While we're hard at work on season 3 of SNAFU, we’re excited to revisit a pivotal moment from Season 1 with a special bonus episode of GREATEST ESCAPES. Produced by the same folks behind SNAFU, it's a brand new podcast covering history’s wildest true escape stories of all time. Ed joins host Arturo Castro this week to dive deeper into the bonkers escape of Oleg Gordievsky, the Cold War double-agent who helped avoid nuclear annihilation during Able Archer 83 and was able to slip through the clutches of the KGB.

Greatest Escapes is produced by iHeartPodcasts and FilmNation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio.

Please listen and follow here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-greatest-escapes-259897937/

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Exciting news from SNAFU headquarters: our first book is coming out April 29, 2025. It's called SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. Spanning from the 1950’s to the 2000’s, Ed Helms steps in as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity’s finest faceplants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to training felines as CIA spies to weaponizing the weather, this book will unpack the incredibly ironic decision-making and hilariously terrifying aftermath of America’s biggest mishaps. Make sure to preorder your copy now at SNAFU-Book.com

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While the SNAFU Team is hard at work on our next season, we are excited to share the first episode of a new season from our friends at Slow Burn. On Season 10, host Josh Levin takes you back to a crucial inflection point in American history: the moment between 2000 and 2004 when Fox News first surged to power and a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it.

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Robert sits down with the great Ed Helms to discuss Curtis Yarvin, the American philosopher of dictatorship whose ideas inspired J.D. Vance.

(2 Part Series)

Sources:

1. Curtis Yarvin, Political Theorist - Tablet Magazine
2. Who is Curtis Yarvin, the monarchist, anti-democracy blogger? | Vox
3. Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich (thebaffler.com)
4. A Founder's Farewell • Blog • urbit.org
5. Interview with Curtis Yarvin — Max Raskin
6. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trumps-vow-to-fire-thousands-of-crooked-federal-workers-prompts-alarm/
7. https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
8. https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
9. https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-moldbug-variations-pein
10. https://glasgowmuseumsslavery.co.uk/2020/11/18/thomas-carlyle-historian-writer-racist/
11. https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/05/ol5-shortest-way-to-world-peace/
12. https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/ego/cult_of_the_dead_cow/cdc252.html
13. http://www.textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0234.txt
14. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-trump-harris-high-status-males-4chan-b2606617.html
15. https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2-profit-strategies-for-our/
16. https://academic.oup.com/book/25370
17. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curtis-yarvin-thiel-carlyle-monarchism-reactionary
18. https://www.amazon.com/Key-Thinkers-Radical-Right-Democracy-ebook/dp/B07LFKWCV2

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COINTELPRO was shut down in 1971, and J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. But the agency's dirty tricks continued in the years directly following the Media Burglary. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FBI's interactions with the American Indian Movement. Scholar, historian, and podcast host Nick Estes joins SNAFU to talk about how COINTELPRO and Hoover's legacy permeated the FBI, from the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973 to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016/2017.

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Former Church Committee Staffer Loch Johnson helps us dig deeper into the Church Committee Hearings to cover the appalling findings we didn't get to in Episode 7 of our season. Then, he takes us straight through to present day surveillance, where we try to answer the question: Where is the right balance between citizen rights and national security? Do we even have any privacy left anymore?

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The FBI tries to clean up its act, but will all those lessons learned later be… forgotten? Plus, the legacy of the Media Burglary.

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Journalist Carl Stern stumbles upon a single, curious codeword in the burglarized documents: COINTELPRO. As shocking revelations about the FBI come to fruition, Congress forms the Church Committee to investigate.

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A mole, a raid, and a war on trial. The Camden 28 make national headlines. But will their trial jeopardize the identities of the Media burglars?

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The FBI hunts the burglars, who suddenly have a window into J. Edgar Hoover's most twisted and sinister operations.

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