Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking, Mike? We are smoking another Anika Rustica time. It is the Adobe. The Adobe. We failed to mention that last episode that we had a Robusto size. This is another Robusto size. Always assume that it's a Robusto unless we say otherwise. I like Robustos. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I like Robustos. It's a good bird time.
I think sometimes with the bigger sizes and longer sizes too, I feel it's a little trickier to get those as good maybe? Or am I just making things up in my head, Mike? No, I would agree. The bigger the stick, a lot of times towards the end of it, it starts to get sour. And if you smoke them correctly, it could take two hours to smoke a big cigar. And that's not the right length for the show. No, we've done that for our finales though, our season finales. We'll sometimes do a bigger cigar.
And I think, oh, hold on, Mike. Hold on, Mike. Ha. I need to, we need to do some math here. Why is that? We have to, well, can you help me with some math, Mike? Yes. All right. So I want, I want you should take 43. Okay. Remember 43. And then I want you should take 38. Yes. And add those two together. Okay. And then I want you should add 15 to that. Okay. What number are we sitting at? 96. So this is our 96th episode.
So we need to plan something special for our 100th episode of Nice Ashes, Mike. And you're the stick guy. So. I'm pretty sure we already have a nice stick. We might have to have a special guest. We might have to have a special guest. I'm just saying we'll have to do something special for episode 100. We're four episodes away. So that's your notice. I'm putting you on notice. Let's figure it out. Not now, because we're recording obviously. Hi listeners. How are you?
Behind the scenes of Nice Ashes. I wanted to make sure this wasn't it. Because if it was, I, we'd talk about 100, I guess. So sure. Well, we, I'm sure that we'll have something nice in four episodes time. Yes. Future, future us will be awesome. I am sure. I am certain that it will be glorious and a pleasure for all. Yes. You like this Adobe up, huh? Yeah. Adobe, not abode. I have to admit that I've already lit it and it's very good so far. It's not acetone or anything bad like that.
No, I, I'm lit and it's good. It's lighter than the other one, which is weird because the other one was a Connecticut, but it was a Connecticut broadleaf and so they can be dark. I was expecting it to be lighter. I'm not going to lie, but yeah, I was surprised and it was pleasant. So not complaining.
Well, it was, it was funny because usually Mike will send me pictures of the cigars that were smoking and I think he did, but that was, I don't know, maybe two months ago that he sent me the next, like, once you were smoking and I couldn't scroll back through the text that long. And so he told me that the two, we were smoking the two Nica rusticas and I didn't pull the right ones out and I sent him a picture and he was like, no, no. So neither here nor there.
But I think what we'll do is I want to, I want to do some pictures of our show humidor's for maybe our Instagram account. Nice ashes podcast on Instagram. But I thought that might be kind of fun to see cause I have two humidor's just for the show, the show cigars and then I have one for personal. So what, how many humidor's do you have for the show? Mike? I have two shoe box cigar style humidor's, but I also have show cigars in my big humidor, humidifying right now.
We got some new ones and so I usually put those in the big humidor and let them level off before I move them to the show humidor. Yeah. Yep. Cause the bigger the humidor, obviously the easier it is to level everything off. So, yeah. And I got some of those, I don't know if we talked about this on the show yet, those blue little plastic gel filled, I'm trying to remember the humicare or the humicare. Yep. Yes. Yep. And those are quite nice.
I like how thin they are and they don't leak after you fill them. So I like them. I have the cigar size and I have the thin flats and I like the thin flats cause you can just put them right on top of your stack. And if you have a multi-tier humidor, you can just put four of them in that big humidor and you're good to go. You know, you should be good for 200 cigars. So, and they don't leak and you can tell right away if they need to be filled. So I like them.
Yeah. And each one of them will handle up to 50 cigars, I believe is what they say in the literature. Yep. And they have some absorbing and releasing like a Poveyta pack does. So it's not like the foam disc style that leak and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you put two drops too many, then it's leaking and yes. Even in my big Savoy, they came with those foam humidor things and they leak like a sieve. They're terrible. I don't like them.
Yeah. I kept them in though in mind just to give, because one of mine is a two tiered. So I kept the foam ones kind of in the bottom and I think I put one of the flat ones in the bottom and a flat one in the top. So yeah, there's a lot of cool things you can, cool technology you can use.
And I like those better than the Poveyta bags, even though the Poveyta bags are amazing, but I like that these you can refill and use easier than I know you were repurposing or refurbishing some of your Poveyta bags. Yep. I do re-report them occasionally and they do all right. Obviously they don't get, they're not as good as brand new, but. Yeah. I mean, these humicure things are cheap. They're like $5. So that's not bad.
Well, they're well worth the investment just to keep your sticks nice and in good orderly fashion. So yes, yes. Well, this is another Mike episode for all the listeners. I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk by now, but this is kind of a failed episode, I'm going to say. That's how I feel after I do a bunch of episodes that are row. I'm like, God, I got to have an episode where I don't talk so much, but I guess I see it more because I do the editing of them.
So I'm like, God, why am I talking so much? Yep. I, so I tried to do research on a topic and I hit a brick wall and I, so I have one half of a show that I planned and the other half I couldn't find any information on. So was it a brick in the Berlin wall or just a brick in a random wall? Right. Yeah, a brick in the wall, like from the album, I think. We don't need no education. That is what it is too. So I was going to do research on Holocaust denial.
So we recently had Semha on and we talked about anti-Semitism. So I was like, well, it's a perfect opportunity to kind of talk about these like crazy conspiracy theories online that were very common 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Do you remember those wild times on the internet, Nate, where you could go, you couldn't help but trip over Holocaust and I are online back then. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. It was like a flatter theory is now except Holocaust denial. Right.
Yeah. So I was like, yeah, moon landing denying and there's all these things. So I did the research that proved to the concentration camps were real. Right. Which I have and we'll discuss that. But then I tried to find the deniers and I could not find anything. Everything that came up was all these organizations bashing Holocaust deniers, but I couldn't find any of the actual like conspiracy theory sites that used to be up and about.
So once we get done with the information that supports the truth, right, which is well documented, we're going to have to talk a little bit about censorship because it's really suspicious when you look for something and all you can say, all you can find is groups saying that people denying this topic are liars. Right. But you can't find any of the claims that liars are making and that's not healthy in my opinion.
No, I mean, you know, we'll talk about this more when we get to the censorship portion, right, Mike, but silencing opposing views, no matter how ridiculous, isn't a good thing. You're not saying denying the Holocaust is a good thing, but if there are people out there that are denying it by silencing their voices, you're creating a vacuum, which is in some cases as bad as believing the deniers, I guess, you know, you should be able to do your own research and the first amendment's pretty clear.
It's not censorship by the government, it's censorship by corporations. Let's be clear about that. That is the government, Mike. Let's be doubly clear, that is the government. It is the branch of the government that doesn't have to follow the Constitution, that's for sure. So yeah, we're going to get into that as well because yeah, the hidden fourth branch, the sixth estate, right, the fourth estate being the media and the, right, like it's wild. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, during the Great Depression, people became very isolationist and the Great Depression is when the Holocaust began. The rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe became very common. Communism rose up and there was, some people would say a genocide in Russia as well. I would tend to agree with that. And the United States became extremely isolationist.
A lot of the reforms that we think of as FDRs reforms were a direct response to the political stuff going on in Europe because people were very afraid that authoritarianism would rise in America. So we fought the war as we do, you know, one thing led to another as they say. And by the spring of 1945, the Americans and the English were taking over, and the Soviet Union were taking over mainland Germany. And when they came in, the Allied forces found the concentration camps and it was a shock.
Omar Bradley and Patton toured some of the concentration camps and they informed Eisenhower and Eisenhower toured and he couldn't believe it. Now this is a fact and again, this is where the censorship comes in.
I could find no articles or papers written, which I've read before about how the main governments were aware of the concentration camps and hid that information from their frontline commanders because aerial photography and spy networks made the federal government, our federal government, aware of the concentration camp system and they hid it from Eisenhower and his staff, which is why they were shocked to find the concentration camps to begin with. Have you heard about this before, Nate?
Yeah, I mean, I've heard that. I mean, I've heard the story of them finding these camps and then sending word back. Yes. The problem is that the US government was aware, the federal government, not the army. And again, I looked for scholarly articles talking about this fact and there was no information about it, none whatsoever. And I also looked up, I tried to find articles about the US corporations that assisted Nazi Germany and I couldn't find that either.
So there is some censorship going on because I know that Ford Motor Corporation used slave labor in Nazi Germany and IBM maintained the equipment at the concentration camps because they had computerized systems. And at that time, IBM did their own maintenance, so IBM was aware of what was going on. Hugo Boss was a Nazi and was involved with that regime. And there were a few other large fashion houses that were involved with the Nazis.
And all this information, I tried to look it up, I couldn't find any legitimate source for things that we know are true. It's like they buried, the search engines have buried that information because they don't want people to think about it. I looked up, I tried to look up some of the anti-Jewish Hollywood movies that were made, couldn't find them. And there were a lot of media from that time that was anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi and they buried it.
They are burying it and it's because these large corporations that are still around now don't want to be associated with the actions that those corporations took 100 years ago. And it's sick. It's sick that they're hiding the truth and I'm against it. It's just as sick. To me, that's even more sick than hiding the Holocaust and I are stuff, you know? So it was very frustrating. Very frustrating. So here's a quote from Eisenhower about the Holocaust.
I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time, I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain, however, that I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.
So the reason why we have images of the concentration camps and I do have a link, but for those who want to see it and a lot of people probably have, the Eisenhower Library online has many thousands of images that Eisenhower ordered taken of the concentration camps because he was so horrified that he knew that people in the future would deny the existence of the camps. So we can thank Eisenhower for this knowledge because he documented it extremely well and ordered it to be documented.
Yeah, there's another one too, Mike. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to mention that there's another one too that has Alfred Hitchcock attached to it. It's called the German Concentration Camps Factual Survey Film and it is a... I think it's a British film institute or something that they sent. It was ordered in April 1945 by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
It's an official documentary, Jesus, about German atrocities and the concentration camps and it was compiled by footage shot by combat and newsreel cameramen. And Alfred Hitchcock was a treatment advisor for the end of it. Okay. So Supreme Allied Command was Eisenhower. Okay. And this one, I think they just restored and you can find it now out on YouTube and other places as well to watch for free. Okay. Interesting. I did not know that. Probably gonna be something I should watch.
Just not something good to watch, but something to watch for sure. So there was an interview that I watched. It was the YouTube Archive American Veterans Center and this guy was his 90 or so. And this is his quote. Eisenhower said to let as many people as possible see the concentration camps. I went to Dachau, one of the oldest concentration camps. I can't describe it. Kids asked me to describe it. You think everything you hate the smell of, everything.
And put it all together and you still don't have it. It was just something horrible to see. Human beings dying there. Nothing you can do about it. At first they were afraid because we had uniforms. Germans had uniforms. Once they figured out we were going to help them, they tried to smile, but they forgot how to smile. They prayed. I should talk about it, but it bothers me still. I used to dream about it. It's so inhuman that you can't show it.
And that was a 90 year old soldier talking about it, experiencing it in 1945. So it's pretty horrifying. My grandfather fought in the war as a tanker, so he certainly had to have seen that shit. And a lot of our grandfathers, our great grandfathers probably did as well. Yeah. Well, my grandfather was in the Navy, Merchant Marines, so I don't think he went and saw, but he saw other things that were also plenty horrific, but probably not as horrific as that. Right.
Yeah. My grandfather was a tanker out of California. So he was in a California tank division. So yeah. Like I say, the horrors of the war were well documented, and the horrors of the Holocaust are extremely well documented on purpose because they knew that people would say, oh, this crazy event could not possibly happen. People aren't that evil. And clearly they weren't, right? I don't want to laugh about that, but very clearly they were.
Yeah. So there's a gentleman named the bookkeeper of Auschwitz. Have you heard of this guy? No, I have not. He was one of the last Nazis to be tried for human rights violations. He outed himself when he was like 84 or 85 because, and this was really like 10 years ago, he was in the SS and he was an accountant and he transferred out of Auschwitz in 44, I want to say, into a SS commando division.
So he wanted to get out and he outed himself because there was growing anti-Semitism in Germany and Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis. And they were denying the Holocaust and he's like, oh no, no, no, no. It was horrifying, right? And this guy lived under an assumed name his whole life and he outed himself and he is now in prison or he was in prison. He might be dead now. And he put himself in prison because he didn't want people to deny what went on, right?
And he talked about how he had to work with IBM staff because all of their computer systems were maintained by IBM. So again, this was known. If IBM knows, the president of the United States has to know, right? You would think. Yeah, yeah. And the fact that they're trying to cover this up now, cover up the involvement of current corporations in the atrocities is sickening to me. I'm against it. Yeah. Obviously, people alive now are not directly responsible for what happened then.
But the fact that they're trying to cover it up is to me speaks volumes in my opinion. And again, this is a failed episode because what I really wanted to talk about was the crazy claims that the Holocaust deniers made, which now from memory, it's like, oh, it was only a million people. Oh, it was only this many people. And so I'm going to bring up some stats here because that's what we do here sometimes. And these are the official numbers, official numbers of the German Holocaust.
Six million Jews, 4.5 million Soviets, 3.3 million Soviet POWs, 1.8 million Poles, 300,000 Serbs, 300,000 disabled people, 500,000 Gypsies, 80,000 Freemasons, 25,000 Slovaks, 15,000 Poles, 5,000 Spanish Republicans, and 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, not to include the Catholic priests and things like that that they went around and killed. So a lot of people, a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Not exactly the happiest topic in the world, but obviously, right.
But like I say, I really wanted to talk about the Holocaust deniers. And you just can't find information about what they're claiming. I'm not going on the dark web to find content for this show. So I don't know where it's hidden, but there's still these crazy fucks out there yapping for sure, right? They got to be. They have to be. Where, I mean, so who's, well, I guess if you can't find it, it's hard to tell who's suppressing it or who's hiding it.
Are they hiding it themselves to avoid persecution or something, or are other people hiding it? I can't imagine other, I mean, maybe other people are purging the web of it, I guess. Google, I think, is banning it from their algorithms so people can't search it out. And I think a lot of web domains are not allowing access to their servers, and payment processors are banning it as well. So they're trying to defund them through the mechanisms of corporate America.
So they have to be on servers from countries that are outside of the American influence of power, because it has to still be online. It just has to be. It's impossible for it not to be. I don't know where to find it. I'm not involved with those circles. It's just like anything else, right? It's out there. If you really want to find it, you could, but it would take more work than it's worth for me to find it for the purposes of a show.
I wonder, yeah, I mean, I kind of wonder, like, are they one step ahead and they're keeping their stuff up? I know this isn't the same thing, but I know all the social media platforms, most of them, I guess, have, I don't know if it's AI review, probably now it is, of any kind of sharing of like child pornography that they'll then report directly to the police and stuff and scrub from their servers and things like that, you know, to comply with those kind of laws.
It's not against the law to be a Holocaust denier, is it, Mike? No, it is not. So this is kind of- Not in the United States. In Germany, it is, but not in the United States. Yeah. In Germany, it's illegal to own any kind of Nazi paraphernalia, right? Yes. Yes, it is. And they are destroying a lot of their history, which I'm against that too. I mean, it's not a pleasant history, but if you destroy it, then that's a step away from pretending it never happened. And that's wrong.
Yeah. And so with the, so let's bring it home real quick. So a lot of the Southern generals and things from the civil war and slave owners of that era that had statues that have now, I think, all been torn down, were those all torn down and destroyed or did they move them to a museum or something? Some of them were torn down. I can understand on one hand, right? Okay. Cause I can understand not displaying them like at the Capitol building or in a public park and things like that.
But I think if you don't display them in a, let's say a museum or something, then people can't learn from it, you know, because to talk about something as terrible as the civil war and then a lot more terrible as the Holocaust to destroy a lot of that stuff, I don't know, to me kind of like cheapens the survivors experiences maybe in the historical lens of it, you know? Because it's one thing to say, oh yeah, the two sides fought. It's one thing to say, oh yeah, the Nazis did all this.
But it's another to say, well, not only did they do all this, but look at the monuments they built, look at the statues they made, look at the propaganda pieces they put out, look at the, you know what I mean? Because that gets into understanding. Yeah, go on, Mike. Oh, I totally agree. It does get into understanding the mindset that allowed those atrocities to occur. More dangerously to us, it allows people to deny the truth and then there's no way to refute.
If you destroy all the evidence, then there's no way to refute what they're saying with the truth. It's blatantly clear based on the evidence what happened. But if you try to suppress the quote unquote opposition, now you are giving legitimacy to their argument. You don't suppress, in a free society, you don't need to suppress bad ideas. They will out themselves as being blatant lines. It's not healthy to suppress bad ideas.
It's good to let them be erred so that people who are not involved with that can have their thoughts corrected with the truth instead of being led down a path of crazy talk. And related to the civil war. Well, in the grand scheme you want- There's so much info. Go ahead, Nate. Oh, you finish your civil war thought and then I'll say mine.
I was going to say in the context of the civil war, there's so much disinformation now with states' rights talk and the romanticization of the old South that if you were a white supremacist you would want these statues to be destroyed so that in 50 years you can deny they ever existed at all. You can just say all that ever happened. Yeah, and that it truly was the states' right thing. Yeah, it truly was about states' rights.
Even though in their own documents they say the thing that they're fighting about is slavery. And I've had that discussion with somebody not that long ago. One of my family members, they're like, oh, it was about states' rights. And I'm like, if you look at their declaration of war, they explicitly say it was to protect slavery in the South. So the people who started this conflict said it was about this thing.
But it's easy to hide that now because it's been so far in the past and there's so much covering up of all the nasty unpleasant things that went on after the fact that it's very convenient to be able to just deny it.
Yeah, I was going to say it's important to see all sides of an issue because it keeps or should keep all sides honest or at least to the person doing the research or looking into it will allow them to sift fact from fiction because even let's say, you know, history is always written by the winner.
So it's always going to be slanted towards the winner being the good guys, which I think in the Holocaust scenario, the winners were the good guys, you know, liberating the camps and freeing the people. But that doesn't mean that everything was done goodness related, you know what I mean? So it's important to have kind of all of those sides to look at and examine and then you can see what's true and not true because things will back it up.
But if you start destroying or suppressing or hiding things, even if they don't agree with what the accepted narrative is, then all you're left with is the accepted narrative and who knows what the goal behind that is, not just for the Holocaust, but for all things. Yeah, with all things. And again, if you silence the opposition, then you're going to get a twisting of the truth yet again, just in a different direction.
So it's important to have the flat earthers out there, if only to have a backdrop to show real evidence against, right? Yeah. And it's like, I really enjoy some of those YouTube videos where they will debunk the flat earthers claims using like, usually just average common household things. So you can go do the experiment yourself in your own backyard to, you know, disprove the flat earthers theory on this, that or the other thing. Right. Then that's, it's kind of like anything else.
People want to deny the moon landing, people want to deny certain other facts. People like to claim that there's cryptids out there, which is a potential future episode that we're going to cover because I love cryptid talk. I enjoy it. But I find it to be darkly humorous. Some of this stuff, not that it's necessarily appropriate to find it darkly humorous, but especially when it's something as crazy as flat earth theory, I find that to be darkly humorous, for sure. I get a kick out of it.
That's hilarious. Yeah. And I also like the teenage boy talk where they call each other names. Okay. Yeah. Going back to our MKUltra Manson episode and things like that where some of this stuff has been proven to be like a Psi-Op done by the United States government or, you know, an actual experiment with drugs and other things and trying to shape a narrative around things that are happening.
So this is going to sound a little conspiracy-esque, I guess, but what's to say that there's some bigger goal that hiding this kind of stuff or purging this stuff isn't accomplishing for whomever is doing it? I mean, it could just be that the Holocaust deniers move to private servers to avoid altercations online or in real life.
I know there's a lot of websites out there that do less than desirable things in the eyes of the law that are invite-only and they're private servers that nobody else can access without a username password and being granted access. There are some servers out there, some sites out there that you can't even ask, you can't ask for an invite. It will just find you if you are the kind of person that the site is trying to attract. You know what I mean? Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
But definitely could be that, it could be that. It could also be some big operation. It could be that. I don't think it's a big operation. I think it's the tech companies think that the people at the tech companies think they know best and they're against a free and open internet. So they don't want you to find this misinformation. As they've proven. It is misinformation. It's lies. Right, exactly.
I mean, it's known that they do this with other topics and it's not against the law to have crazy thoughts and beliefs. No matter how nonsensical they are or immoral or disgusting or whatever. Yes, it's against the law to act on them on non-willing participants. But to have thoughts is not against the law. No, that's thought crime. And read 1984 again. Make your, pick your side. Like are we for or against thought crime? I'm against it.
I think people should be allowed to think and pretty much do whatever they want as long as they don't hurt anybody else. It doesn't hurt anybody to think crazy things about historical events. I've listened to hours of lectures. I mean, forrest got made a lot of money by doing that. Right. I mean, Oliver North has a fucking TV show. So if that guy can have a TV show. Man, the crusades are wild.
I read a book about the crusades because I really wanted to learn more, but it was very hard for me to follow because the crusades, it wasn't like a one time thing. There have been multiple, multiple, multiple crusades throughout the centuries. So this book kind of went through all of them and I was like, what, you know, and I just, I didn't have enough background information on all the stuff to be able to process all the crusades. So that was wild, wild times.
But you know, when you were, I, we were talking about the crusades were like, oh yeah, that's, you know, Robin Hood went and was on the crusades and then, you know, came back and blah, blah, blah, or Richard the Lionheart or whatever, whatever it is from the Robin Hood movies and stuff. But I mean, that's like the general population's kind of understanding of the crusades. But if you do a little bit more research, it's like, there were a lot of crusades. There were a lot of crusades.
And I mean, the prevailing theory that I follow with it was that it was largely about stealing money, stealing wealth, controlling trade routes and a blow off valve for warring factions in Europe because there were many, many very costly wars in Europe.
And the powers that be thought it was a better use of their resources to go and take over trade routes in the Middle East and then use any excuse they could to legitimize it, which is part of the reason why the crusaders would attack Christian towns and take them over. Very similar. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the crusaders took Constantinople. That wasn't an accident, right?
Which the Byzantines were involved in the crusades, but they got attacked by their quote unquote allies because they had money. It was about stealing gold. Yeah. It's strange all these heretics were trying to purge are in the richest towns and countries and cities. Strange how that worked out. Yeah. It's just a coincidence that it was just the major trade route for all the goods that they wanted to buy. Yeah. The hotbed of the heretics is just happens to be the big trade route.
It's a coincidence. It's a coincidence. Yeah. A welcome one, to be sure. So oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A happy coincidence. It's like Bob Ross. Yes. We're going to paint some happy little trees here in Auschwitz. Right. My aunt went to one of the concentration camps. Now I can't remember which one. She said it was pretty scary, pretty eerie to go there, which she's not. My aunt is not particularly prone to magical thinking, but she definitely had some magical thinking when she was there.
Yeah. Yeah. My parents went, I think after college and they told me a little bit about it. So a life changing visit. Right. I don't know about life changing, but definitely impactful. I would like to go. Yes. I don't know. Have you seen those kids that went and they were like dancing on the, doing like a TikTok dance like at Auschwitz or Dachau or something like that, or like walking across the tombs or something? I don't know. Well, yeah.
I mean, don't put anything past teenagers, I guess, and I tied pods and everything else, but I would like to go and see it. I don't think I would like being there. You know what I mean? But I think it's one of those kind of important things. Yeah. If I have the ability one day, I would like to go. I'm sorry guys that I only got you half an episode, but that was kind of the point. It's like censoring the opposition is never a good thing. It's just not.
Yeah. Because you can't get a balanced take on it. When we did the conspiracy episode, we could find the videos of the guy that believed if you swallow gum every seven years. I mean, you could find that. You could find that video and you could watch it and you could look at it and you could do your own research or you could see how passionately he believed it and kind of how crazy it sounded.
And if you don't have that, it's hard to refute or hard to critically think about things if you don't also have. I mean, that's like writing essays in school and college. That's like writing an essay 101, like basics. You have to include a section of the opposing viewpoint for it to be a good essay, right? Yes. At least it used to be. Maybe that'll be our... That'll be a new topic for one of our episodes. Oh, I was going to say that Holocaust denial is firmly in the camp.
Well, that'll be like a talk versus truth. Oh, sure. We were taught having the opposing viewpoint was good, but that's not the truth anymore. So anyway, go on with your Holocaust denial, Mike. Oh, yeah. Not mine. I was going to say that's definitely in the camp of a conspiracy theory that is negative, but having a negative conspiracy theory isn't inherently a bad thing. It's a good thing to teach people about to make them aware of how crazy the world is sometimes, right?
Not everything in the world is good. And sometimes bad things can be made worse through nonsense talk, for sure. Yeah. And there's always... So there's always the risk that if you allow the Holocaust deniers a platform, let's say, to spread their message, that they will ensnare and grow their numbers and grow their membership. And that's always the concern, I think, right? Yeah. I think that's the rationale. I disagree with it, but that is the rationale. Or the guys behind censoring it.
Well, yeah. But I don't know if that's true. I don't know that Flat Earthers sharing their ideas of the Flat Earth are drawing more Flat Earth followers, or if they're just making themselves look more ridiculous, or if they just happen... I mean, it's strange because we do have the internet now and you can talk to people all over the world. So are there really more Flat Earthers now than there were 30 years ago, or are they just able to be more vocal?
Because more people can see what they're saying, but they've turned into a joke. Like it's a meme joke. It's a big societal joke. Not for the Flat Earth people, but for people that aren't Flat Earthers, they're like, well, thank goodness I'm not a Flat Earther, or something like that. So I think it opens these conspiracy theories up to way more criticism to allow them to speak and be heard.
And somebody that is a Flat Earther is always going to be a Flat Earther regardless of if they can see Flat Earth information or not. So they can't possibly be recruiting people, can they? They could be recruiting people, but they're recruiting people who are idiots and they're susceptible to ideas that are unwise. So they're not winners anyway. It's the same as the scammers, you know, the Nigerian prince. Yeah. Right.
You're not going to convince somebody who is an intellectual person who considers all the options. Having the Flat Earth out there does help people who are thinking about the world. Also it's highly entertaining. Specifically the Flat Earth is highly entertaining to me. The great Antarctic ice wall is just one of the best copes I've ever heard in my entire life. Especially since like if you have a certain amount of training, you can get a job on Antarctica. It is a possibility.
Yeah. You could be a tradesman and get a job working there to maintain those systems. They hire every year. So it's not impossible to at least apply for a job. To keep the wall powered up. Right. I have videos of the Antarctic station and shit. Like it's there. There's YouTube videos of people living there, working there. They don't live there permanently obviously, but yeah. Yeah. So one of the best things I've seen is, yep, all the planets in our solar system are round except Earth.
It's the only flat one, you know, like to some extent you have to follow the natural order of things. Like every celestial body is round or roundish. You know what I mean? And the Earth is the only one that's flat or like the dinosaur extinction. Like the comet hit, the comet hit like the edge of the flat Earth and it flung the dinosaurs off into space. I've never heard that one. That's great. Okay. Oh, it's hilarious. That's great. Flung them into space. Yes. I love it.
Yes. Heated them right into space. Oh man. My favorite flat Earth theory is that it's biblical and they call the sky the firmament and they use all this, they try to use the Bible language as scientific backing and then they say, oh, it's all an illusion. The stars and everything else is an illusion. It's the firmament and we're stuck in the firmament like stuck in jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was the best.
And then usually people follow that up with talking about the Stargate system from Stargate SG-1 or whatever. Oh sure, yeah. The historical documents like Galaxy Quest, right? When the aliens are like, oh, the historical documents. They're just watching reruns of the show. Yes. Yeah. I love it. As everybody who's listening knows, I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories. I think they're hilarious. Yes, they're true obviously, which is very interesting.
But the best way to not allow fools to believe in crazy conspiracy theories is to allow that information to be disseminated so that it can be debunked with actual facts. And hiding the conspiracy theory does you no favors when you try to debunk it. So. Yep. Well, and going back to your censorship, Mike, this one goes back to, this one is related to the Holocaust. And I know they've banned lots of books and they banned books in cycles, kind of.
But the banned books are predominantly for schools, correct? Yes. Schools and some library systems will ban them. And Amazon bans books too. So you can't buy them on Amazon. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. Oh yes. I know a few years ago, this is a fairly recent one, they banned the graphic novel, Mao, M-A-U-S. It's an anthropomorphic mouse in a concentration camp. And they banned it. And so I ordered it from, I think from eBay, like right away.
I'm like, they're going to ban it, I'll order it. I haven't read it yet, but I think the reason they banned it was it was uncomfortable for children, which again, I mean, it kind of depends on the age. Like I'm not going to necessarily have a conversation about the Holocaust with my three, almost four year old. But I think if you're of school age and you hear about and learn about World War II, there's not really a reason you should be banning a book about it. By middle school, certainly.
We maybe just don't assign it in class, but you know what I mean? Right. I mean, we sort of learned about the Holocaust in sixth grade, I think. Primary serves. Yeah. I mean, history is not supposed to be comfortable. Nobody said that. Nobody said that about history, did they? No, it's not a bedtime story. No. I'm going to go with the arctic because I'm over halfway. Yeah, I am almost. Yeah, me too. I'm almost to the rap the rapper here. OK, this is good. It's mild. It's good.
I think medium bodied. It's mild. Not bad. Not bad. And it's not very pleasant. I don't know. The other one, the Connecticut, Connecticut broadleaf was better, I think. I like that one better so far. But this one's good. It's kind of about this. I mean, it's similar in the sense that it's not overly complex, but it's good. It's solid. Yeah, it's it's a good cigar to give somebody who wants to try a cigar for the first time. This particular one. Yeah, nice medium, little spicy, pleasant.
I would agree with that. Yeah, no acetone start. So it's not intimidating. Yep. Yep. Good start. Good through got good airflow. Nothing bad to say about it. No, I have nothing bad to say about it at all. It'd be good with a cup of coffee. Yeah. Yeah, it would be. So other censorship stuff, Mike, I don't know if you've noticed this or heard anything about this, but this kind of this kind of goes back and I don't know if this is truly fully full on censorship, but I suppose it is. I suppose so.
A lot of Disney movies. Well, we did Song of the South. But if you're if you're looking or thinking about, let's just say Peter Pan and even even Aristocats, Disney hasn't been censoring their movies, but they'll put a disclaimer at the beginning saying that some scenes in this film embody a viewpoint from a past time and we can learn from it, blah, blah, blah.
But I guess some studios have been known to alter films on streaming platforms to the point where maybe you can't even find the original version of the film anymore. Have you heard anything about that? I know that Disney's been putting disclaimers up, which is fine. Like that's appropriate. That's fine. I think that's perfectly acceptable. I heard that they were going to put a disclaimer at the front of Gone with the Wind, which is fine. That's cool. Don't edit it. That's fine. But it's fine.
No. Yeah. But I guess so. And I'll watch movies on Tubi from time to time. It's free. You know, you get a couple ads. No big deal. And so somebody told me I was having a conversation with somebody about a lot of different films and they were saying, oh, well, Tubi's censoring and editing their films that they put up and they were bought by a big Christian conglomerate.
And I'm like, why would a Christian conglomerate want to buy Tubi where they show a lot of, you know, B films that are nothing but naked women running around and blood and gore and stuff like that? All things that you would think Christians would not want to be.
And so I was looking it up and I found what I found, and I don't know if it's true, a hundred percent or not, is that the studios that are giving these films to Tubi to contractual deals, whatever, what have you, for their platform are a lot of times giving Tubi an edited or censored version of the film, but not disclosing that it's been edited. Really? So what are the editing out?
It's, I don't know, in some cases it's gore or nudity or sometimes they're blurring the nudity for these films that are already rated R, I guess. I haven't noticed one because a lot of them are just, you know, like shitty movies from the eighties, right? And how would I know if it's edited? They're running away from a man in a spider suit, you know, like it's not top of the line cinema stuff, but it raises a very interesting question because now most people consume media on a streaming platform.
And so how easy is it to say, well, and let's just say James Cameron did this for Titanic. He was told that the stars were wrong in the sinking scene of the Titanic and he went back and fixed it. And that's not really censorship or editing. That's fixing, right? And he did that for the special edition of Titanic years ago now, but, and I think all streaming versions now are that.
And it's kind of the same as, I mean, it can be the same as the special edition of the original Star Wars trilogy, where you can't find a theatrical version in say 4k or 1080 anywhere. It's all the stuff George wanted in there in the remastered or the special editions. But it raises a very interesting point because all of these films exist now on streaming and that's where people watch them.
So what's to stop these studios from changing bits of their film going forward without even having to disclose it. I mean, it's a different medium than a book, even though some people will do eBooks, but so you could theoretically have an eBook that's changed from the original version, but film, you know, you could, you could potentially drastically change things that are classic films. Yeah, you could. And that was edited by Tolkien after its first release to add more description of Gollum.
He added more, he added in more, he didn't take away. He added in more descriptors because people were confused about what Gollum was supposed to look like and he wanted Gollum to look a very certain way. So he took his criticism and added in a little more description, which is fine. Yeah. And I would say in the case of that, that's the author, the original author doing it. James Cameron was the original director changing the stars and George Lucas was the original director creator of Star Wars.
So that's less problematic to me in the grand scheme. We live in a, we live in a very sensorious time right now. It's a strange time. We live in a very sensorious time and a lot of those 80 slashers movies, I can see why movie studios would not want to be associated with that style of movie anymore, I guess, but they're fun. I mean, the tits and the gore was part of the spectacle of the crappy slasher movie. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's part of the joy. You know what I mean?
It raises a concern. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I'm against it. There's so much of this stuff that's streaming and subscription based. Yeah. Just as it's the right of the school districts to ban books and stuff of that nature, I suppose. It's the right of the government to censor anything that they want to, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I agree. I don't think it's the right thing to do, especially because it's specifically like a slasher movie. That's what they are.
That's the point of the movie. It's supposed to be some stupid blade. Yeah. I'm not overly concerned with the B movie slasher flick. I'm not overly concerned with that, but if you're... I don't know. A lot of these classic movies are getting restorations and sometimes they'll put... I mean, I've got the Blu-ray of Blade Runner that's got five different versions of Blade Runner, like five different cuts. But it very clearly tells you what each cut is.
This is the director's cut, which wasn't sanctioned by the director. This is the definitive cut that was sanctioned by the director. This is the international version. This is the theatrical version. So it makes it nice. You can see all the different cuts. You can watch the different cuts. You can figure it all out, but that's on a physical product that I have purchased.
And a lot of these streaming and subscription services, even for let's say eBooks or audio books or whatever else, there's really nothing to stop these companies from just changing things they don't like, really. I mean, in the grand scheme of it. And there is no really ownership of media anymore. The companies want to separate the consumer from owning the product as much as they can. So it opens up kind of a tricky situation with changes that some might call censorship or editing or...
What if readers digest, right? They put out all these abridged versions of books. And I'm against that. No. Like if you're going to read the book, read the full book. Don't read an abridged version, you know? But there's a market for it, I guess. There is a market for it. Certain people are very comfortable censoring the opposition. Right now, it happens to be the... What we would call liberals in the past has been conservatives, I'm sure it will turn again in the future.
I try to be anti-censorship in general, no matter who's doing it or what it's for. Yeah. I guess I don't mind having... Well, and I'm hugely against the clean versions of explicit albums as well. But that being said, and I think this is true of most of the things, is if you will tell me if what I'm consuming has been edited in any way, shape or form from the original vision of the creator, then I'm okay.
As long as you're disclosing that it's changed so that I know to not consume it and I'll go find the one that's not edited. I think it's the disclosure bit that really is the sticking point for me. I agree. I agree. I'm actually going to look up the Aristocats controversial scene. Yeah, the Aristocats I think is the depiction of the Chinese cat. Yes, it is. And that movie was made in 1970, which is pretty wild that they had that sort of stuff in 1970.
Yeah. Peter Pan is the scenes with the Native Americans and their song, which I never thought about as a kid, but I bought... Yeah, the What Makes the Red Man Red. Yes. I bought that movie, oh, 10 years ago when I got released on the Diamond Edition or whatever. I wanted to watch it again. That shocked me when I bought it. I was like, holy shit. I can't believe I didn't notice this as a kid. It was pretty shocking to be honest with you. Well, it's shocking, but the intent of...
It's an offensive song. Don't get me wrong. But it's kind of like it's a little like charming little story if you look at it, but it's offensive, right? But it's like, what makes the Red Man Red? A beautiful woman makes him blush or something. It's not really terrible, I don't think. I don't know. It kind of comes down to these caricatures that you see at the... Yeah, it's not aggressively racist or something, but it is uncomfortable for sure.
No. Yeah. And it's a caricature, the Chinese cat in Aristocats. And you see these caricature art, caricature... Oh my God. Whatever. You see these people at amusement parks and things, and you sit down, you pay them money, and they exaggerate all your features and stuff. And maybe the difference is if you're paying them, you're condoning it or sanctioning it. And if it's just in a movie or something or a book or... I mean, look at H.P. Lovecraft. We don't have to go into that.
But then it's unsanctioned, therefore it's bad. And I'm not saying it's good. I'm not trying to say that. But some of these things are just caricatures and exaggerations. That definitely doesn't have to be done to advance the plot of the story in Peter Pan or in Aristocats. But like you said, it's not necessarily blatantly offensive and aggressive and demeaning necessarily. No, no. I've read a lot of Pope novels and that's kind of what they are. Those caricatures and nonsense.
And it is by modern standards not appropriate. But for the times, it was considered perfectly fine, you know? Perfectly fine. Yeah. It's awkward reading it now. Well, and I see a lot of things online about people make these videos of how to talk Midwestern or how to make a friend with a Midwestern. And you comment on the weather and you always say it's good. You know, like, yeah, it's 40 below, but at least it's not windy or something. You know, and it's all true. Of course I love hot dish.
Of course we can never leave without a 20 minute goodbye. You know? But those are kind of caricatures as well. But it's not necessarily targeting an ethnic group, even though the Midwest is by and large what German and similarly European in that sense. So it makes sense. There would be a lot of same kind of mentalities and things like that. But yes, yes, certain subcultures exist. You can only make fun of certain subcultures right now in the United States. And it was true then 50 years ago.
It was true as well. It's just now we can target different groups and not feel bad about it. And I'm sure it will change in the future potentially. Yeah. Well, and it's a little bit. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the Lando Lakes butter. I believe that that was drawn, that logo with the Native American woman and everything was drawn by a Native American. She was commissioned. I think it was a she, the artist was commissioned to do it and did it.
But they removed the Native American from the Lando Lakes butter fearing backlash. That is my understanding. So in some of these things, it's not even the exaggerated portrayal, whatever the exaggerated portrayal might be. It's not even that ethnic group that has a problem with it. It's just the fear of being called out for it, I guess. Yes. The Fighting Sioux logo was the same way that was drawn by a professional indigenous artist.
Okay. Which is a form of censorship in and of itself to tie us back into the censorship. And Kido, when you think, well, something should be censored. I don't necessarily believe that. I think it shouldn't be censored and the free people should decide. Yeah. Yeah. The Fighting Sioux logo was determined by the NCAA because the hockey team went to the D1 and then the NCAA basically forced them to change their logo, even though there was no public outcry for it.
It was just an order from the organization saying you're not allowed to have the logo anymore. I am putting my cigar down. It is burning my fingers. Okay. I've got a little bit left, maybe an inch. I want to talk real quickly because I think it ties in a little bit. The new Minnesota state flag, Mike. Yes. There was an outcry from somebody about the seal on the old state flag, the original state flag. Yes. Wasn't there something about the white man and what have you? They didn't.
Certain groups, and I don't think it was the indigenous groups in the state. I think it was an activist organization that was not related to any of the bands in Minnesota, but they didn't like the depiction of a Native American riding a horse on the seal or a white guy plowing a field waving to each other. They didn't like that. They being this group. I'll have to look it up because I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with any of the bands. Yes. It's not terribly important.
We took a family trip to the Minnesota History Center and we were looking out. They've got a big hall with a big floor to ceiling window where you can see the state Capitol. One of the History Center volunteers came up and was like, yep, there's the new state flag over there. He was an older guy. He goes, personally, I like the new state flag much better because I can look across and I can immediately pick it out if you had a lineup of all 50 state flags.
He said, the New Mexico state flag is very distinct, a very distinct flag. There's a ton of state flags that have the blue background and then a seal in the middle. He's like, if you're any distance away from them, they all look the same. You can't pick out one versus the other. I made a comment about a lot of the British colonies or countries that started out as British colonies that have the British flag in the upper corner or something. They're very similar.
His view was that we should have a distinct flag because we're a distinct state. The new design wasn't my favorite of the designs that were proposed, but I remember on Facebook, there's a ton of people saying, keep our original state flag, blah, blah, blah, and don't give into the whatever, the wokeness or this and that. I don't know. I feel like that change is fine. It's distinct. You can easily pick it out from a distance.
If you want something to represent your state, don't you want something that's distinct and not like 20 other states? I have done a little research on this topic because I thought it was ridiculous. We're getting upset. How about the state flag change? The original state flag came out in a wave of state flags that were all pretty much the same. They all had state seals and maybe their name of their state on them. Now this new flag is part of another wave.
Our state flag looks unique by comparison to the old one, but there's a ton of new flags that all look pretty much the same. Our flag looks just like all these other flags. A lot of towns and it does not look very distinct when you put it up against these new flags that are coming out. They all look really similar. Large colors and no words and minimal symbols and large color blocks. It's pretty difficult to tell the difference.
There's one flag guru who somehow made all these rules that everybody's supposed to follow. That's just random. There's no rhyme or reason. It's just the opinion of this commission. It looks pretty similar to a lot of these flags that are all coming out right now to replace old flags that all looked pretty much the same as well. It'll get lost in the ether. I guess I'll have to look at some of these other ones. I don't have anything against having guidelines or standards for state flags.
They're all government entities after all. I guess I was hoping they'd all be- Oh, it doesn't matter to me. ... more distinct. I mean, the New Mexico flag is distinct. Always has been as far as I know. The Wisconsin-Minnesota flag always looked the same because they were both blue with the seal. Right. The North Dakota flag looks pretty similar. A lot of the states that all became states around the same time all had flags designed similarly. Now, there's the same group just different.
That's fine. According to this little bit of research I did, the seal was... There was an individual person who was indigenous who was a leader of a non-governmental group that was against the old seal. But yeah, and that's fine. Whatever. Symbols change, seals change. It's perfectly fine. I don't really care. It's not a... No, it's not. It's not going to change my life. No, but I guess that's not really... That's not flag censorship. I mean, that's just changing the times.
And a flag is something that should be allowed to change with the times much like our constitution. It has a mechanism to change with the times through the amendments. We've had a slew of amendments since it was written, but that's different than censorship. You get newer thoughts, newer people, new times, and the flags and laws should change to reflect those new times. Big works of literature, film, events, historical events should not change.
The literature and movies and films of that time should change to reflect the modern time, but you shouldn't go back and change past things to reflect modern times. I agree. Is my stance. I remember Guam and Puerto Rico had votes a couple of years ago to become states. And one of the controversies was, oh, if we get 51, it's going to be hard to make a flag. So they both have to vote yes, if they become states or not. Because people didn't want to have a 51 star flag. That's ridiculous.
That's their right to vote whether they want to be a state or not, whether or not we change the flag. Well, and who says the United States flag has to stay the same design and layout if you can change the state flag? It's been that layout forever. Well, yeah. The US flag has been that way for a long time. But we've added, you know, the stars used to be in a circle. Well, yeah, you could make an infinity symbol with the stars and cram 51 of them in there. I don't care what you do with the stars.
It doesn't matter. I don't care. Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's not a partisan issue to me. I think that it's, if I was a savvy politician, I would love to have controversies like that so that I can embezzle money in the background and nobody would pay attention. Not saying that's what's happening. Yes. But there's a lot of money going through certain countries right now that is just disappearing. Right. Right. The Pentagon can't pass an audit. You know, there's just billions of dollars missing.
So let's talk about the state flag and not that. Yes. I am done with my cigar. Are you? Yes, I am done with this one. Anything but what's actually going on. I like it. It was mild, smooth, very consistent throughout. Not particularly inspirational. It had very foul tastes throughout. No. It was good. It was just a decent stick. Like you said, I'd like to do this one with coffee. You know, that'd be a good pairing, I think. Yeah, I think so. A nice cup of coffee.
A Guatemala and Hue Hue, something like that. Yes. Not a state Hue Hue. Oh, that's Guam. Guam, not Guatemala. Sorry. That's my bad. It's Guam. Yeah. All right, guys. I'm sorry for the lack of great information about some conspiracy theories, but. You know what? It was censored off the internet. Yeah, I think personally, yeah, I think it went well. I think it was good to have a little bit of a shift.
I think it would have been a really downer episode to talk about the Holocaust for the whole time. Not that it's not worth the time. Right. You know what I mean? But it's nice to have a little shift and get it a little lighter again. So I don't know. Do your research. And usually when you can't find an opposing view, there's a reason, though you might not be able to find out what the reason is, but it should give you a little indication that more research is required.
Anyway, thanks for listening. Be safe. To prevent transgressions.