Hey, everybody. Don't skip this. It's not an ad. Just dropping in to let you know this episode

was initially recorded and released back in February 2018. And at the time, it was just four

subscribers. And oh man, even just three years ago, it was a completely different world. Travel back in time with me to a universe

where our main problem was just that Trump was in office. He was only a year into his term at this

point, and we were all still wondering at what point during the next three years, Trump's

incompetence was going to cost us hundreds of

thousands of lives and how it was going to happen. If you had the poorly handled pandemic square

in your office betting pool, congratulations on getting rich off COVID. You're the new Jeff Bezos.

This episode happened so long ago. I still thought

Robert Mueller's last name was pronounced Mueller. You'll hear it. The Russia investigation had

started by this point, but we didn't know a whole lot about it yet. We were still a full two years

away from the findings being released and politicians and political pundits

bragging about reading all 450 pages like they just walked on the moon i don't think

stephen king has ever written a book that was less than 450 pages long and there are untold

numbers of people who've read every single one of them.

And it wasn't their job. Also, I don't think I've even mentioned that this episode is about

Donald Trump's ties to Russia. And I'm pretty sure it's one of the first episodes we ever

recorded about that particular moment in American history. So you're going to hear a bunch

of names that have since become synonymous with collaborating with Vladimir Putin to overthrow

American elections. But back then, we were still kind of at the point where we were just getting

introduced to the cast of characters.

There are also, upon listening to this episode again, a few quirky little moments here and there,

...