PicoBlog

by Ed Irving

Blowback is a podcast about the fuse trailing up to the bomb. Meetings between future revolutionaries, midnight airlifts of rifles and bullets, and page-inches of yellow journalism. Through first-hand accounts and publicly available sources, Brendan James and Noah Kulwin move along the timeline of American empire to show how our actions have reactions and nothing is ever as cut and dry as it is presented. The path they’ve chosen to tread is well trodden, but their footsteps stand out due to the sheer quality of their production, and their dedication to acquiring those firsthand accounts. I can’t emphasize enough how much Blowback excels at presentation, it is a cinematic recounting underpinned by a synth driven score composed by James (which has now been fleshed out into an album), drawing influence from the scores of eighties slasher flicks, a gamut of eighties music including Wendy Carlos, Tangerine Dream, Depeche Mode, and pop punk.  Alongside collaborators Marty Sulkow, Joe Valle, and Robin Hatch, James creates an atmosphere tailored to the content, highlighting the grim subject matter and evoking the cool, paranoid determination of a real gumshoe. Propulsive, deep, and alternating between furious intensity and an uneasy calm; it is the ideal soundtrack for a series about the long arc of history and the place that America's dirty wars and the people that run them willingly or otherwise are etched into it. I wanted a look under the hood: what inspired the soundtrack? what were his influences? what was he thinking during its creation? where is the podcast going? To this end and others I sat down with James to discuss Blowback.

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For anyone who's not familiar - anyone who's coming to see your stuff for the first time - who are you? What's your name? What do you do?

My name is Brendan James. I am a co-host along with Noah Kulwin, my friend, of the podcast Blowback, which is a show about American Empire. I guess that’s the simplest way to put it. We did our first season about the Iraq War. In 2020, we're now on our second season - just wrapping our second season - on the United States' war against Cuba over the past sixty years.

Noah and I met years ago, and then in 2019 (just a couple years ago), he said, "Would you want to do a podcast together?" And I had founded another show that had some success, so he thought maybe we could try one. And he said, "Do you want to make it about the Iraq War? Sort of like, uh, like revisiting the Iraq War?" And I didn't really have any interest! I thought, “what's the point of doing that, everyone knows the Iraq War was bad.” Now even a lot of people who supported it, you know they say that “the WMD's weren't there … It was a big slaughterhouse.” What is there really to say? But then I started noticing the rehabilitation during the Trump Era of a lot of Bush apparatchiks and George Bush himself and realized that, yeah - the history specifically of the Iraq War… but then as we went into the second season of a lot of other stuff - it's tough to get in on the United States without a very, very thick ideological sheen over it. And so we've turned this this little, you know, conversation over dinner into our jobs now. And the show is hopefully filling a bit of a void there when it comes to Pop History that's available in American Culture.

Another part of this is that you have your musical project, The Great Vorelli. Is this your first foray into making and releasing music?

Yeah, it's my first foray into releasing music. I was originally going to go to school for classical composition. And then I swerved in a different direction and got more into journalism and went on to be - before I started doing this type of stuff - I was a full time journalist out of college. But before that there was music: That's what I wanted to do specifically, like, twentieth century classical composition. But I also had interests in - and I had played in - bands when I was younger and recorded a lot of stuff when I was younger. So, there was a pre-existing condition there (if you like). But when the show came along or when we started making the show I thought it would be… or at least I always wanted the show to have a slightly cinematic feel to it - almost as though you were watching a miniseries without the video. As if maybe your screen was busted and you were just hearing it. And, so, music is obviously a big way to generate that kind of atmosphere and I had a decent idea of sort of mashing up this American Nightmare - this subject matter of the of the American Nightmare - with American Imperialism: American foreign policy with a sort of slasher movie aesthetic.

Did that influence the Sonic palette to evoke eighties slasher movies? Because the eighties is really when you get that Reagan-era foreign policy.

Yeah, in our first episode we tackle the sort of pre-history of America's involvement with Iraq and that goes back to even before Reagan. But Ronald Reagan is a big figure in that episode, so it felt very right getting that low note on the synthesizer and letting it drone under [archival footage of Reagan]. And I think John Carpenter is a big one there, I would also say Wendy Carlos, Tangerine Dream… A lot of acts from that era and before. I also… Well, actually, let me stay on that first question, the palette came out of that – The interest in in playing around with that genre. We're in the era of, you know, Stranger Things, and a huge renaissance for synth music (so I by no means thought mine was an original instinct), but I did want to try it. I wasn't really all that bowled over with this music for Season One. It was very just off the seat of my pants - I did it at the last minute! But, with Season Two, because we had had a nice reception by the listeners about the little music there was in Season One, I wanted to make it more of a project - And so I spent a lot more time on the music in Season Two and then decided that - since people were asking - we would release the music on its own and that led to this album [by The Great Vorelli] because there's another Brendan James out there unfortunately (probably several) -  [and] there's at least one other who releases music. I had to pick a moniker, and I went with The Great Vorelli - fans of b-movies might know where that comes from - but then we put the album out under that name and I worked with two of the three guys from Wet: Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle, who I just bumped into at a convenience store a couple years before, and they liked my stuff and I liked theirs. So, when I knew that I was going to need some help in the production specifically - and then mixing - I hit them up. I also knew that there was a great opportunity to work with Robin Hatch, who is a wonderful composer in her own right and a wonderful performer who has a lot of great synths and access to a lot of great synths. So, with Robin, it was a great privilege to have her on. That's sort of how the approach generated both the idea of what the music should sound like and then the way to get a little group together to assemble a team and make it happen.

You mentioned that you've been in bands before in your youth. Did any of the music you played back then seep into the new stuff? You were saying you were flying by the seat of your pants here, but was there an evolution from the music you used to make to this? What did you? What sort of new things did you bring?

Well, I’m definitely sort of on the more commercial or pop side, you know. It was Depeche Mode: a band I loved a lot and still love a lot! Oh, yeah, and they fit right into that sound anyway! Obviously, it's not the hardest thing to take some a pinch of John Carpenter and a pinch of Depeche Mode and a pinch of, you know, the soundtrack from Manhunter and get something that sounds nice or try to get something that sounds nice, but I listened to and played a lot of stuff like that. As a kid, you know, [I listened to a lot of] Depeche Mode, The Cure, Jesus & Mary Chain, Pixies.

You're speaking our language!

Yeah, like the synth stuff and also the post punk and pop punk - you know? And I think Frank Black - if there were vocals on these songs (which there are not) - They would sound like Frank Black. That would give us, like, a slightly different injection into it, because that's how I could sing when I was younger and probably still would, and I do have plans to make some more music for better or for worse. If I end up singing on stuff, that's my comfortable register. I don't know why…? Maybe it’s 'cause, you know, he's kind of just screaming half the time?

He likes to yelp!

And, you know, who doesn't enjoy a good yelp?! But I think that, yeah: There were a lot of things that when I was just a kid who wanted to play in a band… Those are your formative years! You sort of never quite leave those reference points, and they made it in here (as well as the more conscious stuff) to mimic and ape the film score mood.

You mentioned earlier that Robin Hatch, Joe Valle, and Marty Sulkow were on the record, and you mentioned that Joe and Marty brought a lot of production expertise. Did that change your way of working or… Well, how did the songs come out? I’d assume it changed the songs a little bit, but how did that affect your approach to the music?

Oh yeah. Having these other people in the room was a great experience because I quite like collaboration! But, before I do the collaboration, I do work on as much as I can alone. So, I had written a lot of the music and recorded demos (and in some cases recorded the actual final tracks) and it was just a matter of mixing them with Marty and Joe. But in other cases, things were a little bit more open - Marty plays a little bit of a MIDI guitar on the track Love Theme.

Like a keytar?!

Just on a little MIDI keyboard, but it's a guitar tone. Ironically, I originally approached Marty not even to mix it, but just to play guitar on a track. And then I scrapped the whole track and said, “You know, I still want to work with you. Do you want to help me produce it and mix it?” And that's where I got Joe in as well! At the end of the whole process, he was on the album, but with a fake guitar sound - not his actual guitar. Which… I don't know how he feels about that.

But then yeah, they were really wonderful because, like I said, I did pretty much bring them finished products: There wasn't a ton of collaboration as far as the recording went. It was much more about mixing the [songs], but that, of course, is a whole creative process that I was really happy to learn about - and was deeply ignorant about! It was a lot of fun fine tuning and (in some cases) experimenting a little bit with what the soundscape was. We had a pretty brisk and, you know, no drama process there and I would love to work with them again obviously. We had it mastered, I should mention, by Ed Woods.

Ed Woods...

Not-

Not Ed Wood.

Not Ed Wood! Which, that would be, uh, it's... It's a fun little yet another little tendril connecting to this whole genre movie aesthetic. But it's not actually Ed Wood! That would be strange!

I'm sure he loves hearing that!

Yeah, exactly. And he'll love reading this! And the mastering was another thing I peppered him with a bunch of questions about. 'Cause, like I said, a long time ago, I thought I was going to be doing music, and I took a huge detour, and now in my own small way I'm doing it again - and I'm sort of - the parts of my brain are lighting up again - about what fascinates me about actually making it, recording it, and mixing it. So yeah, Joe and Marty were completely essential to make sure that the ideas that I had, which were pretty straightforward…that they sounded really sharp and hit that that spot. It's sometimes kind of elusive to make it sound out of that - almost caricature - that you're going for when you're mimicking these sounds.

I remember you mentioned earlier, Stranger Things and this revival of 80s synth music and what struck me about the the great Vorelli record is that it takes a different tack towards the eighties than a lot of the first wave of like eighties revival stuff. Including – and I don't know if you're familiar with Kaputt by Destroyer - It actually has a song on it called Bay of Pigs. But that Destroyer album takes a totally different tack towards the 80s synth stuff, where It's almost like city pop. Whereas The Great Vorelli sound is more like horror soundtracks, sci-fi, there's a very deep thrumming bass, whereas the destroyer record is a lot of saxophones and other "sounds of the eighties."

Right, right - There's a lot of Michael Mann soundtracks in some of those sounds, and I love that as well! We'll see where we go with the show, but I would love to dabble in some of that as well. I neglected to say before: [Vangelis] or Vangelis is another big influence on some songs more than others, but yeah; I tended to like playing in the deeper, darker, heavier sounds rather than the... you know, uh, just as popular or fun or valid style from that era of the kind of bleeps and bloops, you know. And that was just because it matched the atmosphere of the show, obviously, but I think I also am more attracted to, like I said: Depeche Mode did a great job as a pop group of harnessing those kinds of deeper darker sounds. So, yeah, it's a specific angle of mimicry from that era. And I was conscious, you know! I mean, it's just this is just my soundtrack to my own little show. Like a true egomaniac, I'm making it for something else that's my main job, but I didn't want it to be too obvious or too repetitive or predictable given the renaissance of this stuff over the past couple of years. So, I tried to find some different inflections of it and some different flavors that are by no means original but that are not front and center in things. You know it's hard not to bring it up, Stranger Things, although I want to shout out my buddy Simon Barrett! He's a screenwriter and a director. He did You're Next and... Oh God, what am I thinking here? You're Next and The Guest, and some of those movies. He and Adam Wingard made those movies [and] pre-empted everyone else on the synthwave revival in those movies 'cause they were doing it in - I don't know, the late-two-thousands, mid-two-thousands? Before, I'm sure, long before the "official" renaissance began again in TV shows like Stranger Things. I loved their movies and so I'm sure that was also reason why maybe I drifted toward this this approach.

Yeah, well, and the idea that there's, you know, multiple "eighties" to pull from, this idea [of the eighties]. It feels like for twenty years now we've been mining the eighties, the first "eighties revival" was post-punk revival. All these bands trying to kind of ape Gang Of Four, Joy Division, and all these other bands. But now the later revival's all based around synths and New Romantic and again, John Carpenter, Vangelis. All of these sounds. That kind of slides a little bit more into a point about the show, which is this idea that we've been mining, or American media has been mining, these things in in Iraq and Cuba, and keep looking back, and for years now we keep getting a different past out of these events that happened. They happen once, but now first it's bad now it's good then it's bad again. Fidel's our friend, Fidel's our enemy Fidel's the worst guy on Earth, et cetera, et cetera. It's just a weird... A weird thing, a weird recursive thing that keeps happening. And that also brings me to my next question, which is something that you learned doing this. The first season of course, focuses on Saddam, the second on Fidel. It's not strictly about them, but what did you learn about the war in Iraq and America's war on Cuba that you didn't know before you started the show?

Can I just say one thing? Before I [provide an] answer about what you just said, about the recursive thing is that… One thing I liked about picking this style, in at least the first two seasons, is that they are out of sync with the time period of the show: There's no reason why a show about the early sixties in Cuba should have an eighties flavor to it in the music, and there's really no reason why a show about the two-thousands should either! But I enjoyed that mismatch as a way to really feel as though this is more about the concept of this “Slasher” that is our main character, America. Whether he's wearing the Reagan mask or wearing the Bush mask or wearing the Kennedy mask or or… the… I guess really I should say, maybe the Lyndon Johnson mask or the Nixon mask! So, that was a fun thing.

Sorry to cut in, With Stranger Things which we- I know, we keep going back to.

Stranger Things - I've never seen it! And I should also say so.

Well, one of the characters in Stranger Things, the cool teen older brother. In one episode he's really into Joy Division and he's showing his younger brother his Joy Division tape. And something that was pointed out to me was that there is no fucking way that this guy could have known about Joy Division. And he's in a rural town in in America, in like 1979. There's no way he would have had Love Will Tear Us Apart on a cassette tape or record or whatever. And it was like an editorial decision by the music supervisor to be like, "hey, you know this! This is eighties!"

Yes, there's also - I haven't seen the show - but I have seen it pointed out that there are posters and stuff that are up [and] there's no way – like, literally, the movie hadn't come out yet. You know, maybe just by a couple months or a year… I mean, they're not making a documentary. Obviously, they're trying to lather on as much of that atmosphere, and, let's be honest, nostalgia [because] that's the ticket these days as well (for good and for ill). I'm obviously tapping into some of that by wanting to make some of this music, but then, you know, I think it is very endless…well, right now…it seems. And so they just sort of slap a RoboCop poster up there when RoboCop wasn't out yet  which is funny. So, with this it's a little more conscious. I mean, clearly there was not a pounding Tangerine Dream beat going on in any part of the world in 1961, as the Cubans were reforming their education system amid assassinations - that's an aesthetic choice that we're playing around with!

So, sorry, your other question… Oh, and by the way, just to make it clear, [when I said] I know that there there's been a musical renaissance of synth music I meant [for] film or TV. I think that's why I brought up, my friend Simon, that you know, they [synth music] suddenly became the soundtracks again.

OK, so you talked about "What did I learn about season one or two?"

Yeah, something you didn't know before.

Yeah well: when Saddam was given the key to the city of Detroit in Season One - I didn't know that. I knew we were friendly with him, which is a funny story we tell in the show about how he basically seen as a particular friend of America. He didn't literally go to Detroit, but Detroit went to him. I believe the mayor dispatched a church leader. Because Saddam had given money to a Christian church or group and, you know, that it was some constituency of influence in Detroit and it earned him the key to the city.

I don't think he ever really fully took advantage of that. You know, in the lead up to the 2003 war he should have should have leaned on that. So, I learned that. More broadly, I'll be honest with you here, I think there's… Man, at some point we might need to revisit that season - which we might have the opportunity to do in some way because there's stuff I've learned since doing the season. I think it's an even darker picture than we presented in that episode about - just to be somewhat vague - what America knew about the quote-unquote "enemies" it was creating in the midst of the chaos. And that's something I'd like to return to.

In Season Two with Cuba, I learned a lot. I sort of went into the Iraq season having already studied a bit about the Middle East [because] I've lived in in the Middle East a little bit.

You lived in the Middle East?

I lived in Palestine for months on and off back in 2010 and 2011, living in the West Bank. So, I had had an interest in that part of the world already. But with Cuba - I've begun to learn Spanish, and obviously Noah and I will be in Cuba soon, actually- with Cuba there was a history there that I knew, probably, just about as much as a lot of our listeners: the canned history. I should say that some of our listeners might have known - I don't want to make it seem like no one knew anything about Cuba before we did our show- but I did know a lot and I think the most I learned about was that to normalize relations with Cuba after all that had happened during the Kennedy years, the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis in particular - I learned a lot about the backchannels that were starting to open up just before he was assassinated. Which is an interesting thing that we touch on, to say the least, in in the show. They were real, they were very real and Fidel and the Cuban leadership were very excited about them! And when [Kennedy] was assassinated - quite contrary to the crackpot theories that Fidel or the Soviets were the ones behind the assassination (a theory that is still being pushed by one of the guys who said Saddam did 9/11 the former head of the CIA, James Woolsey, just wrote a book quite against that "theory" quote-unquote… Anyway, the Soviets and the Cuban leadership were devastated to know that Kennedy had been assassinated because they thought, "Here's a guy we can deal with! Even after all this shit he's opening up!"

History repeats itself with, you know, the nuclear deal in Iran. Every time a country thinks they can deal with whoever is in charge in America: we replace them.

Yes, I mean in the case of Obama, [he had] served two terms. He stepped down [and] clearly didn't give a shit. I mean, I don't want to go too much on a tangent, but yeah - that was something that I think the Obama people knew was reversible, and it was. Not to say they didn't hope it would stand up as a legacy, but I mean that was on his way out, basically. And yeah, you're right, I mean the same effect happened and you don't really see the Biden administration on either the Middle East or Cuba specifically. You don't see them returning to the Obama approach right now.

No, and I meant to ask why are you two going to Cuba? What's bringing you there?

Well, I mean, we had meant to go before the show was in production, but COVID happened and that was that. So, you know, I've travelled a bit, but not literally in Cuba. I don't want to feel like a complete fraud having not actually gone! We're talking about history in the show, but we're also talking about the present, and we've been dying to go and the pandemic swept the earth, so, now that we're able to, we will be going as a part of a delegation of journalists. We were invited! So, we we'll be there in a couple of months. I don't know if by the time they say (or by the time this is printed), if we'll have gone yet. But, yeah, we're going there soon and it's exciting, y’know. We have a lot of friends there that we've made through our interviews and through our contacts of researching the show and doing interviews for the show, which was important to us. I didn't want to do, uh - certainly because we weren't able to go during the pandemic - I certainly didn't want to do a season where we couldn't even talk to people and give people who live there a say.

I did notice you had firsthand accounts, you had primary sources, and you even have a clip in the show where a newscaster says, you know "This is why I'll be reading it in my voice and we won't be talking to any Cubans" You have actual first-hand accounts from people in Cuba of what happened and what's going on, which is very interesting.

We didn't want to be “that guy.” I'm glad you picked up on that! That was a conscious joke. I did not want us to be two gringos mouthing off without any connection to the people there in the country itself and I - you know, not pointing any fingers- but that is an easy thing to slide into as a western ideologue. So you don't want to fall into that trap! I'm glad to hear that the people have appreciated and gotten a lot out of those interviews because they really are a key part of the show narratively [and], if you like, dramatically. And then of course the information that's in them is stuff that we wouldn't have had, and we wouldn't have been able to factor into our story so that was a very important part of the show for us.

Was it difficult to get in touch with people from Cuba who would be willing to speak to an American journalist? Were there any kind of roadblocks?

No, no, not at all! It was quite the opposite! Noah and I are both journalists, or, I mean, he's still freelancing [and] I mostly do this now. We knew how to get interview subjects in the way that you do when you're trying to do an article or a book or a piece about something, but it takes a little bit of legwork. But, no, they were quite eager to talk to us, especially of course knowing the angle that was far more - If you like - fair or objective when it came to the story of their country. But that's sort of a myth, or a perception that is (especially these days) a myth that's propagated that these people are all trapped in this little island where they have no ability to speak or talk to the outside world or  - and that's something - and insofar as it is difficult for them to meet Americans or speak to Americans - It's because of our policy! I mean, the Trump sanctions obliterated what little room was being made under Obama to visit Cuba again and interact as people between our two countries. So, yeah, we were able to speak to them (the guests we had on the show) and make friends with some of them as well. I mean, they're friends of ours now, so we'll be in good hands when we visit.

So, Season Two, obviously, focusing on Fidel Castro, Cuba has been in the news with this Havana Syndrome thing. But what kind of seems to be seeping in (if you read the news) is this idea that America used to just "go in." Send an army and knock everything down. Say "OK. Here we are. We're in charge now." But now the latest attempt was basically to get a SoundCloud rapper to write a song about how the government is bad, and, in Belarus, it was this lady, who was like, "We need to overthrow Lukashenko, 'cause my husband is in jail."

Yes, the most noble of causes.

Yeah, the most noble! Very eighties to, you know, do it for love: "Love is A Battlefield." Is there a sense that something like Iraq could even happen again? Because it seems like people just aren't buying this news anymore. All the news we hear about Iran, about North Korea, about Cuba… It it feels like the greater distress in American media is that people won't sign on for this anymore. Do you think it could happen again?

Yeah, could it happen again. Anything can happen again!

Big question, I know.

No, no, I think it's a great question because you're right that, in in recent memory, we've shifted from a full on invasion in Iraq to much more covert and roundabout ways of achieving the same ends, which is to destabilize countries we don't like and make them - if not partners of the US – very, very chaotic places that are not able to build their own futures or partner with other people that aren't us.

However, it's not so neat a chronology that “we used to invade, and that now we don't.” In fact, the second season with Cuba is going back in time before our first season over the Iraq war to show, really, the early days of perfecting the covert methods of American imperialism because we never invaded Cuba: The Bay of Pigs was an invasion of exiles that we organized to be backed and funded and trained for sure - but we did not [invade]. There were couple of CIA guys in there, but we “mercifully” did not actually invade, although that was a threat during the during those years - particularly during the Apocalyptic peak of the missile crisis. But this was a time in which the CIA and the State Department and the Defense Department were perfecting ways that [they] had worked [on] in Guatemala, [which] had worked in Iran in 1953, to achieve our – well, to put it blandly – to achieve our goals. And the embargo that still exists in Cuba is another example of that.

Now, Eisenhower actually really liked – Eisenhower, who of course was President during the during the success of the Cuban Revolution - the victory of the revolution taking power. [However,] he liked these methods better than straight up war because he thought they were cleaner and required less explanation to the public.

"Cleaner for who?" is the question.

Well, they were clean. Let me be totally clear they were clean here, of course, for the merchants of death in the DoD and in the State Department and the CIA: They were “cleaner” for [the] American purposes of the American government. You know, this is his point of view and… covert OPS sort of training, death squads abroad - These were the new methods that he really liked, especially in the age of nuclear annihilation. It really doesn't make them any less oppressive or nasty, but it required even less democratic assent than when you have to get everybody whipped up about a war. Which, of course, we still do - or we can still do. Iraq was not that long ago! But, yes, I mean, I think that [this] is the same calculus at play in the minds of Obama, who expanded the War on Terror (you know he did not contract it): He spread it to new countries with new methods that we're still living with - drone warfare being the most obvious, [as well as similar] special forces things like this - and Biden as well.

And you can be sure: It just depends on the style and the options that are available to Presidents that will come in in the future. I think that even [merely] talking about presidents sometimes is a little misleading: Presidents are [only] one of many powerful people making those choices. We like to think that we elect the person who makes all the choices, but that's not really the case – as, of course, the era of our second season and John Kennedy proves.

Yeah, we don't elect the State Department.

We don't elect a lot of people and a lot of institutions that constrict the choices of those heads of state that we do the portraits of and that we make the libraries for.

Earlier I mentioned distrust in the media. Do you think that this this sort of - I hate to start talking about fake news - but this idea that nobody really trusts any media anymore unless it's saying exactly what they already believe? Do you think this has helped or hurt the ability of America to sell these things?

Well, it's helped our show and it's helped us sell our show so no!

Has it has it hurt America's ability to sell these lies when it comes to foreign policy? Yeah, I think it has. I mean, we're obviously living in a time where any kind of, like, total moral calculation about the mess we're in is not really a good way to think about stuff. It's not great that there's a proliferation of (as we call it now) "fake news" or this hall of mirrors, in which things are so atomized that it's impossible to form a national consensus in a lot of important regards, you know, ways that we could help. It's very hard to do that sometimes because of, basically, Facebook and the ability of a pretty large part of the country to find a way to legitimize their long-forged skepticism of any power of government to do anything good when it comes to healthcare or things like that. But, at the same time, I think your question is correct that it also makes it harder for the government to do bad things. The Iraq War was probably one of the reasons that was the last time, I'm sure to your very point, that we were able to marshal that kind of monolithic moment. Yeah, and let's not forget we… there was a terror attack that that actually killed Americans on American soil that people were not ready to deal with in in their minds other than the reaction of, as Howard Stern said the day of: "we got to bomb everything over there." Now, you know that was going to be the reaction! There was so much working for (and I'll say it again) a monolithic or monomaniacal effect. You saw it in Bush's approval ratings! I don't want to be painting with too broad a brush: they did need to polish the turd of the of the Iraq case: People didn't sign on immediately, but eventually a majority of the country did favor it. Afghanistan was even easier.

 I mean, "Islamofascism!" 

Islamofascism, yeah. We're living in a later chapter now in real time as we're talking right now about Afghanistan. That that war was even easier to sell, and the progressives - Bernie Sanders supported that war - a lot of liberals, some of them would go on to also support the Iraq war, but some of whom would oppose the Iraq war, they were just fine with Afghanistan. I think it's only now that the withdrawal is happening, and it is... it's not good: It's horrific what's happening - but it's honestly what happens when you invade countries and reduce them to rubble, and, then even before that, when you supply and train and fund militants that eventually become the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This is what happens when anyone even thinks about taking our thumb off of the scale. I think now there will be a bit of a reckoning with the entire motivation and case for war in Afghanistan that was so uncontroversial back then.

Anyway, to answer your question: yes, I think it does make it harder, and that's good. But it would be better to build a different politics. That's a way of making it harder to do these kinds of wars that is purely destructive. We've destroyed the ability for there to be a consensus in the country, which means we've also destroyed the way for there to be a consensus about war. OK, that's kind of a win. It would be better to build a way so that there could be a consensus, and the consensus is "not war!": We haven't gotten there yet. That's a more succinct answer.

It was a very good answer and I think you're spot on when you say that this is what happens: This is the reaping that follows the sowing.

Yeah. Oh, and just one more thing about your point! I don't know if it was just then or earlier - look at how) to use the word again) monomaniacal the media has been. I can't remember the last time I saw them all writing and talking about one thing for more than twenty-four hours. You know we're coming out of the Trump News Cycle days. It is relentless: Every story is about how we shouldn't be withdrawing because of "this, this, this, this, this." It's like a laser directly pointed at one thing, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut. But - it's just the media class. From what I've seen of polling so far, no one cares that we're leaving Afghanistan per-se. They may have knock on effects where Biden is seen as weak or whatever, but not because of Afghanistan. More what's in the air and how the media tends to cover a president when he's, you know, being attacked by the media. But, yeah, they're trying to recapture what they had in 2003 in this moment as that as that forger of opinion.

Yes, exactly! The government wants to get back the importance they had when they were telling everyone that New York just got blown up.

Yeah, and Biden, no big fan here - but Biden clearly thinks he has - whatever - the capital, the influence, the necessary leverage, to go "Yeah, I don't care what you're saying," you know. I mean it! He clearly feels he has that, and so they're just throwing a big tantrum really. Again, I don't want to downplay the violence that's happening in Afghanistan. I would only want to redirect attention to why it is happening in the first place.

As historical figures and historical moments, what are some quick contrasts you could put between Castro and Saddam, and between the war in Iraq and the ongoing efforts to overthrow the Cuban Government?

Well, the big one that stands out between the two cases is the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the nineties following the Gulf War, which were crippling. They essentially turned Iraq into a failed state or pretty close to it, and we said that they were “humanitarian” and that we would excuse things like medicine or parts needed for infrastructure - but that's always something we say. You look closer and you find that we actually block parts that are necessary for other parts that allow for those things to really continue to function.

We dug up quotes from the Washington Post -  fully available to people at the time - from DoD guys saying the point of these sanctions is to hurt the Iraqi people. It's to make people suffer so that there is some kind of coup against Saddam or uprising against Saddam. It's to hurt the country so that they eventually do what we want. It's not to help anybody, and these were military men speaking very – well – honestly!

This is incredibly similar to the Cuban embargo, which has existed for even longer and has not [caused] the country to have failed - but it certainly made it very difficult for them to build their own future. Of course, the method is very clear: you choke someone for 60 years and then complain that you know that that that they're stumbling around wheezing and unable to [generate] an economy that's as dynamic as it should be. That is a very tried and true method. Our show does not elide that fact: Cubans are hurting. Trump slapped on over 200 new sanctions that Biden has not only not removed but, after the protests this summer, he's imposed new sanctions in addition to the Trump sanctions. Throw in the COVID pandemic which shut down tourism in a country where tourism is now the main industry - they don't have a lot of dollars.

They have sent new sanctions, and the embargo, and reduced income, and a pandemic to treat – [it all] costs money. The fact that they are still on their feet at all as a revolutionary government that guarantees people what they can [when it comes to services] like health care and education for free [considering], uou know, all this pressure coming from the “Great Satan” 90 miles to their north? That's an achievement: That's not a failure, it's not a failed state.

Neither [of] those things, by the way, were "wars" that we inflicted on them.

Yeah, it was Not Technically a War.

Yeah, not technically a war. There weren't military assaults on them. They were something really that can be far more deadly in the long term -and we did that to both Iraq and Cuba.

Of what I was just saying, yeah, I mean… Of course, the greatest similarity that you could say is that they were both Anti-American figures. At a certain point on the world stage and they had reason to be, both of them had good reason to be. Saddam did have Cuban doctors treat him at one point however, but they treat everybody.

Beyond that, I mean, there's really there's no similarity whatsoever - as far as they are as leaders. Saddam is a very nasty customer: he committed genocide, massacred a bunch of Shia in his country, [and] he invaded another country. Two countries. Fidel never did any of that: He never invaded anyone else. He sent troops to help Angola fight South Africa and the CIA. He didn't invade Angola against their will. They asked for his help and [his assistance] not only [drove] out the South Africans but also indirectly helped lead to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It's pretty different from Saddam invading Iran and causing one of the most destructive wars of the twentieth century - which he did with America's say-so.

So, they're very different. Saddam was also a huge anticommunist: The Ba'ath Party that he rose to power through was an American friend. There is some speculation that, because they slaughtered communists in Iraq (a very influential Communist Party until they were gutted alive)… There's some of the agents of oil interests in Iraq, not the American government per-se, but the oil companies helped transport people transport communists to concentration camps in in Iraq. And the Ba'ath Party eventually just became Saddam-ism. He eventually runs afoul of the United States because- to be too glib about it- well, essentially, we didn't need him anymore: He had walloped Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. Then we gave him the green light to invade Kuwait and then we turned on him as soon as he did it. Which is quite an interesting and honestly kind of suspicious example, because we sold [him] a bunch of military equipment, told him we didn't mind if he invaded Kuwait, and then - as soon as he did it - we blew him up!

Anyway, Cuba did not support, for example, the invasion of Kuwait that Saddam carried out. It opposed that just as it opposed the American War on Iraq - both in 1991 and in 2003. So, there's really no comparison. Fidel did not run a kleptocratic “family-run” business. His brother was defense minister, but, I mean, it's not like the rest of his family [is] living large in Cuba with giant gold plated mansions or gold plated toilets or whatever. He didn't write a book in his own blood.

You know, Saddam, he did have his admirers in the sort of, if you like: Third World because of his opposition to America. He didn't flee Iraq when America said it was going to invade in 2003. He did stay, he did fight till the end. So there's a lot of American clients who don't, who turn on us. I mean you look at Gaddafi-

I mean, look in the news now.

Yeah, I mean, the Taliban were good friends of ours - and then the Afghan government was. But I mean - if you want to talk about larger than life personalities - Gaddafi became a friend of the West. Eventually he gave a very nascent - you could argue essentially non-existent- WMD program to the United States as proof that he was not going [go with] the Defiant Saddam route and then ended up being a friend of Tony Blair and getting on British TV [and] being able to talk about his philosophies and partnering with the United States and Britain in the War on Terror. That did not work out very well for him either, though, so I guess he bought another decade of a personal wellbeing out of that, but we still ended up invading his ass, and you know letting him… I'm trying to think of a of a non-horrible way to describe what happened to him.

There are not many words to describe that.

Yeah, "Google It" is probably what I would say - or don't. Anyway, to more briefly summarize that: Yeah, [Castro and Saddam] are really as different as you could get, and I wanted to really stress in the show that these are not figures that we're lumping in together.

They're as different as you can get, but the outcome is the same as long as the United States gets involved.

Well, Fidel lived long. He lived seventy years, you know, and the same cannot be said about Saddam, so their outcomes were also different. However, America was deeply, deeply committed to killing both. Through slightly different means, but, yeah, I mean Fidel certainly outlasted [Saddam]. He literally outlasted Saddam, and, you know, died as an old man after successfully overseeing the revolution of his country, that gave his country A lot. Saddam? Mixed bag to put it lightly!

Given a blank cheque (spelled with a Q. Because I'm Canadian) by Stitcher for more seasons of Blowback, what is a world leader or American intervention or just event that you'd want to cover?

Well, I don't want to give anything away here. I mean, the sad fact is there's so many examples that we could cover that are fascinating, but, of course, you know the fact that they happened is terrible. Let me see... I mean, I think there's a lot of trips we could make back to Latin America. Umm, you know, there's famously Chile.

There's a Salvador Allende Street in Toronto!

Yeah, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! [Salvador Allende] knew that there was a non-revolutionary attempt to build socialism that still resulted in a CIA sponsored hit job. You know, there's a lot of knock-on effects of that… There is a case that people know [about]: There was a great book written by a journalist named Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method, that came out last year.

It's sitting next to me!

He's sitting next to you?!

No, no. I have a copy sitting next to me!

Oh, it's sitting next to you. I was like holy cow, that's fate!

Yes, about the genocide that we enabled in Indonesia. I suppose maybe genocide is technically, I guess, that's an ethnic slaughter. This was a slaughter of communists, but it had had an ethnic dimension as well. There's so many. I mean, I think that the gem for me would be to find a way to do a season on Operation Gladio because that's such an important moment and it's one of those things that people do not believe when you tell them that it actually happened.

No, it sounds insane!

And, you know, readers can go look it up on their own, but suffice to say that it removes some scepticism about everything else that might have existed before you learn about Gladio because it's a fact. However, it is still very, very sparsely reported on - and there's a lot of documentation and evidence that has understandably not been released. Some has been [unreleased], very important parts have been [unreleased]. A part of the show is that we try to do our due diligence: We read hundreds of books, read articles. We obviously try to do interviews as well. There's much less out there about Gladio than there is about the Iraq War or the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Bay of Pigs so we would need to, probably, go over there, do some reporting ourselves - as well to be able to produce a season about that, so… But it's my crown jewel.

I think that that those are some examples, but, honestly - everyone - anytime I mentioned any other thing in the show people go "there's season three! They just said it!" I'm not saying any of those are [all in] Season Three. I did not say that, but I think that there's, as I said, unfortunately, a wealth of different case studies that we have to pick from for the foreseeable future.

Excellent. To finish off: What can fans hope for in the future from The Great Vorelli?

Yeah, I mean, I would like to make music now that there's, you know, obviously some interest from fans of the show. I'd like to keep making music under The Great Vorelli. I'd probably like to work with Marty and Joe again, and maybe I think even in a couple months, you know, I'm going to try to do a couple songs and get us to the next season of this show. There can be some stuff in between that is more straightforward music and maybe I'll keep on this synth kick - I definitely like it! One thing that's really nice about it is the ease with which you can do it at home. I'm not saying anything original there. That's a very nice thing to be able to do, particularly when scoring the show. You know, I didn't have to book any time or anything to go back or ruthlessly score stuff, I could play along with a segment. But anyway, yeah, I'm starting to think about maybe going for more chamber music stuff. Maybe get back in touch with some of the things I was going to do a long time ago.

Have any composer in mind specifically?

Oh boy… let me think;… Yeah, there's a lot, but my favourites right now might be… Well, I love Olivier Messiaen. Second, Sofia Gubaidulina. She was an interesting case. She was a Soviet composer who was very spiritual, but her stuff sounds like a scary Francis Bacon painting. Despite her finding it [to be] very fulfilling religious music, it sounds terrifying. Penderecki is great, and, you know, connects to some of what we've been talking about, obviously - His music was used extensively in The Shining.

Yeah, a lot of Eastern European stuff (although Messiaen is French). On the less, uh, atonal side - I do like Shostakovich. I do like Heitor Villa Lobos. And everyone knows that even just going back to Bach. Bach's got a lot of amazing atmospheric spooky stuff that is endlessly easy to kind of inspire. So, I think that it would be fun to try, and, As much as I said - I like the DIY aspect of this and stuff. We recorded some of the piano parts in a studio for this album and I really liked being in the studio. It was my first time so, you know, I'd like to maybe do a bit more with some live instruments and live ensembles. Stay tuned maybe in the next year! You know we can get some of that done!

Will there be a physical release?

It's a pain in the ass, honestly. I didn't really realize what I was getting into! As I said, "Yeah sure people say they want a vinyl. Let's do a vinyl." We will do it, I just have to kind of wrangle - we gotta upscale the art. We've gotta [do] all the stuff that that goes into doing a vinyl. We've actually slightly tweaked the master of the music so that it's compatible [with vinyl]. We'll do it. It takes a long time (as people might know) so I, you know, I didn't go into this thinking we would be printing a vinyl, so it'll it'll come out next year, to be honest…

But it is coming?

There will be a vinyl of the Season Two music - yes, yes! And in a nice, big, lovely jacket of that album art (which is by John White, by the way). It's actually John White and the artist who does our podcast artwork, Josh Lynch. Those two did a great job in making that a sort of take on the Michael Mann movie Thief, the poster for that movie with James Caan's xeroxed face smack dab in the center. I wanted to do that with Fidel - so they both did a great job at making that art. So, yes, it will come out/may come out when season three comes out - but it will come out!

(Note: edited for clarity)

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