne was the local
Boy Scouts executive for the state of Georgia that year a scout master at a
camp in his domain was accused of molesting a boy in a sleeping bag Wayne
followed procedure which at the time meant documenting the allegation and
sending that documentation on to Texas the leader's name and crimes were added
to the confidential files the scout master was expelled but the police were
not informed he left town Brock was promoted again and again and eventually
wound up running the Boy Scouts as a different Los Angeles Times article
notes quote as he and his recent predecessors rose through the ranks of
scouting they handled at least 120 cases of suspected sexual abuse dating from
the mid 1970s according to a Times analysis of constant confidential Boy
Scout files as district executives it was their job to gather evidence and
witness statements determine whether to recommend a leaders expulsion and report
their findings to headquarters which made the final decision in the process
the officials had a front row seat on cases in which scouting's abuse
prevention policies failed although the officials may have followed scout
policy and violated no laws the files in several cases indicate that they did
not inform authorities or their communities of suspected child molesters
who were expelled from the organization so this is the guy who runs the Boy
Scouts right we got his history which isn't you know he's not a molester
himself but he has a shall we say imperfect history of dealing with cases
where kids are molested and they all all of their last names are just read we
got Stinger we got Brock yeah we got slusher yeah yeah I like problems I mean
just like they sound like a really scary 18 yeah so this is the guy who runs the
Boy Scouts and his predecessor the guy who had headed the BSA before him was a
guy named Robert Mazzucca and before Robert another scary name I know I know
and before he ran the Boy Scouts Mazzucca spent 20 years as a regional scout
executive in California and Pennsylvania he dealt with numerous cases of child
sexual abuse by adults and scouting one of these was the case of David Cooley an
assistant scout master in Pittsburgh who was expelled in 1997 after police found
videos that he'd made of himself having sex with children Cooley was
eventually sentenced to 54 years in prison when the case broke it came out
that Mazzucca had earlier been arrested and convicted in 1987 for molesting a
boy in South Carolina he'd been allowed to volunteer in scouting and molest
kids after that because the Boy Scouts did not require background checks at that
point and this brings us to a particularly dark part of the story oh are
we gonna get dark now we're finally gonna get dark my man yeah so if you'll
remember back at the very start of this story back at the very start of
scouting Robert Baden Powell had rejected the idea that scouting
volunteers should be filtered under the justification that this would reduce the
number of adults who volunteered and slow expansion now at that time even though
kids were being molested child sexual abuse was not a widely understood
phenomenon by the 1980s this had changed a number of high-profile cases of
abuse of children had led several other leading youth groups to institute
criminal background checks for their adult volunteers criminal background
checks first became widely possible in 1985 and in 1986 the big brothers big
sisters organization made this a requirement for volunteers and the
Boys and Girls Club did the same thing in the same year 1986 was soon as this
becomes possible responsible organizations who take care of kids are
like well of course we should do criminal background checks and our adult
volunteers obviously that just makes sense the Boy Scouts don't do this
scouting officials claimed that background checks would be too expensive
and would scare away volunteers too expensive again it's it would have
cost tens of millions they made hundreds of millions yeah I was gonna say the
fucking Boy Scouts they don't have the money cash yeah everyone's a
volunteer or pays so they said that do and they also argued that doing so what
it best provide a false sense of security how many stories of guys with
criminal records getting back in the Boy Scouts they're like listen it's gonna
happen one way or another might as well let me promise you even with criminal
background checks kind of stop kids for adults molesting kids
job is to help pedophile scout for boys yeah that's the name of the
organization oh man oh god be prepared as a motto that means be prepared to get
molested yeah you be prepared for what the adults in this organization are
gonna do to you so the Boy Scouts didn't just refuse to
require criminal background checks for their volunteers they poured huge
amounts of money into lobbying local governments because states start to be
like well we as a state want to require FBI background checks for youth
volunteers for organizations anywhere in the state and the the BSA lobbies local
elected leaders to stop these laws it's it's I don't I don't understand like at
that point you just you're directly enabling it this is like is this like
an Epstein thing like this like what is going on with you people at this point
it sounds on purpose I can't even yeah I don't know how much of a logical reason
yeah I think so I just like this is the way it's always been I think some of it
might some of it is probably that there are pedophiles in the organization who
were or want this and some of it might be well shit if we do this people will
find out how many adults have been molesting kids and the Boy Scouts yeah
and that that's not gonna be good for us burn the P file or whatever yeah what
the fuck yeah damn so the BSA did not ultimately start requiring criminal
background checks for volunteers until you want to guess what year oh I'm at
2003 2008 by this point hundreds and possibly thousands of men with criminal
histories of child molestation were allowed into the Boy Scouts most of
these men went on to abuse more children from the very earliest days after the
decision not to require background checks this was recognized as a problem
from yet another Los Angeles Times article in 1989 a scout committee
chairman in St. Paul Minnesota decried the organization's half-hearted
screening in a letter to headquarters BSA is only creating an illusion of
performing what they claim K. Russell Sias wrote to scout chief executive
bin love it becomes quite clear that BSA is more concerned with passing the buck
than an accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders that
same year a Las Vegas scout master with a criminal history of exposing himself
to boys was arrested for sexually abusing a 12-year-old scout one parent
said casinos did a better job of screening workers honestly yeah yeah the
parent wrote to scouting officials the black eye which scouting has suffered
in this could easily have been avoided if the council had taken the simple
expedient of doing a background investigation I mean yep yeah yeah I
mean I don't I just don't I don't understand it at this point it just it
wasn't the money they don't want to pay the money at that time some that has to
be some of it because of what we're about to talk about because mmm it gets
worse we have not hit bottom yet Matt are you excited I'm just like my blood
pressure goes any higher motherfucking die yeah we have we have oh boy so while
the boy scouts are giving child molesters probation covering up abuse
refusing background checks at yada yada yada children keep coming forward to
tell their stories and by the 90s again this book comes out in 93 it's getting
more known right that this is a problem the organization has and as a result
once it becomes clear to people at least you pay attention that like this might
be a systemic issue some parents of kids who get molested try to sue the
organization claiming a pattern of abuse enabled by the very structure of the
BSA itself confronted with these threats in the form of children entrusted to the
BSA and abused by men that organization had refused to properly vet the boy
scouts viciously attacked the victims and their families in one case two boys
in Michigan alleged that they had been molested quote hundreds of times by a
troop leader the BSA denied any responsibility and instead in court
blamed their widowed mother they claimed she had failed quote to provide
adequate supervision over the volunteer they had approved wow yeah your fault
your kids got molested you weren't watching hard enough over the guy that
his whole job according to the ethos of our organization is to help like single
moms raise the kids you didn't it's your fault that yeah you should have done a
background check on yeah you should have done a background check yeah don't
just scream come on and it gets worse from the LA Times quote in 2002 Gerald
Schwartz a 42 year old former scout master in New York admitted to abusing a
boy in his troop in the 1990s after being secretly recorded saying he did
something very very wrong and apologizing to the boy Schwartz pleaded
guilty to four counts of sodomy and was sent to prison despite the conviction
and the victims testimony that Schwartz raped me and forced me to perform oral
sex on him the scouts in a motion to dismiss the subsequent lawsuit contended
that the sex was consensual what the fuck yep wow yeah we gotta burn it down
this is yeah we gotta burn this shit down this is not this is not salvageable
holy fuck yeah yeah that's bad that's the worst these guys are you know it's so
much worse than I thought it was yeah it really is yeah I'm not I'm not pro
scout no more no no this is definitely turned me around
honestly yeah fuck them yeah in the 1980s in Oregon one man alleged that
scouting troop leader Timur Dykes was allowed to continue his leadership
position after he admitted to molesting 17 boys and this kid molested them after
that yeah it took decades for one of the boys victimized by Dykes to seek legal
recourse but when he did at a trial in 2010 regional BSA official Eugene Grant
blamed his parents for letting their children go to Dykes his apartment to
work on may merit badges and attend the scouting sleepover which maybe there's
some questionable parenting calls being made here but you let him into your
organization and let him stay after he molested 17 boys and also like you know
it's like you were saying it's like you trust you trust him he's an ego scout
right yeah fucking a but the Boy Scouts representative said in court his
parents should have known better I think it's criminal you let him stay in the
Scouts after he admitted to molesting 17 boys and the parents are the criminals
is wrong with you these guys we got it I don't understand I'm not gonna say you
can say that in a court of law and not immediately burst into fire yeah I mean
just like yeah murder is wrong right yeah kind of in some cases I'm not trying
to say publicly right now anything that's gonna get me in trouble but I feel
like sometimes murder is good is yeah yeah that's a reasonable thing to feel
hearing this story like they said these words out loud and the fact that no one
was just like yeah the value of brickings that's a brick in that somebody
should just be like okay I gotta hit this guy with a fucking brick yeah you
don't get to say that not get hit in the face with the brick you know holy shit
that's that's brick in words very easy to break that guy thankfully the Oregon
jury rejected his line of argument and found the Scouts liable for almost 20
million dollars in damages this is the case this is why we all like know in
mass about the problem now this case breaks open the floodgates of abuse
claims against the Boy Scouts and it's during this case part of the discovery
in this like 1200 of the P files are revealed and and put into the public
record because they're trying to show like there's a pattern of abuse right
these guys keep getting in and abused in the Boy Scouts let them in again this
is what led to all of the Los Angeles Times articles we've quoted so far
because once these things are made public because if it's introduced into
like a legal case in that way it's like no one can see that so they start
combing through this stuff and it the other they start doing like other stuff
gets released it's it's the this is the blood in the water you know yeah
journalists start finding out other details of sorted Boy Scout sexual
abuse history and more victims start coming forward an avalanche begins one
issue that confronted many victims is the fact that some states had very strict
laws regarding the statute of limitation for sex crimes so like a lot of these
guys they were abused in like the 50s you know and like now as an adult who's
like these stories are heartbreaking some of these men are like I was never I was
abused in like the 50s the 60s I was never able to like have a relationship
that I was right never been able to feel intimate with anybody like this yeah
there's cases of people who commit suicide one guy there were molested and
he's like yeah my brother became addicted to drugs and died of an overdose and
like did he never recovered from this you know yeah it's I mean anyone who knows a
victim of childhood sexual abuse knows how how deep like uniquely evil of an
act it is to inflict upon somebody and and how yeah the stories are just
fucking so when these guys start realizing I'm not alone people will
believe me now and also maybe if I speak up this will help to protect other kids
you know so they start to come forward but on a lot of states they can't bring
charges against the people who victimize them or the Boy Scouts because of the
statute of limitations so many states when they realize how many these kids
are out there to their credit a bunch of state lawmakers put forward bills to
expand the statute of limitations and allow charges to be pressed further away
from the time of the abuse to be like well shit maybe we didn't really we
didn't make these laws considering everything that was happening and like
it's we need to we need to allow these people a chance to get justice the Boy
Scouts spend a fortune in lawyers and lobbying fighting these bills wherever
they crop up once again devoting for huge financial resources which they'd
said we're not worth spending on background checks to try and make it
harder for boys victimized by BSA officials to seek justice from the
Washington Post quote the group retained lobbyists in Georgia in New York
where lawmakers say such action helped stall proposals that included look-back
windows allowing adults to take legal action over decades old claims it has
hired lobbyists in Michigan where similar proposals are being debated the
bills would give adults who were abused as children a second chance to file suit
if they missed their first opportunity under state law opponents of the state
proposals including the Boy Scouts and Catholic Archdiocese argued that open
ended look-back periods violate due process and would put groups in the
tough position of defending themselves in cases from the distant past I love
like the people the Catholic Church coming together coming together just
like a fucking rapey Voltron yeah trying to be like this is just wrong and
this is I want to belabor a bit on the the argument they're making which is
that this is unfair because it puts us in the position of defending our
organization from actions that other we weren't in charge of the Boy Scouts on
the set this was 50 years ago yeah completely different group of men who
were in charge like how can we be held responsible today for the actions of two
generations you know leaders from two generations ago yeah I don't think this
is a good argument for one thing as we have discussed the historical record
shows that the BSA's attitude towards sex abusers and the ways in which you
enable them and defend them has not wavered since the days of Robert Baden
Powell from Baden Powell's time to the fucking 2000s the Boy Scouts are doing
basically the same shit yeah for another the same officials who led the BSA in
the late aughts had been the ones in the 70s and 80s furthering the hide and
ignore policies that enabled sexual abuse of children in April of 2019 an
expert who had been working with the BSA estimated that as many as 7,819
adult volunteers and staff members had sexually abused boys over the course of
the BSA's history he suggested they were responsible for harming as many as 12,254
victims that's the BSA's expert right now if that were it if that were the
extent of the problem this would be a huge problem but it turns out that was
a drastic underestimation a little over a year later in November of 2020 after a
series of lawsuits and settlements more than a hundred thousand alleged victims
had come forward to claim they had been sexually assaulted as children in the
Boy Scouts so that's a hundred thousand who have said I was a victim yeah yeah
and this is in the last year fuck yeah the Boy Scouts have filed for
bankruptcy claiming to be devastated by the allegations there's a number of
fucked up things in the fallout of this one of the most the worst things so the
Boy Scouts were stewards of a huge amount of wild lands right for campgrounds
and stuff then they were right that they would take care of they've sold a bunch
of that to developers a lot of that shit these like this like pristine wilds
they've been turned into like housing developments and shit because the Boy
Scouts went broke trying to defending themselves from all the rape that their
members did it's um it's just like a comprehensively bleak story oh my god
they can't even redeem themselves and make them like public lands they're just
immediately like sell it to pay for lawyers to attack these kids hey if I
can't touch kids on this land then I'm gonna fucking build condos on it yeah
fuck you wow story of the Boy Scouts yeah oh my good god dude I mean it's like
yeah usually when I you know the name of the show behind the bastards it's like
usually it's like the plural is because you have many episodes covering
specific bastards this is one it was just like one bastard at the beginning and
then just an endless slew of bastards yeah and it's too many bad I think I'm
on bastard overload and yeah I want to I want to do some righteous murder let's
do a righteous kill together dude yeah yeah let's go um Sophie can you uh can
we can we like uh get like a write off some some money for murder tools I mean
that we do that probably not but all right well what about a bug so that we
could go to international waters yeah in international waters it's legal so stop
try and pull over come on right it'll be like sea org but like but yeah but good
a good sea org they're good but not yet so if a you have a very closed mind
towards sea orgs and I don't think that's fair to all the good sea org yeah
like uh like the I don't know the surfers navy yeah they'd probably chill
yeah come on mmm no I don't think it's gonna happen um I mean you know we can
do it on land I guess but the point is is I'm currently furious and I'm
disassociating so I've had a good time yes so you had a good time on my show
well I'm sure everyone's dissociating now so um have a good time staring into
the distance and yeah and just kind of like my dark thoughts yeah yeah have a
good time losing touch with your corporeal body as the rage within you
becomes transcendent yeah yeah that's um that's a it's a type of drug rage is a
type of drug rage a hole yeah yeah I'm just gonna get some rage a hole on right
now I need a Xanax yeah rage out with your page out I don't know yeah I don't
know boy Matt you got any pluggables to plug um yeah I do
sopranos podcast pot yourself a gun check it out we're about to start season
six by the time this comes out a will season six episode one will be out it's
a great show film drunk broadcast that's us but same guy's talking about
movies right I want to want her to dedicate this to my childhood friend
Johnny Aaron you know you listen to this show Johnny Aaron you're a you're a
good you're a good man sorry it was the molestation one yeah this is a rough
episode to get a shout out but you know fucking hey you can't all be winners
you know man yeah yeah thanks thanks for having me back yep thanks for coming
back and also sorry
alphabet boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover
investigations in the first season we're diving into an FBI investigation of the
2020 protests it involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver
purse and inside this hurts like a lot of guns but our federal agents catching
bad guys or creating them he was just waiting for me to set the date the time
and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen listen to alphabet boys on
the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast what if I
told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't
based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price to death
sentences in a life without parole my youngest I was incarcerated two days
after her first birthday listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app apple
podcast or wherever you get your podcast did you know Lance Bass is a
Russian trained astronaut that he went through training in a secret facility
outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space well I
ought to know because I'm Lance Bass and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my
crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found
himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down with the Soviet Union
collapsing around him he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the
world listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or
wherever you get your podcasts