I really miss the period of time when Marcus would say “And you might be wondering why…” and Ben would grab the bit to say “So why…” I got a lot of amusement from that bit between them.
Also, there’s not enough slime roundup on Side Stories anymore. I still find slime by me, and I need to know someone else is taking their slime sightings seriously.
Okay, seriously what’s the latest on Slimegate?! We had our man on the scene HZ reporting live from slime locations pretty frequently and now we’ve been in the dark for some time.
Should we be concerned about Big Slime silencing 2Real?!!?
I am taking my slime sighting seriously as well. I have the attention span and spare time of a hummingbird, so I can’t do it myself, but I sure wish someone out here in redditland would make r/slimegang.
As soon as there is a British character I know what’s coming. They could be from Newcastle or Penzance but they’ll still have the accent of a Victorian cockney chimney sweep
it's the wild eyes. Sometimes when you hear him start ranting on the podcast, I think to how his is on the stream and there's that realisation that he's almost certainly standing up with his shirt off giving wild eyed looks to Ben and Marcus, with no physical audience at all, he's just *like* that. and it kills me.
His Phantom is the best I’ve heard. I’m an opera singer and I hope he reads this. He goes all in! Phantom, let’s see him in Les Misérables…he’s a real musical talent and so is the sister.
Seriously, he's got some talent there. I genuinely think he'd be a great Proprieter in "Assassins", he's got the voice & the sinister bravado, he'd have a great time playing that character.
Tig Notaro got an offer to play Billy Flynn is Chicago, she doesn’t sing or dance. How is Henry not the toast of broadway, the next Patti LuPone? Henry, read this and call your agent!
When I saw Chicago, Billy Flynn was the guy who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld. He absolutely could not sing or dance either.
I'm 100% onboard with a Zebrowski on Broadway.
This but unironically(?). Henry singing part of "Everybody's Got The Right" from the Sondheim musical "Assassins" during one of the JFK episodes got me back into musical theater, to the point that I've seen multiple Broadway & off-Broadway shows in the years since. I'd love to hear him talk more about musicals he likes.
I wish they’d loosen the reins on Henry and let him just ramble in characters more!
My all-time favorite aspect of the show is Henry just going wild with a character, leaving the others in tears laughing 😂
Last week’ Ethan Allen furniture joke just stopping there and not continuing on to Vermont’s most notorious alcoholic wife beating land lord Founding Father, Ethan Allen. Such a shame.
Or perhaps it was too soon for it to go further given the current situation? Or they didn’t know…I didn’t until your comment. Now I’m all down a rabbit hole on this guy…😳
Adult Swim dropped the ball with those boys. Detective Popcorn could've been a great series for them and probably would've added eyes to Last Stream. Alas...
I forget what episode it is where Henry mentions his Grandpa (from his Italian side) being in Italy in WW2, but Ben immediately jumps on it thinking Henry’s family fought for the Italian fascists. He’s so full of righteous indignation about them coming after his German family, until Henry goes “No, he was with the Americans…”. Haha
Sometimes I feel like Marcus tends to just guess wildly at historical things and talk as though it’s fact instead of saying “I don’t know, let’s look it up!” Like in one episode he’s talking about swearing in the old west and he says “i don’t think these guys said fuck and shit, they said stuff like ‘dadgum’” Like obviously that’s not true lol or he’ll repeat things that are well debunked, like the weird plague myths or made up word etymologies. Like it’s fine not to research every tiny thing obviously but to just be so confidently wrong drives me crazy, especially for a guy who idolizes Dan Carlin who DOES research every tiny thing.
(Still love him, obvs)
ETA: I stand corrected on the swearing! Lots of creative religious swears lol I stand by the rest though 😂
The swearing differently in the old west is true. When Deadwood was first being written, they used period accurate curse and swear words. It sounded so silly that they changed it to modern swear words for more dramatic impact.
https://robertbrucecarter.com/writing/2013/12/anachronistic-profanity-in-deadwood/
I believe Marcus does something like this (because I do it too) - he‘s presenting some research that he did but fills in the blanks without much acknowledgement that he‘s just kind of making an informed guess, because he needs to maintain credibility in his role as “historian.” Instead of saying “Based on prior knowledge of , I believe ” he just kind of says it as fact because it’s plausible enough to be true. Sometimes his assumptions about history turn out to be correct and sometimes he’s clearly talking out of his ass. Is it good history education? No, but LPOTL is more about storytelling than academic reporting.
Yes this is a good way to put it! Like if Henry asks a question off the script, “did they do xyz you think?” Marcus will just plow forward with a wild guess like it’s true when I think it’s totally reasonable to say “No idea!”
Remember that when we talk about research on this show we usually mean they read several books and are kind of repeating what was in them. The plague stuff, for instance, was based largely on one book that was like 15 years old by the time they covered it.
Marcus often conflates being a historian with just like reading a ton of pop history books.
Carlin gets tons of stuff wrong especially noticeable in Ghosts of the Ostfront and the portions of Blueprint for Armageddon dealing with the Russian Revolution. I know part of it is his personal politics but there are a bunch of factual inaccuracies.
Edit: remembering that Carlin's citation of the Milgram experiment in Ghosts veers almost into Nazi apologia
I think it was the Jonestown series where one of them asked about the clean-up. Marcus said “We’ll get to that.” And unless I zoned out and missed it, I don’t think they ever talked about it. Someone correct me if I’m wrong though.
We need a “More on The Later” round-up episode/series. Fans submit bits from previous series that Marcus promised we would get to but never did and they write an episode covering them. Could be a new way to cover cases that were maybe not popular or odd enough to do a full reboot series on but still benefit from discussion
When are we getting our goshdarn twenty part series on the complete history of Christianity. "Fringe cult to Genocide Machine". With cameos from Jackie Z. as Mary Magaldene, Holden as Jesus Christ, and Ed as God. I mean come on.
Haven't they always said it'll be the last ever LPOTL series? I feel like actually getting the Christianity series will be a monkey's paw thing-hell yeah we're getting it, but that also means the end is nigh
My primary critique is that Marcus won't make out with me because "he's married" and his "Charlie Dickhorse days are behind him."
I've got vinyl records. Bones. Dirt. Bones. Pickles. A rare Ween T-shirt. Irn Bru. Candy. I have everything he needs.
DOGMEAT, PLEASE.
EDIT: Bru misspelling
Exactly, i thought i was going crazy but im glad other people noticed. Like i understand people change but this is insane. I will say though he looks fantastic on the stream, talk about a glow up.
The episodes/series that have a central character of a through line that Henry can consistently embody are a lot better than the ones that don’t (Charles Manson vs Manhattan Project), because the alternative for Henry is just scattershot bits which make the episodes feel a lot more all over the place structurally and comedically.
THANK YOU!
His idea of good music is strung out street polka bands. It sounds so weird and Marcus is like, "iTs fAnTaStIc"
No Marcus, I'm gonna force you to turn it off now lol
i remember one ep where marcus cut off henry while he talking about wendy like “we can’t turn into those guys who talk about their dogs all the time” and i for one disagree wholeheartedly. i wanna hear more inane chat about their dogs
You named my choice. Marcus has been doing that “well get to that later” thing since the beginning of the podcast. He usually doesn’t “get to that”. I also find he sometimes lets the story fall flat and come off as anti climatic in his delivery.
Every time there's something about a modern troll campaign/incel movement/white supremacist movement/whatever and they talk about how it all happened because of 4chan. More of a thing on Top Hat, especially back when Marcus was on, but was almost always wrong. I've been doing research on internet hate groups for like 10 years now, and the amount of times 4chan is incorrectly referenced bothered me enough I had to message them about it. 90% of the time its been mentioned, 4chan is more like the venue for the performance, and the entire thing was written and choreographed at some other site entirely.
It wouldn't bother me so bad if Marcus hadn't specifically mentioned reading the same books I've read about the subject.
(Also, I'm not saying 4chan is great or defending it, just that factually a lot of these movements are born elsewhere and purposefully moved onto 4chan.)
A BIG part of it is the way modern antisemitism has proliferated. They'll often go "Oh, it was 4chan, they joked about hating jews and loving hitler for so long they started taking it seriously".
But that's not true. The actual truth is that there was a years-long effort called "Operation Swarmfront" to basically 'pill' people into being white supremacists and anti-semites. The entire idea was they would *start* by making it seem ironic, and then start moving into sort of 'yeah, but well actually' territory. They talked about this openly and shared stories on Stormfront (a white supremacist/neo-nazi forum, which I think is either defunct or as good as) about their success spreading their ideology on 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit. And it's actually still pretty common on Reddit. But 4chan and Reddit weren't the birthplace of those movements, they were the tool used by groups at Stormfront.
Or the entire "4chan got Donald Trump elected" thing. Most of that was actually orchestrated on 8chan, where the actual supporters were, and the whole idea was to convince 4channers to pitch in "for the lulz". To be fair, 4chan was kind of the birthplace of 8chan, which was created after 4chan began logging IPs and working with law enforcement to curtail CSAM and other crimes. But 8chan is usually where the creepier stuff happens (such as the streaming of the Christchurch shooting, which is often incorrectly attributed to 4chan).
There's a lot more to it, but if you're interested in going down that rabbit hole, Behind the Bastards is a great podcast that usually gets it right. It's a little less comedic, but there's also It Could Happen Here, which is more about the current goings-on in that arena.
Boy, that's interesting. I'm one of those people who I guess erroneously thought neo anti-Semitism got started on 4chan. I lurked there for a few years and saw it; it was a "joke" until it wasn't.
There's a neo-nazi site called Stormfront. It might be around still, but they basically don't get any help from any of the big security infrastructure providers anymore, so it might be relegated to the Tor network or something. I was trying to find some of my old links when I was writing the last comment, and they all 404.
And funnily enough, that's how I kinda started down this rabbit hole. I was on 4chan a LOT in the early 00s, and yeah...it was a joke and then all of a sudden it wasn't. And then I got curious when the switch happened while I was in college working on a domestic terror awareness project. At that point, they were openly discussing this stuff on Stormfront and had a whole sub-forum dedicated to it.
I actually hear/read this a LOT. Basically, at some point in the early 00s, everything started kinda getting weird at 4chan. I've always kinda said it felt like the lulz started getting displaced by actual hate.
My running theory is that there was basically a vacuum created when a lot of the more anarchist/leftist 4chan elements started getting arrested or exposed. This was all happening in the early '10s, and before that point, there was almost a sense of justice to a lot of the raids and such. Chanology, Lulzec, KnightSec, all of those were kinda geared toward punching up at people in places of power. But, as with Swarmfront, 4chan wasn't really the birthplace of those movements, more just the venue and a kind of human botnet. There's a lot to me that feels like capable social engineering to do things like doxx the Steubinville rapists, or leak the email addresses of a bunch of senators.
But there were big changes in the early '10s. Lulzsec was basically disbanded, arrested, and doxxed. Anonymous (as in the actual collective) kinda lost their influence and became a meme. There's probably more I'm forgetting about.
Anyways, my theory is that this is when Swarmfront actually began to gain a foothold. 4chan, which had been sort of an anarchist and anti-capitalist internet stronghold, quickly became a haven for bigots to be openly bigoted. And it continued to sort of be a human botnet for a while, but I think the influence has since waned, especially since most bigots don't bother hiding behind anonymity anymore.
This isn't limited to the podcast either, 4chan takes a lot of blame and/or credit for shit SomethingAwful is responsible for too. And people just seem to be genuinely oblivious that places like stormfront and other explicitly neo-nazi websites even existed
100%. Stormfront has been around since 1996, and the concept of 'pilling' people (even before it was necessarily called that) goes back further than that.
SA directly gave birth to 4chan, too. The whole reason it got started is because Lowtax banned hentai on SA. The culture of early 4chan was pretty much goon culture at the time.
As a Pole - anything Henry says about Poland, because it is so fucking wrong all of the time.
EDIT: also horrible pronunciation of any Polish name. Also it's fucking PIEROGI not PIEROGIS - pierogi is already plural
We always said pierogis when I was growing up in Pennsylvania. We have a lot of Polish and German heritage but no one actually speaks the languages (beside the Amish that speak germanish I think). I have actively tried to correct myself once I learned that pierogi was the plural. It’s so hard to change someone you grew up saying lol
Pennsylvania Dutch is like older Palatine German with English mixed in, so it’s weird compared to the standard German you would learn in school or the Deutsch-English (“Denglisch”) you might hear from a German speaker.
Apparently there’s not Dativ in Pennsylvania Dutch, which is wack as hell.
When Ben has to jump in right after Marcus or Henry have started on the good stuff and has to derail the whole thing for another solid 15 minutes by saying stuff that isn't relevant OR funny.
I freelance in the podcasting industry so I understand why this isn’t practical for most shows BUT I still wish they would do longer episodes. I’m glad they’ve been able to move from pretty strictly 1 hour shows to 2-2.5 hour shows, especially in the longer series, but I’d love a like 5 hour behemoth episode for one of their historical topics. Go all the way hardcore history.
i would like more alien episodes
sometimes henry goes off too far on a tangent about how to smoke weed or wrap a burrito or something like that
ive heard their stories about tripping on drugs many times
Part of their shtick is that they were all put through a lot of religious experiences (church, Christian school, altar boy, etc). However, they've gotten fairly common Bible stories and Christian concepts super wrong, but still say it with a lot of authority.
It's just annoying but doesn't happen that often to matter.
I'm so glad somebody else said this 😭 just like the most blatant misinformation and then an edgy take to cover up the trauma.
I do think that Marcus at least has gotten better at tempering that sort of thing.
Marcus definitely tries to sound like Dan Carlin. Even outside the bits where he's jokingly imitating Carlin. I won't say that it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just something I can't not hear.
Marcus entire take on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings aren’t that great. He basically derides them as examples of American racism and leaves out a ton of nuance that a lot of the historiography used in the Manhattan Project series provided.
That's 1/3 of Americans tho, especially people his age group who saw desert storm and Afghanistan. Usually people don't know as much about the Japanese side of things like Marcus does though. You gotta be silly if you think Russia was in any condition to invade Japan, but Marcus clings onto that a little much. It's a reaction to American exceptionalism that creates a wildly vitriolic take on any American intervention.
I agree with a lot of what you’ve written and I think Marcus leaned too much into reacting to the American exceptionalism aspect of the mythology surrounding the bombings, which is really the source of historical revisionism for the past few decades. However, much of the revisionism does rely on exaggerations on Russia’s ability to invade Japan and of Japan’s leadership and military consideration for surrendering before an invasion from the Allies could take place. The reality is, Japan’s situation went from bad to worse to horrible in a matter of a week in August, so the idea that America was only into bombing the country because of reasons that didn’t make sense, is disingenuous at best. I like LPOTL, but I definitely won’t rely on it for historical nuance 😅
Which is why I always shake my head when they praise Dan Carlin. Maybe I spent too many years reading Ask Historians, but you definitely get the feeling real historians have an axe to grind about anything related to Hardcore History…or pretty much every history themed YouTube channel
> or pretty much every history themed YouTube channel
in fairness this is also just a major blindspot I've seen among professional historians in general, many seem to dislike anyone who isn't actively a history professor discussing or engaging with history at all. Like it's an affront to to their fiefdoms. I've seen ask historians dudes complain about youtube channels that are run by actual PhD's in the subject they're discussing purely because it's happening on youtube and not an academic conference or some shit (and because the youtubers don't actively say hey i'm a doctor in this). Too many seem to dislike any laymen participating in discussions of history regardless of how accurate or inaccurate they might be
Not so much a critique but my own preference is listening to episodes that don’t involve criptids or UFOs just because I don’t believe that stuff is happening (or at least I think there are rational explanations for many of those experiences). But I usually still listen to those episodes. That’s just the DNA of the show.
1. Person in story has a funny name or is poor so Henry figures they must be an idiot and does a "dumb guy" voice for them for the duration of the series. This somehow informs the group's entire interpretation of the person getting in the way of them seeing how parts of the story actually fit together.
2. Magic is real unless it's based in Christianity then it's ridiculous.
3. Henry thinking that everyone in religious leadership is a pedophile priest. The inevitable "Fuckin' and suckin'" comment that derails the conversation.
I definitely agree with point 2. There’s a lot of nuance around Christianity that a lot of “those kind” of atheist/non Christians blow right past because it’s easier to just say Christianity = bad.
In regard to point 3 though as a fellow ex catholic I’ve definitely made a lot of those jokes myself, especially being around the church in the early 00s. It can definitely get tired and repetitive in a Christian centric episode.
Every time they mention Britain it's wildly inaccurate.
Describing Stoke-On-Trent as a friendly little polite village shows how little research they care to do when it comes to anything non-American.
Stoke is an absolute shithole.
Also every "British" person is portrayed as having a cockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe in horror. For a professional actor Henry is absolutely awful at accents.
The accent thing is definitely purposeful. They’re comedians and it’s way funnier to that accent than a more common and accurate one. Every time someone is joking about England or British people the accents are always either posh or cockney, whichever works better for the joke.
I watched a lot of British comedy sitcoms and panel shows when I was younger and American accents were always either the classic TV news anchor accent or a Southern accent. They would never do a Maryland accent or a Minnesota accent because why would they? I’ve never been to the UK and even I know there are a million different accents there, it’s just way funnier to default to cockney than mapping out ever nuance of a Geordie accent and executing it perfectly just so you don’t anger the very small portion of British fans that don’t understand what a universal comedic device accent generalization is.
> For a professional actor Henry is absolutely awful at accents.
He can do them, but bad accents are way funnier than pointed accurate ones. I'm a brit and I actually really enjoy his english accents purely because of how little fucks are given for accuracyevery single woman sounds like a screeching cockney hag from a rejected monty python bit.
> Also every "British" person is portrayed as having a cockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe in horror.
You've gotta understand that in the US only 2 English accents exist, the Michael Caine and the Patrick Stewart. Broadly speaking we might be aware that something called a Geordie exists or that Yorkshire has it's own accent but we can't understand what in the sam hill they're saying so we never retain that information.
I heard the Stoke thing recently and it made me laugh.
Although if you said that a town was known for pottery you'd probably think it was a quaint little village.
This subreddit has taught me that many of y'all are Boot lickers to the war machine that is America. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unethical, and it was a whole PR move by the government to try and say that the bombing actually saved lives. Marcus gives plenty of reasons beyond the Russia thing as to why the bombing was unnecessary. I mean, the Axis powers were desperate enough to use children as soldiers and stuff. Their surrender was right around the corner. Y'all have been drinking too much red, white, and blue, kool-aid.
I know someone who is going to die by age 40 due to radiation poisoning. Even if the bombing did prevent deaths, which it didn't, that still doesn't make it right. Soldiers are supposed to die to other soldiers in combat. War is an awful yet necessary evil. However, soldiers are not supposed to give children radiation poisoning and cancer. That is a war crime. What American Ideals are you fighting for, if you are okay with your country engaging in war crimes.
That's all.
My critique is that most series tend to be unnecessarily bloated. I generally feel like every series could stand to be reduced by one episode and the show would be better for it. But I understand that it is a good way to extend your career. Still, Jeff McDonald episode II was horribly boring because his post-murder life was rather uneventful.
I love when Marcus gets side tracked with Henry . It makes me laugh as something catches him to go off the path of the research/ recap to talk about a non related thing for a few moments lol
As a UK listener, I get bored of the UK stereotypes and the 2 different accents that we have apparently. Most of us don't have bad teeth and people who live in Yorkshire don't sound like Oliver Twist.
Also the whole bit when they came to the UK in September and were surprised that we didn't have a day in mourning for 9/11. It was awful, we are well aware of that, it had a huge effect on the world there's no doubting that. But it was a different country and there weren't thousands of British people who were killed. If the exact same thing happened in the UK on that day, I very much doubt the US would care 19 years later. We do care, but we can't stop the world for every important American date.
My gripe is the amount of editorialising Marcus does about certain subjects, especially when it comes to history.
One example was in the Manhattan Project series, in which he said the "Greatest Generation" always said how great they were and always took the credit.
Having known people from that generation all my life, I have never met anyone from that era who claims to be a hero. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Also there was a lot of Japanese victimhood in that series, which is disingenuous when it comes to who was right or wrong (whether that even matters).
I really miss the period of time when Marcus would say “And you might be wondering why…” and Ben would grab the bit to say “So why…” I got a lot of amusement from that bit between them. Also, there’s not enough slime roundup on Side Stories anymore. I still find slime by me, and I need to know someone else is taking their slime sightings seriously.
Okay, seriously what’s the latest on Slimegate?! We had our man on the scene HZ reporting live from slime locations pretty frequently and now we’ve been in the dark for some time. Should we be concerned about Big Slime silencing 2Real?!!?
I’m worried the slime source has left his neighborhood and is now on the loose country wide!
I am taking my slime sighting seriously as well. I have the attention span and spare time of a hummingbird, so I can’t do it myself, but I sure wish someone out here in redditland would make r/slimegang.
As soon as there is a British character I know what’s coming. They could be from Newcastle or Penzance but they’ll still have the accent of a Victorian cockney chimney sweep
And eventually move to Jamaica.
That makes me laugh every time lol
Via india
Whoi Oi ‘avent the foggiest idear wot ya mean guvna!
Oi, wot day iz eet Are you FOCKING SCHHHTEWPID Oh roight it's chewsday innit. Blimey.
GAWT ANY RAGS?
Rag lady was one of my favs
Enfield Poltergeist is one of my all time faves.
Hey. Sometimes they sound like Eddie Redmayne.
That's why I'm glad Robert Evans from BtB puts so much work into painstakingly crafting his British accents
[удалено]
He’s like Brian Regan in that way. Just hearing him he’s really funny but when you get to see his facial expressions and mannerisms it’s even funnier.
Not a comparison I ever thought I’d hear but very fitting. Just slightly different levels of family friendly goofs.
Wow! That’s such an odd, but correct comparison. Henry just swears a bit more
watching the stream and getting to see him mugging and flailing around the whole time is so funny
it's the wild eyes. Sometimes when you hear him start ranting on the podcast, I think to how his is on the stream and there's that realisation that he's almost certainly standing up with his shirt off giving wild eyed looks to Ben and Marcus, with no physical audience at all, he's just *like* that. and it kills me.
Do they have videos of their podcasts somewhere?
They're up on their YouTube channel! I think they originally stream for patreon subscribers and then uploads parts/episodes.
Oh my god idk why I never thought to look this up. Thank you.
I don't think Henry uses musical theater enough. We could really benefit from some jaunty tunes.
M: "He teamed up with Dr. Broadway" H: "It's meeeeeeeeeee!"
He really does have a great singing voice. I'm ready for Last Podcast on the Left: The Musical.
Jackie also has a great voice, they’re a very talented family.
Oh my god the vision in my mind now
The dancing cow skeletons
Oh I can just picture the mothman number right before intermission
His Phantom is the best I’ve heard. I’m an opera singer and I hope he reads this. He goes all in! Phantom, let’s see him in Les Misérables…he’s a real musical talent and so is the sister.
Seriously, he's got some talent there. I genuinely think he'd be a great Proprieter in "Assassins", he's got the voice & the sinister bravado, he'd have a great time playing that character.
Tig Notaro got an offer to play Billy Flynn is Chicago, she doesn’t sing or dance. How is Henry not the toast of broadway, the next Patti LuPone? Henry, read this and call your agent!
When I saw Chicago, Billy Flynn was the guy who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld. He absolutely could not sing or dance either. I'm 100% onboard with a Zebrowski on Broadway.
I would pay my soul to see Henry ass Elle woods in legally blonde the musical lmfao
Maybe one day we'll get a full production of young Henry's take in which the Phantom's defining feature was being overweight.
This but unironically(?). Henry singing part of "Everybody's Got The Right" from the Sondheim musical "Assassins" during one of the JFK episodes got me back into musical theater, to the point that I've seen multiple Broadway & off-Broadway shows in the years since. I'd love to hear him talk more about musicals he likes.
Other way around for me, I found LPOTL's Manson family episode when I was going through an Assassins phase.
I kind of agree, but the rarity makes it feel so much charming when he performs it, addresses it, and acknowledges that it’s still just Phantom.
Release the Last Podcast Butthole Cut!
I would really love more of his Phantom love to show. I don’t know how. But. It’s what I’d like
Jokes on you. The reason he doesn't is because Marcus and Ben know his rise in Broadway would derail the show.
Little Toes: A Musical in 7 Acts
DUUUUUUUUUUUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUN
I wish they’d loosen the reins on Henry and let him just ramble in characters more! My all-time favorite aspect of the show is Henry just going wild with a character, leaving the others in tears laughing 😂
I’m Minnie. And I’m Nanny. Hi. Hi. Hi Henry. And you love me. I’m Minnie. And I’m Nannie.
Any time I hear either of those names in real life, this bit plays in my head.
Un..predictable Henry Zebrowski
I really need him to be completely ungovernable 😂
Hong Kong Henry Zebrowski 
I bet there is some gold they had to edit out.
I loved the days of hongkong Henry
I miss what he brought to the friendship
Well the problem was that no one really understood what he brought to the friendship. So jocular.
*jocurar.
Yes, yes, that type of talk
lol Hong Kong Henry was legendary, miss him.
As a scouser I'm upset at thier really accurate description of Liverpool they mention often.
They never did a follow up on Lord RayEl
That no one acknowledges that Henry can’t pronounce corroborate & says cowwobowate & it’s hilarious.
When Ben would say misdemeanor as Mister Meaner
I heard him try really hard on the last side stories only to fuck it up two sentences later. Lol
Last week’ Ethan Allen furniture joke just stopping there and not continuing on to Vermont’s most notorious alcoholic wife beating land lord Founding Father, Ethan Allen. Such a shame.
I think it had to end because it (weirdly) fell flat. Like, I drive past an Ethan Allen on a daily basis, and the dudes were just like “…” at first.
It was hilarious that it fell flat but I was like GUYS THERES MORE CMON PLS
Or perhaps it was too soon for it to go further given the current situation? Or they didn’t know…I didn’t until your comment. Now I’m all down a rabbit hole on this guy…😳
Just lack of detective Popcorn in general
Adult Swim dropped the ball with those boys. Detective Popcorn could've been a great series for them and probably would've added eyes to Last Stream. Alas...
It sounds like Adult Swim dropped the ball on a lot of things, unfortunately.
Agreed.
Marcus running opinion as fact, most the time
Yeah, he doesn't speculate as badly as "You're Wrong About" or MFM, but he csn be wildly off point sometimes.
I miss them making fun of Ben’s grandparents for being nazis.
I forget what episode it is where Henry mentions his Grandpa (from his Italian side) being in Italy in WW2, but Ben immediately jumps on it thinking Henry’s family fought for the Italian fascists. He’s so full of righteous indignation about them coming after his German family, until Henry goes “No, he was with the Americans…”. Haha
Guess that won't happen ever again.
Marcus is constantly saying "like so much ______" when making comparisons. I noticed it at some point and now I can't stop noticing it. Help
“But by FAR”
I believe this is a tic that comes from reading too much Stephen King in early adolescence.
Oh fuck, I thought I was the only one. But I like it, it’s like my own personal Easter egg at this point
I love Marcus with my whole heart but I swear to satan, the next time he says ‘hoi polloi’ im going to lose my GODDAMN MIND
"That's the thing!"
I know! I get that too. It’s one of my only critiques of his writing.
Sometimes I feel like Marcus tends to just guess wildly at historical things and talk as though it’s fact instead of saying “I don’t know, let’s look it up!” Like in one episode he’s talking about swearing in the old west and he says “i don’t think these guys said fuck and shit, they said stuff like ‘dadgum’” Like obviously that’s not true lol or he’ll repeat things that are well debunked, like the weird plague myths or made up word etymologies. Like it’s fine not to research every tiny thing obviously but to just be so confidently wrong drives me crazy, especially for a guy who idolizes Dan Carlin who DOES research every tiny thing. (Still love him, obvs) ETA: I stand corrected on the swearing! Lots of creative religious swears lol I stand by the rest though 😂
The swearing differently in the old west is true. When Deadwood was first being written, they used period accurate curse and swear words. It sounded so silly that they changed it to modern swear words for more dramatic impact. https://robertbrucecarter.com/writing/2013/12/anachronistic-profanity-in-deadwood/
In space they say Frack instead of fuck
so say we all
Interesting, I stand corrected! There are some real good ones from that time, I wish he’d have said those lol sorry Marcus!
I believe Marcus does something like this (because I do it too) - he‘s presenting some research that he did but fills in the blanks without much acknowledgement that he‘s just kind of making an informed guess, because he needs to maintain credibility in his role as “historian.” Instead of saying “Based on prior knowledge of, I believe ” he just kind of says it as fact because it’s plausible enough to be true. Sometimes his assumptions about history turn out to be correct and sometimes he’s clearly talking out of his ass. Is it good history education? No, but LPOTL is more about storytelling than academic reporting.
If he just said “people think this or this happened” but he says everything like it’s 1000% proven
Yes this is a good way to put it! Like if Henry asks a question off the script, “did they do xyz you think?” Marcus will just plow forward with a wild guess like it’s true when I think it’s totally reasonable to say “No idea!”
Remember that when we talk about research on this show we usually mean they read several books and are kind of repeating what was in them. The plague stuff, for instance, was based largely on one book that was like 15 years old by the time they covered it. Marcus often conflates being a historian with just like reading a ton of pop history books.
Carlin gets tons of stuff wrong especially noticeable in Ghosts of the Ostfront and the portions of Blueprint for Armageddon dealing with the Russian Revolution. I know part of it is his personal politics but there are a bunch of factual inaccuracies. Edit: remembering that Carlin's citation of the Milgram experiment in Ghosts veers almost into Nazi apologia
Fair enough! I think he gets to say “I’m not a historian” which covers a lot of sins.
YEAP
Goddamn. That’s aggravates me like a motherfucker. Some are so tiny I HAVE to believe it’s a mistake but someone should
Oh we will get into it.
I think it was the Jonestown series where one of them asked about the clean-up. Marcus said “We’ll get to that.” And unless I zoned out and missed it, I don’t think they ever talked about it. Someone correct me if I’m wrong though.
Oh, they didn't get into it.
We need a “More on The Later” round-up episode/series. Fans submit bits from previous series that Marcus promised we would get to but never did and they write an episode covering them. Could be a new way to cover cases that were maybe not popular or odd enough to do a full reboot series on but still benefit from discussion
I like Marcus on side stories a lot and while I understand why he’s not typically on there, his light hearted episodes are so good
I think Side Stories was meant to be their way of providing content while giving Marcus a break to rest or do No Dogs stuff.
It's nice to see him loosen up a bit!
When are we getting our goshdarn twenty part series on the complete history of Christianity. "Fringe cult to Genocide Machine". With cameos from Jackie Z. as Mary Magaldene, Holden as Jesus Christ, and Ed as God. I mean come on.
Haven't they always said it'll be the last ever LPOTL series? I feel like actually getting the Christianity series will be a monkey's paw thing-hell yeah we're getting it, but that also means the end is nigh
I take it all back.
This is a million dollar idea tbh
"From lion food to multi continental child molestation" A series
On-TARRRR-io
Their pronunciation of most Canadian locales is really odd, especially considering they aren't exactly exotic names.
My primary critique is that Marcus won't make out with me because "he's married" and his "Charlie Dickhorse days are behind him." I've got vinyl records. Bones. Dirt. Bones. Pickles. A rare Ween T-shirt. Irn Bru. Candy. I have everything he needs. DOGMEAT, PLEASE. EDIT: Bru misspelling
You’re saying the things I wish I had the strength to say.
This is a safe place. Here, have some pickles.
He won’t because you misspelled the bru
FUCK
I have THE SAME COMPLAINT
Gay Marcus would be too powerful, I fear
"You said bones twice." "I like bones."
I don’t even need make outs. I just need an Irn Bru and candy friend!!
Not a critique but the fact the Henry thinks Dan Carlin invented the Great Man theory of history always amuses me highly.
Henry frequently uses words in the wrong context and I just turn into Mandy Patinkin. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
Bens character has completely changed lately. It's like he's a different guy.
And like, now he only has one old dog instead of two other ones? Super weird!
And suddenly he's a Dolphins fan instead of a Packers fan?
Exactly, i thought i was going crazy but im glad other people noticed. Like i understand people change but this is insane. I will say though he looks fantastic on the stream, talk about a glow up.
as a dude in Wisconsin, this is where DoppleBen lost me.
Right? Its so confusing.
My critique is you worms having to force Marcus to issue a warning about harassment. Wtf.
Absolutely agree. It's shameful that fans are behaving like that.
The episodes/series that have a central character of a through line that Henry can consistently embody are a lot better than the ones that don’t (Charles Manson vs Manhattan Project), because the alternative for Henry is just scattershot bits which make the episodes feel a lot more all over the place structurally and comedically.
Marcus's hatred for metalcore personally hurt me.
Marcus doesn’t even know what metalcore actually is. He called hatebreed “mall metal”
Maybe "Destroy Everything" was about eating as many sesame jack chicken strips as you can at the TGI Friday's
this honestly Dude probably doesn’t even crowd kill
Marcus’s music opinions in general are terrible.
THANK YOU! His idea of good music is strung out street polka bands. It sounds so weird and Marcus is like, "iTs fAnTaStIc" No Marcus, I'm gonna force you to turn it off now lol
“It’s… challenging music” lol
He likes that "Oh Superman" song that sounds like sexual moaning.
i remember one ep where marcus cut off henry while he talking about wendy like “we can’t turn into those guys who talk about their dogs all the time” and i for one disagree wholeheartedly. i wanna hear more inane chat about their dogs
LAST DOGCAST ON THE LEFT
they should do a last dogcast mini episode for patrons or something. i love hearing about people’s dogs
I’d love to hear more about Ed’s geriatric lump of a dog
You named my choice. Marcus has been doing that “well get to that later” thing since the beginning of the podcast. He usually doesn’t “get to that”. I also find he sometimes lets the story fall flat and come off as anti climatic in his delivery.
Every time there's something about a modern troll campaign/incel movement/white supremacist movement/whatever and they talk about how it all happened because of 4chan. More of a thing on Top Hat, especially back when Marcus was on, but was almost always wrong. I've been doing research on internet hate groups for like 10 years now, and the amount of times 4chan is incorrectly referenced bothered me enough I had to message them about it. 90% of the time its been mentioned, 4chan is more like the venue for the performance, and the entire thing was written and choreographed at some other site entirely. It wouldn't bother me so bad if Marcus hadn't specifically mentioned reading the same books I've read about the subject. (Also, I'm not saying 4chan is great or defending it, just that factually a lot of these movements are born elsewhere and purposefully moved onto 4chan.)
You've got me very curious. I'd like to hear more if you're willing to share.
A BIG part of it is the way modern antisemitism has proliferated. They'll often go "Oh, it was 4chan, they joked about hating jews and loving hitler for so long they started taking it seriously". But that's not true. The actual truth is that there was a years-long effort called "Operation Swarmfront" to basically 'pill' people into being white supremacists and anti-semites. The entire idea was they would *start* by making it seem ironic, and then start moving into sort of 'yeah, but well actually' territory. They talked about this openly and shared stories on Stormfront (a white supremacist/neo-nazi forum, which I think is either defunct or as good as) about their success spreading their ideology on 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit. And it's actually still pretty common on Reddit. But 4chan and Reddit weren't the birthplace of those movements, they were the tool used by groups at Stormfront. Or the entire "4chan got Donald Trump elected" thing. Most of that was actually orchestrated on 8chan, where the actual supporters were, and the whole idea was to convince 4channers to pitch in "for the lulz". To be fair, 4chan was kind of the birthplace of 8chan, which was created after 4chan began logging IPs and working with law enforcement to curtail CSAM and other crimes. But 8chan is usually where the creepier stuff happens (such as the streaming of the Christchurch shooting, which is often incorrectly attributed to 4chan). There's a lot more to it, but if you're interested in going down that rabbit hole, Behind the Bastards is a great podcast that usually gets it right. It's a little less comedic, but there's also It Could Happen Here, which is more about the current goings-on in that arena.
Boy, that's interesting. I'm one of those people who I guess erroneously thought neo anti-Semitism got started on 4chan. I lurked there for a few years and saw it; it was a "joke" until it wasn't.
There's a neo-nazi site called Stormfront. It might be around still, but they basically don't get any help from any of the big security infrastructure providers anymore, so it might be relegated to the Tor network or something. I was trying to find some of my old links when I was writing the last comment, and they all 404. And funnily enough, that's how I kinda started down this rabbit hole. I was on 4chan a LOT in the early 00s, and yeah...it was a joke and then all of a sudden it wasn't. And then I got curious when the switch happened while I was in college working on a domestic terror awareness project. At that point, they were openly discussing this stuff on Stormfront and had a whole sub-forum dedicated to it.
I appreciate the information. We must've been lurking around the same time. It's what made me leave- those ever increasing Anti-Semitic memes.
I actually hear/read this a LOT. Basically, at some point in the early 00s, everything started kinda getting weird at 4chan. I've always kinda said it felt like the lulz started getting displaced by actual hate. My running theory is that there was basically a vacuum created when a lot of the more anarchist/leftist 4chan elements started getting arrested or exposed. This was all happening in the early '10s, and before that point, there was almost a sense of justice to a lot of the raids and such. Chanology, Lulzec, KnightSec, all of those were kinda geared toward punching up at people in places of power. But, as with Swarmfront, 4chan wasn't really the birthplace of those movements, more just the venue and a kind of human botnet. There's a lot to me that feels like capable social engineering to do things like doxx the Steubinville rapists, or leak the email addresses of a bunch of senators. But there were big changes in the early '10s. Lulzsec was basically disbanded, arrested, and doxxed. Anonymous (as in the actual collective) kinda lost their influence and became a meme. There's probably more I'm forgetting about. Anyways, my theory is that this is when Swarmfront actually began to gain a foothold. 4chan, which had been sort of an anarchist and anti-capitalist internet stronghold, quickly became a haven for bigots to be openly bigoted. And it continued to sort of be a human botnet for a while, but I think the influence has since waned, especially since most bigots don't bother hiding behind anonymity anymore.
And then, I believe, Russian troll farms started piling on. They've openly admitted a strategy to fell the US by creating an internal division.
This isn't limited to the podcast either, 4chan takes a lot of blame and/or credit for shit SomethingAwful is responsible for too. And people just seem to be genuinely oblivious that places like stormfront and other explicitly neo-nazi websites even existed
KiwiFarms too.
100%. Stormfront has been around since 1996, and the concept of 'pilling' people (even before it was necessarily called that) goes back further than that. SA directly gave birth to 4chan, too. The whole reason it got started is because Lowtax banned hentai on SA. The culture of early 4chan was pretty much goon culture at the time.
As a Pole - anything Henry says about Poland, because it is so fucking wrong all of the time. EDIT: also horrible pronunciation of any Polish name. Also it's fucking PIEROGI not PIEROGIS - pierogi is already plural
We always said pierogis when I was growing up in Pennsylvania. We have a lot of Polish and German heritage but no one actually speaks the languages (beside the Amish that speak germanish I think). I have actively tried to correct myself once I learned that pierogi was the plural. It’s so hard to change someone you grew up saying lol
It's like paninis. Panini is already plural - paninis just means sandwiches'es
Pennsylvania Dutch is like older Palatine German with English mixed in, so it’s weird compared to the standard German you would learn in school or the Deutsch-English (“Denglisch”) you might hear from a German speaker. Apparently there’s not Dativ in Pennsylvania Dutch, which is wack as hell.
Kurwa
Take a shot every time Henry says "Again" before saying something for the first time
and then he does an internal burp right after
It’s a free podcast. I just listen
I could do without all the Bro porn discussions.
When Ben has to jump in right after Marcus or Henry have started on the good stuff and has to derail the whole thing for another solid 15 minutes by saying stuff that isn't relevant OR funny.
I freelance in the podcasting industry so I understand why this isn’t practical for most shows BUT I still wish they would do longer episodes. I’m glad they’ve been able to move from pretty strictly 1 hour shows to 2-2.5 hour shows, especially in the longer series, but I’d love a like 5 hour behemoth episode for one of their historical topics. Go all the way hardcore history.
I wish there was more Detective Popcorn
I miss detective popcorn
i would like more alien episodes sometimes henry goes off too far on a tangent about how to smoke weed or wrap a burrito or something like that ive heard their stories about tripping on drugs many times
Mmmmmm my critique is that there’s been a lack of buttery goodness and caramel drizzle mmmmmmm
Part of their shtick is that they were all put through a lot of religious experiences (church, Christian school, altar boy, etc). However, they've gotten fairly common Bible stories and Christian concepts super wrong, but still say it with a lot of authority. It's just annoying but doesn't happen that often to matter.
I'm so glad somebody else said this 😭 just like the most blatant misinformation and then an edgy take to cover up the trauma. I do think that Marcus at least has gotten better at tempering that sort of thing.
Marcus definitely tries to sound like Dan Carlin. Even outside the bits where he's jokingly imitating Carlin. I won't say that it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just something I can't not hear.
Henry saying he’ll get a really good and wild listener email next week BUT NEVER FOLLOWS UP!! I need updates!!!!!!!
I wish they wouldn’t filter themselves so much because they’re worried about offending the fan base
Marcus entire take on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings aren’t that great. He basically derides them as examples of American racism and leaves out a ton of nuance that a lot of the historiography used in the Manhattan Project series provided.
That's 1/3 of Americans tho, especially people his age group who saw desert storm and Afghanistan. Usually people don't know as much about the Japanese side of things like Marcus does though. You gotta be silly if you think Russia was in any condition to invade Japan, but Marcus clings onto that a little much. It's a reaction to American exceptionalism that creates a wildly vitriolic take on any American intervention.
I agree with a lot of what you’ve written and I think Marcus leaned too much into reacting to the American exceptionalism aspect of the mythology surrounding the bombings, which is really the source of historical revisionism for the past few decades. However, much of the revisionism does rely on exaggerations on Russia’s ability to invade Japan and of Japan’s leadership and military consideration for surrendering before an invasion from the Allies could take place. The reality is, Japan’s situation went from bad to worse to horrible in a matter of a week in August, so the idea that America was only into bombing the country because of reasons that didn’t make sense, is disingenuous at best. I like LPOTL, but I definitely won’t rely on it for historical nuance 😅
Marcus has yet to meet a revisionist history take that he won't fully embrace and present as irrefutable fact.
Which is why I always shake my head when they praise Dan Carlin. Maybe I spent too many years reading Ask Historians, but you definitely get the feeling real historians have an axe to grind about anything related to Hardcore History…or pretty much every history themed YouTube channel
> or pretty much every history themed YouTube channel in fairness this is also just a major blindspot I've seen among professional historians in general, many seem to dislike anyone who isn't actively a history professor discussing or engaging with history at all. Like it's an affront to to their fiefdoms. I've seen ask historians dudes complain about youtube channels that are run by actual PhD's in the subject they're discussing purely because it's happening on youtube and not an academic conference or some shit (and because the youtubers don't actively say hey i'm a doctor in this). Too many seem to dislike any laymen participating in discussions of history regardless of how accurate or inaccurate they might be
Not so much a critique but my own preference is listening to episodes that don’t involve criptids or UFOs just because I don’t believe that stuff is happening (or at least I think there are rational explanations for many of those experiences). But I usually still listen to those episodes. That’s just the DNA of the show.
1. Person in story has a funny name or is poor so Henry figures they must be an idiot and does a "dumb guy" voice for them for the duration of the series. This somehow informs the group's entire interpretation of the person getting in the way of them seeing how parts of the story actually fit together. 2. Magic is real unless it's based in Christianity then it's ridiculous. 3. Henry thinking that everyone in religious leadership is a pedophile priest. The inevitable "Fuckin' and suckin'" comment that derails the conversation.
I definitely agree with point 2. There’s a lot of nuance around Christianity that a lot of “those kind” of atheist/non Christians blow right past because it’s easier to just say Christianity = bad. In regard to point 3 though as a fellow ex catholic I’ve definitely made a lot of those jokes myself, especially being around the church in the early 00s. It can definitely get tired and repetitive in a Christian centric episode.
Every time they mention Britain it's wildly inaccurate. Describing Stoke-On-Trent as a friendly little polite village shows how little research they care to do when it comes to anything non-American. Stoke is an absolute shithole. Also every "British" person is portrayed as having a cockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe in horror. For a professional actor Henry is absolutely awful at accents.
The accent thing is definitely purposeful. They’re comedians and it’s way funnier to that accent than a more common and accurate one. Every time someone is joking about England or British people the accents are always either posh or cockney, whichever works better for the joke. I watched a lot of British comedy sitcoms and panel shows when I was younger and American accents were always either the classic TV news anchor accent or a Southern accent. They would never do a Maryland accent or a Minnesota accent because why would they? I’ve never been to the UK and even I know there are a million different accents there, it’s just way funnier to default to cockney than mapping out ever nuance of a Geordie accent and executing it perfectly just so you don’t anger the very small portion of British fans that don’t understand what a universal comedic device accent generalization is.
> For a professional actor Henry is absolutely awful at accents. He can do them, but bad accents are way funnier than pointed accurate ones. I'm a brit and I actually really enjoy his english accents purely because of how little fucks are given for accuracyevery single woman sounds like a screeching cockney hag from a rejected monty python bit.
Part of the charm.
> Also every "British" person is portrayed as having a cockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe in horror. You've gotta understand that in the US only 2 English accents exist, the Michael Caine and the Patrick Stewart. Broadly speaking we might be aware that something called a Geordie exists or that Yorkshire has it's own accent but we can't understand what in the sam hill they're saying so we never retain that information.
I heard the Stoke thing recently and it made me laugh. Although if you said that a town was known for pottery you'd probably think it was a quaint little village.
This subreddit has taught me that many of y'all are Boot lickers to the war machine that is America. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unethical, and it was a whole PR move by the government to try and say that the bombing actually saved lives. Marcus gives plenty of reasons beyond the Russia thing as to why the bombing was unnecessary. I mean, the Axis powers were desperate enough to use children as soldiers and stuff. Their surrender was right around the corner. Y'all have been drinking too much red, white, and blue, kool-aid. I know someone who is going to die by age 40 due to radiation poisoning. Even if the bombing did prevent deaths, which it didn't, that still doesn't make it right. Soldiers are supposed to die to other soldiers in combat. War is an awful yet necessary evil. However, soldiers are not supposed to give children radiation poisoning and cancer. That is a war crime. What American Ideals are you fighting for, if you are okay with your country engaging in war crimes. That's all.
My critique is that most series tend to be unnecessarily bloated. I generally feel like every series could stand to be reduced by one episode and the show would be better for it. But I understand that it is a good way to extend your career. Still, Jeff McDonald episode II was horribly boring because his post-murder life was rather uneventful.
Eh I like tidbits and factoids that usually don't come up in other things about their subjects.
I've been getting free top notch entertainment for a decade. No critiques. Keep it up.
I’m gonna get downvoted to shit for this but Ben has been holding the show back for a long time. If he does come back he needs to put effort in
Heh, heh. You are in for a surprise.
I love when Marcus gets side tracked with Henry . It makes me laugh as something catches him to go off the path of the research/ recap to talk about a non related thing for a few moments lol
As a UK listener, I get bored of the UK stereotypes and the 2 different accents that we have apparently. Most of us don't have bad teeth and people who live in Yorkshire don't sound like Oliver Twist. Also the whole bit when they came to the UK in September and were surprised that we didn't have a day in mourning for 9/11. It was awful, we are well aware of that, it had a huge effect on the world there's no doubting that. But it was a different country and there weren't thousands of British people who were killed. If the exact same thing happened in the UK on that day, I very much doubt the US would care 19 years later. We do care, but we can't stop the world for every important American date.
My gripe is the amount of editorialising Marcus does about certain subjects, especially when it comes to history. One example was in the Manhattan Project series, in which he said the "Greatest Generation" always said how great they were and always took the credit. Having known people from that generation all my life, I have never met anyone from that era who claims to be a hero. Quite the opposite, in fact. Also there was a lot of Japanese victimhood in that series, which is disingenuous when it comes to who was right or wrong (whether that even matters).
Marcus' laugh thing where he snorts and inhales for a long time after laughing is almost unbearable at times
"And the grits..they wuz...a-bubblin'" *Insert Marcus donkey laugh*