Hosted by Ed Helms, SNAFU is a podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3: Formula 6 - how prohibition's war on alcohol went so far off the rails the government poisoned its own people.
A special father’s day treat for you! This week, Ed shares one of his favorite chapters from his NYT Bestselling book SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screw-ups (available at SNAFU-BOOK.com or wherever you get your books.) Selected from the Audiobook rendition, Ed weaves a wild tale of a CIA covert operation to develop a bona fide claw machine aboard a seafaring vessel strong enough to haul up the remnants of a sunken Soviet submarine which held Cold War era nuclear secrets. Thi...
Josh Lynn of RepresentUS joins Ed to explore political pitfalls from the 1920s that still threaten our politics today. Together they ask: how can we combat those issues, and how can we bring power back to the voters? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ed is joined by writer, producer, and showrunner Terence Winter who shares stories about his New York upbringing and journey into Hollywood, and describes what it took to build a world from a century ago for his hit HBO show, “Boardwalk Empire. ” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Prohibition, and all that Mabel has worked to build, comes crashing down, thanks in part to a sly tell-all by none other than George Cassiday. And in New York City, Gettler & Norris finally see their work yield meaningful results. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As you might have heard, the SNAFU book comes out next week (April 29, 2025)! If you want to meet Ed, either on book tour or virtually, buy your copy right now. He’ll be hosting a private Ask Me Anything for anyone who preorders and submits their proof of purchase here: www.Snafu-Book.com . Or if in-person is more your style, you can also join Ed on his book tour next week in 8 cities across the country, complete with book signings (NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Silicon ...
Mabel Walker Willebrandt and the Dries have their backs against the wall. The Treasury Department has made their poisoning program public, but will any of it matter when the tainted booze reaches the masses? Meanwhile, a mind-melting twist in the case of Two Gun Hart comes to light. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The battle of scientific wits comes to a head, as government chemists continue to up the ante on their formulas, with Alexander Gettler hot on their trail. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Out west, Prohibition agents take the gunslingers' path to enforcement. When their methods backfire, it stains Mabel Walker Willebrandt's Dry cause, while Formula 6 lurks in the shadows. Preorder the SNAFU book and join me on book tour at www.snafu-book.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode of Snafu explores the challenges Mabel Walker Willebrandt faced during Prohibition, including corrupt colleagues and powerful bootleggers like George Remus. Despite obstacles, Mabel secured a key Supreme Court victory allowing tax evasion charges against bootleggers, but also uncovered deep corruption within her own Justice Department, leading her to consider new, tougher measures.
The bootleggers' perspective comes into sharp focus as we meet a survivor of the Great War, George Cassiday. Meanwhile, why were speakeasies across the nation transforming into veritable chemistry labs? Preorder the SNAFU book and join me on book tour at www.snafu-book.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How did alcohol come to be illegal and why, of all the agencies, was the IRS tapped to enforce it? One rising legal superstar from California becomes the highest ranking woman in government, but she finds her efforts impeded by the IRS's newly established—and rather corrupt—Prohibition Unit. Preorder the SNAFU book and join me on book tour at www.snafu-book.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Organized crime, speakeasy gin, and jazz impresarios stole headlines in the 1920s, but behind the scenes boiled a bizarre government plot rooted in the first American culture war. In New York City, a pair of scientists sees the devastation written on the wall, and they try to put a halt to the mayhem before it's too late. Preorder the SNAFU book and join me on book tour at www.snafu-book.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
This is the story of Prohibition you haven't heard. Sure, Prohibition was a gigantic SNAFU to begin with. But it turns out Prohibition was actually darker than any of us could have imagined. Flappers and jazz? Not the full picture. Season 3 of SNAFU follows an unlikely pair of sleuths trying to uncover what was behind a mass wave of deadly poisonings that killed thousands of people during Prohibition. Why were so many people dying when they imbibed? And what do gun-slinging Prohibition agents, W...
While we're hard at work on season 3 of SNAFU, we’re excited to revisit a pivotal moment from Season 1 with a special bonus episode of GREATEST ESCAPES. Produced by the same folks behind SNAFU, it's a brand new podcast covering history’s wildest true escape stories of all time. Ed joins host Arturo Castro this week to dive deeper into the bonkers escape of Oleg Gordievsky, the Cold War double-agent who helped avoid nuclear annihilation during Able Archer 83 and was able to slip throu...
Exciting news from SNAFU headquarters: our first book is coming out April 29, 2025. It's called SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. Spanning from the 1950’s to the 2000’s, Ed Helms steps in as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity’s finest faceplants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to training felines as CIA spies to weaponizing the weather, this book will unpack the incredibly ironic decision-making and h...
While the SNAFU Team is hard at work on our next season, we are excited to share the first episode of a new season from our friends at Slow Burn. On Season 10, host Josh Levin takes you back to a crucial inflection point in American history: the moment between 2000 and 2004 when Fox News first surged to power and a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
COINTELPRO was shut down in 1971, and J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. But the agency's dirty tricks continued in the years directly following the Media Burglary. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FBI's interactions with the American Indian Movement. Scholar, historian, and podcast host Nick Estes joins SNAFU to talk about how COINTELPRO and Hoover's legacy permeated the FBI, from the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973 to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016/2017. See om...
Former Church Committee Staffer Loch Johnson helps us dig deeper into the Church Committee Hearings to cover the appalling findings we didn't get to in Episode 7 of our season. Then, he takes us straight through to present day surveillance, where we try to answer the question: Where is the right balance between citizen rights and national security? Do we even have any privacy left anymore? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
The FBI tries to clean up its act, but will all those lessons learned later be… forgotten? Plus, the legacy of the Media Burglary. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Journalist Carl Stern stumbles upon a single, curious codeword in the burglarized documents: COINTELPRO. As shocking revelations about the FBI come to fruition, Congress forms the Church Committee to investigate. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A mole, a raid, and a war on trial. The Camden 28 make national headlines. But will their trial jeopardize the identities of the Media burglars? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The FBI hunts the burglars, who suddenly have a window into J. Edgar Hoover's most twisted and sinister operations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As Ali and Frazier go head-to-head in The Fight of the Century, Bill Davidon and his team aim to pull off the heist of the century. But at what cost? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
With the team assembled, the burglars begin staking out a small FBI satellite office in Media Pennsylvania. And Bonnie Raines takes a big risk. To read more about the FBI’s history, check out Daniel Chard’s book, Nixon’s War at Home . See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It’s 1970 when John and Bonnie Raines get a call from their friend and fellow activist, Bill Davidon. He suspects something is very wrong with the FBI, and plans to do the unthinkable: break into an FBI office to prove it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In March 1971, Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger receives a mysterious envelope full of classified documents. Soon, what's inside will change the way America sees the FBI. Logo and branding by The Collected Works: www.thecollectedworks.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In 1971, a courageous group of activists broke into an FBI office and stole files containing J. Edgar Hoover's deepest, darkest secrets. How did their actions forever upend everything Americans knew about their country's most powerful law enforcement agency? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
From Executive Producer Ed Helms comes a new podcast, Broomgate: A Curling Scandal. Over the course of six episodes, semi-professional curler and fully professional comedian John Cullen (Blocked Party) is exposing the unbelievable, never-before-told scandal that rocked the sport of curling. Yes, curling. Listen here . See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Back in World War II, a group of Nazis tried to overthrow American democracy, with the help of some U.S. congressmen, no less. We’re talking about The Great Sedition Trial of 1944, and it’s the subject of a history podcast hosted by Rachel Maddow called ULTRA. SNAFU and ULTRA have so much in common. Both podcasts are deep-dives into important moments in American history, which are largely forgotten – and yet, they feel oddly prescient to our world today. Ed recently sat down with Rachel to discu...
Bonus Episode – Ed speaks with former sleeper agent for the KGB, Jack Barsky. Together, they recount Jack’s life trajectory from super spy to American author, and discuss the Soviet paranoia permeating throughout the Soviet ranks during the high-intensity of Able Archer ‘83. Produced by FilmNation and Pacific Electric Picture Co. in association with Gilded Audio. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
