In this spoiler-filled review, we break down Dead Ringer by Chris Hauty, a political thriller centered on JFK assassination conspiracy theories, Cold War espionage, and modern intelligence operations.
We analyze the full plot, major twists, and dual-protagonist structure, dig into how the novel reimagines the JFK conspiracy, and discuss what works, what strains credibility, and how Dead Ringer compares to other conspiracy-driven thrillers.
If you enjoy political thrillers, CIA intrigue, historical conspiracies, and deep spoiler discussions, this episode goes all in.
—
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📚 ABOUT NO LIMITS:
• The Mitch Rapp Podcast: Deep dives into Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills' Mitch Rapp series.
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—
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
02:01 Discussion on Chris Houghty's New Book
05:00 Character Development and Plot Analysis
11:00 Spoiler Alert: Major Twists Revealed
24:20 The Drama of National Treasure
25:05 Historical Context and Conspiracy Theories
26:17 Exploring the JFK Assassination
28:50 The Role of Catholicism in the Narrative
30:43 Characterization of the Villain
39:40 The Protagonist's Journey and Plot Mechanics
50:27 The Enjoyment of Reading Despite Critiques
51:46 Action and Suspense Ratings
52:49 Plot Holes and Their Impact
56:59 Exploring the Antagonists
58:28 Setting and Descriptive Elements
01:00:36 Cover Design and Its Significance
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#DeadRinger #ChrisHauty #JFKConspiracy #ThrillerBooks #ThrillerPodcast #BookPodcast #BookReview #MilitaryThriller #PoliticalThriller #NoLimitsPodcast
00:00:17
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike.
00:00:21
And welcome back to this week's No Limits on that other podcast,
00:00:25
What's Up today, Mike? Not much just want to let you
00:00:29
know this podcast and all our podcasts are bought to you by
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Click the book club tab to learn more.
00:00:45
And Chris, we had a great conversation with our patrons
00:00:47
this past weekend. More than an hour chatting all
00:00:51
about thrillers. We covered Mitch Rapp and we
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talked a little bit about boy David McCloskey.
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We covered we were supposed to talk about the book of the
00:00:59
month, but we always branch off into all things thrillers in
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those conversations. We talked a little bit about
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Project Hail Mary. Yeah, but it, it, it mainly
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devolved into like other things. So, you know, we always have
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fun. I was on there for an hour and
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45. I would have kept going, but I
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had to take Beau, my dog, to the vet 'cause he, like, I thought
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he broke something. But yes, no great time.
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Well, one other way to pitch in besides the Patron Book Club is
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simply by following us on YouTube.
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For those original followers who always listen to us by audio on
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comment and subscribe. We'd love to have you watching
00:01:42
these two beautiful gents over here.
00:01:44
Talk about books. And Speaking of beautiful gents,
00:01:47
we've got a Chris Hardy book. And whenever we have a Chris
00:01:51
Hottie book, you know we're going to have a good time.
00:01:53
And this one is a thrill ride right to the very finish.
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Yeah, yeah. You know, we've covered all of
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his books so far, including his novella.
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Yeah. What is it 4.
00:02:05
Haley Chills 4. Haley chills.
00:02:08
Yeah. Plus the novella.
00:02:10
Yep, this one. You know, we're eagerly waiting
00:02:12
the next Haley Chill book. When I found out that, you know,
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he was having a new book come out and it was not going to be
00:02:18
in the Hailey chill universe, Little little disappointed,
00:02:22
super intrigued by this, you know, JFK assassination setting.
00:02:28
And so, you know, just to give a little bit of a spoiler free,
00:02:34
you know, exposition. Let's let's dive in.
00:02:37
Let's see how it what the people are saying.
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So Amazon, it's got a four point O rating.
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Goodreads 3.8 Interesting. Both of them are low numbers of
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ratings, so. Surprising it.
00:02:48
That's it is surprising considering that most of the
00:02:50
authors like, you know, Brad, Mitch, Don, generally those
00:02:55
books unless they're like tankers are above fours.
00:02:58
Yeah. But there's sometimes where
00:03:01
where we see a score on Goodreads and it's like really
00:03:04
you think it's that Goodreads is where the Super like nerds go,
00:03:10
you know, So and if you and if you love like an author, you're
00:03:14
going to go on and just give them a 5 out of five, you know,
00:03:17
so. Or if he got a free advance copy
00:03:19
of the book. Yeah, exactly.
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I mean, that's part of like the shtick.
00:03:24
But so anyways, the little blurb on this is set in present day.
00:03:28
A disgraced former Secret Service office officer and a
00:03:31
Jesuit professor joined forces to delve into the mysteries
00:03:35
surrounding the events of November 22nd, 1963.
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Fixated on deciphering the conspiracies behind the history
00:03:42
changing assassination, they're oblivious to the fact that the
00:03:45
Cabal is still active and may face an end as bloody as the
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carnage in Dealey Plaza. Will they be able to uncover the
00:03:53
truth in time, or will it become two more footnotes in history?
00:03:58
I mean, just the tagline of like disgrace here.
00:04:00
A service officer with the Jesuit priest?
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Boom, sign me up. You got me, You got me.
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As I was reading this book, I took down these notes.
00:04:08
I was like, this is Boondock Saints meets No Country for old
00:04:12
men. Oh, very much.
00:04:13
Meets national treasure. Meets National Treasure, meets
00:04:16
Da Vinci Code. Completely.
00:04:19
At times I thought we were reading Dan Brown.
00:04:22
Yeah. I thought I was reading Dan
00:04:23
Brown or Steve Berry or even Brad Thor.
00:04:26
It kind of had the pacing and the plotting of these two
00:04:29
protagonist main characters, each with their own quirks and a
00:04:33
plenty amount of humor and and witty dialogue along the way.
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And it's all about tracing down clues, historical events that
00:04:41
give them these clues, little cryptography they have to
00:04:44
decode. And I think there's actions
00:04:47
throughout this book that's non-stop.
00:04:49
And it's also a chase story because the villain is right on
00:04:52
their heels every time, leaving a path of destruction.
00:04:55
And so I honestly, I don't think it deserves those low ratings on
00:04:59
Amazon at Goodreads. It's a thrill ride through and
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through. It's very much in the same genre
00:05:04
of the pop thrillers that we love, especially those ones
00:05:08
tinged with a little bit of faction that where history and
00:05:11
fiction meet. Yes, I'm going to push back on
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that a little bit. Like, OK, you know, we're, we're
00:05:19
not getting into the nitty gritty yet, but I liked it.
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I didn't love it. And I guess I'm I'm having some
00:05:28
reservations about it, mainly because of, you know, a lot of
00:05:32
it felt like national treasure light or Steve Berry light.
00:05:37
And but at the same time, I appreciated like Chris, how you
00:05:41
could definitely tell like Chris Howdy was putting himself in his
00:05:44
spin on like him wanting to do this kind of stuff, you know,
00:05:48
but obviously bringing in, you know, the, the bad guy from no
00:05:52
country for old men or, you know, that kind of things.
00:05:55
But there was just some stupid stuff.
00:05:57
And we'll, we'll discuss it like it wants to go spoilers, but
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there was just some stuff that I'm like, this doesn't make any
00:06:03
sense at all. Like these these guys are,
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wouldn't this wouldn't happen, You know, Whereas I don't know,
00:06:10
maybe I'm just not suspending my disbelief enough, but I don't
00:06:14
know. Did you, did you never come
00:06:16
across something like that? No, I'm going to 100% agree with
00:06:19
you because I I will absolutely praise this book for the action,
00:06:22
the plotting, the pacing, and I will even say the character
00:06:25
development. I think all of that was done
00:06:27
very well for this pop fiction thriller genre.
00:06:29
It almost is very much like a summer beach read kind of style.
00:06:33
So I think that's all done really well and in the vein of
00:06:35
the the what the audience expects in the thriller.
00:06:38
I'm 100% going to agree with you.
00:06:41
The buy in the buy in and the believability of some of it.
00:06:44
It's just utterly ridiculous. So while it's the best of a Brad
00:06:49
Thore, Steve Berry, Dan Brown on, I feel the action in the
00:06:52
plotting and the sequencing, I will say it's the worst of each
00:06:56
of those authors in terms of the believability.
00:06:59
The codes are just wild. The, you know, kind of how they
00:07:02
get themselves out of situations.
00:07:05
Wild, utterly ridiculous and wild and unbelievable wild.
00:07:08
So I'm going to agree with you. I have a lot of gripes about
00:07:11
this book, but I'm also going to find the positives because it is
00:07:15
a joyride reading it. If you're willing to, like you
00:07:18
said, suspend the disbelief and go along for the ride.
00:07:21
I definitely enjoy, you know, I mean you if you guys are
00:07:25
listening to us, you know that we're but two conspiracy nuts.
00:07:28
So excuse me, this is right up our alley.
00:07:32
Exactly. I think that's what like this
00:07:35
was just something else, like wasn't like JFKII don't know how
00:07:38
much I would have enjoyed it, but I loved like this take on on
00:07:44
the assassination in modern day. You know, I love the howdyisms
00:07:50
of although we didn't we didn't get many until the very end.
00:07:53
You know, the spoiler alert, but you know, not that we're saying
00:07:55
what they are, but you know, I I did miss that.
00:07:58
I find myself missing that. You know, if and if you guys
00:08:00
aren't familiar, a lot of times Chris Howdy will do me because
00:08:04
he's a screenwriter, right. And so typically when you're
00:08:08
screen writing, you write a lot of stuff that doesn't actually
00:08:10
get said on screen. It's meant to give like an actor
00:08:14
like direction stuff. So a lot of times when he's the
00:08:18
last time you see a character, he'll give you his entire back
00:08:21
story, like in one like foul swoop, you know?
00:08:23
Back story and future story though.
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And future, yeah, that's what I meant.
00:08:26
Future, future story. Like you find out like what goes
00:08:29
on. I do love the extemporaneous
00:08:31
details, though, about someone's background, like even just that
00:08:34
woman at the motel. Yeah, a few of the cops along
00:08:37
the way and and there's a payoff at the end and there's a big
00:08:41
scene where you see a lot of those individuals and get to see
00:08:45
what became of their story. So I love this kind of future
00:08:48
forward that Chris Howdy does. And the last thing we'll leave
00:08:51
you with before we get into the big spoilers.
00:08:54
The number one Howdy ISM the twist guys.
00:08:58
A shocking ending to this one. A twist nobody saw coming.
00:09:03
A AA double Howdy twist. He's the master of it.
00:09:07
You. I'm going to guarantee some of
00:09:09
those comments that went lower than four out of five.
00:09:12
Guarantee you they didn't finish the book, didn't get to the
00:09:14
twist, did not get to the twist in the pay off.
00:09:16
And that's I. Mean it's it's a howdy ISM right
00:09:19
it is I mean you know and I don't know if like do all of our
00:09:25
books have like a all of our books don't have A twist.
00:09:27
They have like maybe like a subtle like change, like where
00:09:29
where you the the protagonist like figure something out, but
00:09:35
how he always has like some like 180, like, you know, just going
00:09:39
to mind blow you at the end. And as soon as we got there, I
00:09:43
was like, Yep, that's it. You texted me immediately.
00:09:47
I think the difference with him too, is he does it in a way
00:09:49
that's so subtle, like you said, but when you go and reread it, I
00:09:54
bet it's just an absolute pleasure to be like, how did I
00:09:57
miss that? How did I miss that?
00:09:58
There was a little clue here, a little clue there.
00:10:00
I think he also plants seeds along the way that you never see
00:10:04
coming. So it is a major twist.
00:10:06
It's a huge turn around, but the same time you're almost in a
00:10:10
position to buy it, to believe it, like he sold it to you along
00:10:13
the way. He's a great salesman.
00:10:16
And we've only talked to him once.
00:10:17
I would love to ask him if like, does he when he's writing, does
00:10:20
he know the twist in the beginning?
00:10:23
Yeah. You know, like, is it and then
00:10:27
he writes around it or as he's writing, he's figuring out what
00:10:30
the twist will be. You know, I feel like that would
00:10:32
be that would be harder. But you know, then knowing what
00:10:36
you wanted, like, you know, you start with A twist and then you
00:10:38
like sort of build the story around that.
00:10:39
But. And then what does your editing
00:10:41
process look like? Yeah.
00:10:42
Exactly because then you can go back once you once you once you
00:10:44
have that, then you can go back and start, you know, sort of
00:10:47
filtering it in, right. Prepping it, yeah, but you have
00:10:50
to do that in a way that's natural.
00:10:52
Doesn't. Can't.
00:10:53
Do it doesn't give it away. It's not.
00:10:54
Jarring. It's not too much.
00:10:56
It's not too little where you don't see it.
00:10:57
Yeah, sometimes you're blindsided by it, but it's
00:11:02
always done very tastefully. I feel like the twist.
00:11:05
Deep state I was. That's the big one.
00:11:07
I was absolutely blindsided by that.
00:11:09
The second one too, though with Hayley Chill's friend, so we'll
00:11:12
leave it at that. Love the Haley Chill universe.
00:11:15
We're we're delving into we we we spoilers, spoiler
00:11:19
territories, so we'll. Do it.
00:11:21
Give them a spoiler warning, Yeah.
00:11:23
We are going to talk. We may delve into some of the
00:11:26
other Chris Howdy books. So if you, you know, you don't
00:11:29
want any spoilers, well, especially on this book, you
00:11:33
know, stop this. Go read it, come back, listen to
00:11:37
us again. But yeah, no, we got to get into
00:11:39
it. The Big 1 Here it comes.
00:11:42
Pause the podcast. If you did not read Dead Ringer
00:11:45
JFK Alive, that is wild as absolutely.
00:11:52
But he's 108 years old. Who writes that shit?
00:11:56
Like come on, who does that? That's.
00:11:57
Crazy, that's. Such a risk you are you are
00:12:00
risking and staking so much about your, you know,
00:12:03
reputation, your credibility to do that and to pull it off.
00:12:07
I think it made sense. I think it completely made sense
00:12:09
for all the other things I don't buy into how they get out of
00:12:12
some some that I'm a filled scene.
00:12:15
That part I actually bought into.
00:12:17
Wow I didn't have. Mainly because I didn't realize
00:12:20
until they said he was 108, like I, you know, because you could
00:12:24
easily set the story like, I don't know, 10 years and he
00:12:27
could have been 98, you know, like, or, or, you know, 20 years
00:12:32
ago. But yeah, that, that to me like
00:12:35
was just like, wow, all right, that's bold.
00:12:37
That's like just the choice of like of setting that and the
00:12:40
fact that, you know, he he then goes on to have a second family,
00:12:45
you know, to have more grandkids and.
00:12:50
In his nature, I might say. Yeah.
00:12:52
From what I've. Heard.
00:12:55
But it wasn't only like I was wondering if you were texting me
00:13:00
when we found out that Chris Danti was his uncle.
00:13:05
Yeah. Because that was like a not as
00:13:07
big as obviously the JFK review, but that that was still like a
00:13:14
big revelation. And I didn't quite.
00:13:16
I didn't quite see that coming on either, did you?
00:13:19
No, yeah. I'm also curious, am I wrong in
00:13:22
reading into it that Christante, there was also a body double for
00:13:24
Lee Harvey Oswald, that that was a thing?
00:13:27
Or was that kind of one of those rabbit hole conspiracies that
00:13:30
actually just muddied the waters?
00:13:32
Because part of me thought that could have been Chris Dante,
00:13:35
too. No, I think I think that was his
00:13:38
dad. Oh, yes, yes, yes, that's right.
00:13:43
Yes, that was Uncle Philip. Uncle Phil.
00:13:45
Yeah. Was was in the CIA and was
00:13:49
essentially the body double like the guy who went, that's what it
00:13:52
was, you know, posed as, you know, coming to the Soviet Union
00:13:56
to sort of build this whole back story, right.
00:13:59
Yeah, that was where it was getting a little weird as I was
00:14:01
trying to see how this fit together.
00:14:03
But you knew something was up. Once we found out about TO
00:14:06
Philip and it was like he he was there and won Verdugo's
00:14:09
childhood. I was like, OK, hold on.
00:14:12
This guy Verdugo is much more intimately involved in this than
00:14:15
I would have ever thought. And so that was one of those
00:14:17
things that I think prepped us when we heard that his
00:14:20
grandfather is actually JFK. We already were connecting
00:14:24
Verdugo's back story and we were already clued into the fact that
00:14:28
Olivia, who left this whole treasure hunt in his hands, and
00:14:31
Tarasenko, the guy who actually planted all the clues, they knew
00:14:35
Verdugo had a had a role to play.
00:14:37
It was just we as the reader were strung along of like, why
00:14:40
is this Jesuit priest so into this?
00:14:42
Why is he the one who has to follow these clues?
00:14:44
And it slowly fell, OK, his family connection, something in
00:14:48
his history, in his childhood. And so, yeah, that could have
00:14:51
been the big reveal. And then boom, he Chris just
00:14:54
pulls the rug out from under us again and there's a bigger
00:14:56
reveal. Yeah, because in the beginning
00:14:59
I'm like, all right, so this random Jesuit priest, you know,
00:15:05
happen to be friends with, you know, this archivist, and he's
00:15:10
just like one of the world's foremost historians on JFK and,
00:15:14
like, that's what we're going with.
00:15:15
But when you once you get to the end and you look back on all of
00:15:18
it, sure, it makes complete sense.
00:15:20
Like, obviously, you know, his parents probably were talking a
00:15:24
lot about the situation and and it stirred up fervor in him.
00:15:27
So he grew up in like this, this world of wanting, maybe wanting
00:15:31
to know more, maybe maybe that there have been subliminal like
00:15:34
things that his mom and dad had like done at an early age that
00:15:38
planted these seeds that made him want to like study this even
00:15:40
more. And then obviously the reason he
00:15:43
would be involved is because Terasenko figured out who he
00:15:46
was, you know, and so. And made sure Olivia befriended
00:15:50
him. When he because he kept trying
00:15:51
to reach out to reach outreach out.
00:15:53
This guy's like, I don't want to talk to this crazy ass man.
00:15:55
And then finally, like on his deathbed, he's like, all right,
00:15:58
I will make sure that he will. You know, I'll at least lay
00:16:01
these seeds with by letting Olivia know and then obviously
00:16:05
putting Olivia in danger. But yeah, it it makes when
00:16:09
you're going through it, it's like, all right, like who, who
00:16:12
the hell really is this priest? Why is he involved?
00:16:14
But when you get to the end of the makes complete sense.
00:16:17
So. It, it was one of the probably
00:16:19
the original gripe that I had of why I wasn't bought in was this
00:16:23
Jesuit brother who does the JFK stuff was like, OK, that's
00:16:29
weird. Then on top of that, the
00:16:30
disgraced Secret Service agent Mingus just happened to be
00:16:34
dating her, who also happened to at one point date Tarasenko.
00:16:38
They all had this like love triangle relationship.
00:16:40
It was like, it's just a little too handy that all these people
00:16:45
are connected to this Olivia woman in such a convenient way.
00:16:48
And their skill set is exactly what's needed.
00:16:50
The academic with a religious background who can kind of take
00:16:53
down the the Kristante network and all that and understand
00:16:57
their radical extremist faith. But you also partner in with a
00:17:02
Secret Service agent who knows about protection and would give
00:17:04
his life for a president and a little bit of that.
00:17:06
Poetic justices he does. He he, he saves his life.
00:17:11
He he takes the bullet. For the president, he.
00:17:13
Saves the president and I do in the end like that arc that this
00:17:17
disgraced Secret Service agent who was always told by his
00:17:20
father you're just a Mingus, you amount to nothing.
00:17:22
Our family's dirt will always be that way.
00:17:25
And he wanted to prove him wrong by getting the job, but then
00:17:27
scandal hit. So it's like down on his luck.
00:17:30
And finally he gets to come full circle and one, save the
00:17:33
president, but then also 2 honor those who died in the wake with
00:17:37
that really moving tribute that he and the security guard bury
00:17:41
the names of the bus people. So it's all like poetic and it's
00:17:45
all really nice. But if you stop and think about
00:17:46
it, it's rather absurd. And even just that security
00:17:49
guard that. Oh, that's what?
00:17:51
A cop. I was checked out.
00:17:52
I was like why is this dude even entertaining the fact that he's
00:17:56
going to let them go and dig up a grave site in Arlington that
00:18:00
way in hell? That is where I started like to
00:18:04
get annoyed, you know, I. Rolled my eyes.
00:18:06
In my where I was like Oh my God, like.
00:18:10
Too much. Wait, you're he's just going to
00:18:12
let you go? But the problem is that it was
00:18:19
like half that, but at the same time, like some of the shit was
00:18:22
intriguing, like when they go and like when they actually open
00:18:24
up the box and like what they find in it.
00:18:26
That was cool, like the all the deciphering like that kind of
00:18:30
stuff. First of all, wouldn't wouldn't
00:18:33
the all right, It's pretty much every single time they go to get
00:18:36
a a cash like there's some ridiculous ass shit.
00:18:40
OK. The first one is is the security
00:18:42
guard. Museum.
00:18:43
No. Before that's the museum, No,
00:18:46
the logic museum at Fort Meade. I thought the security guard was
00:18:50
the first one. No, no.
00:18:51
No, you're right. I was talking Arlington.
00:18:54
The security guard at the second one is the one that really
00:18:56
pissed me off. Yeah, no, but the first one is
00:18:58
at at the museum. We're like, OK, wouldn't once
00:19:03
they realize that's gone, they're going to go back and
00:19:05
look at the footage and see the hell like shoved it down this
00:19:08
random. The wheelchair that what
00:19:10
bothered me about that one was the wheelchair, how they
00:19:12
conveniently snuck it out with the girl in the wheelchair who
00:19:16
got left behind by her field trip chaperones and and the fact
00:19:19
that they were just playing around with this, you know, code
00:19:22
breaking device in the museum trying.
00:19:24
To plug in there playing around with this code breaking device
00:19:26
like in the middle of. In Fort Meade like.
00:19:29
What are you? What are you doing?
00:19:31
I'm imagining, you know, that museum is not like some random
00:19:37
roadside antique, you know, antique museum.
00:19:40
It's like a former hotel or something, like a rundown motel
00:19:44
on the grounds that they converted, but it's actually on
00:19:47
like government property. Like this shit's going to be
00:19:49
watched pretty seriously. I mean, I've gone to like some,
00:19:55
you know, a couple like random like National Forest or like
00:19:59
hiking parks that have like little little tiny museums of
00:20:02
like just the, you know, describing the nature around.
00:20:06
And my kids have gotten yelled at for like touching something
00:20:08
wrong. You know they have no security.
00:20:13
Like that, that was the first thing that set me off.
00:20:15
Then we jumped to the security guard and he's just going to 1
00:20:18
go along with it and then 2 not say anything afterwards, like
00:20:24
just let him go. Yeah, between both of those,
00:20:28
they were really bothersome. Then the third is the bees.
00:20:34
Oh, the bees were ridiculous. It was ridiculous.
00:20:37
And then he all of a sudden has a fear of bees from childhood.
00:20:40
It was just so convenient to make that up.
00:20:43
I mean, they had planted that like a little earlier when he
00:20:45
like he said he saw a bee or something like that, but.
00:20:49
It didn't work. Who?
00:20:50
Planted those bees or did did no one plant the bees?
00:20:54
Like was it? Just it was it was the Russian
00:20:56
guy Tyrosenko or whoever they he.
00:20:58
Puts them there. He surmised that that was a
00:21:01
protection device for someone trying to steal the clue would
00:21:07
get chased off. One lady got killed because of
00:21:10
it. Anaphylactic shock.
00:21:14
But she was also a bad guy. She was lying about being a cop
00:21:18
and on the La Jolla. Team yeah, but all right, you're
00:21:20
going to set up like a cachet no other of your caches had like we
00:21:25
we had no other Indiana Jones like dodging Spears and stuff
00:21:31
like that like we only like 1 of them.
00:21:33
We're going to have like a crazy ass thing.
00:21:36
I mean, all right, if you want to argue the bees just happened
00:21:39
to like, show up in the wall, OK, that's fucking insane.
00:21:43
These African killer bees. Take it back, I said.
00:21:54
I don't know how you give this book lower than a four out of
00:21:56
five stars. If you can't overcome that.
00:21:58
And if that those three things are your mental block, give this
00:22:01
book a one out of five like. No.
00:22:03
But the problem is it's like, all right, once you get past
00:22:06
like everything in between and like the the other meat of it,
00:22:10
it's fine. You know, like it's good.
00:22:12
It's good because what the next one is the next one's like
00:22:17
actually pretty good like that. That's like the most national
00:22:20
treasure of them all, where they go to the restaurant and they
00:22:24
concoct some story to like be allowed upstairs and they're
00:22:29
going, going, going. And finally what you know, he's
00:22:31
had his last patience. Ming is like, you know, pretends
00:22:35
to go down and and he gets it and he doesn't.
00:22:37
He's not able to grab the whole thing, but you know, that's like
00:22:39
the one that's most. Believable.
00:22:42
Plausible. Yeah, well, the other one I
00:22:43
think is the Russian Embassy. No, the Russian embassy is is
00:22:46
also not plausible at all. It's absurd that it's at this
00:22:51
fountain and they're like having the the guards poke with sticks
00:22:54
to see where it is at the fountain like one it's
00:22:56
ridiculous. But I was kind of edge of my
00:22:58
seat of like, are they going to get away with this shit?
00:23:01
And like at. That point I just wanted to
00:23:02
know. I was like, you know, as you're
00:23:05
building, like you just, you just you want to know like what,
00:23:07
what what is going on. But the fact that one, there
00:23:12
just happens to be a Russian guy who is also a, you know, maybe,
00:23:15
maybe this is maybe this is just Chris Howdy trying to say like,
00:23:19
you know, the, the craziness or the fervorness of conspiracy
00:23:24
theorists that like exist in the world.
00:23:26
The fact that like, you can find kindred spirits in this.
00:23:28
Everywhere. And he's able to just one.
00:23:33
They allow a man 2. They go along with a story to
00:23:38
try to get the box 3. They open the box in front.
00:23:41
Of them show them the box, yeah. And four, they let him leave
00:23:45
like. It doesn't make any sense.
00:23:48
I like the drama aspect of it all.
00:23:50
Sure. It's all like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:52
Like I was OK with that, and by this point I think I've already
00:23:55
just been along for the ride. Like I told myself, this is
00:23:58
national treasure. This is Nicholas Cage on the
00:24:00
cover. Like doing that crazy shit.
00:24:02
I was like, this is already happening.
00:24:04
I think by that point I was just let me just enjoy this as we go.
00:24:08
So yeah, I if. You if you are.
00:24:10
Willing to give it that grace. When you bring up National
00:24:13
Treasure, the idea that he does steal the Declaration of
00:24:17
Independence, exactly like that's also crazy.
00:24:21
So you know, when you put it like that.
00:24:24
And I was fully bought into that movie, so maybe I'm just
00:24:27
nitpicking too much. But I think at some point you
00:24:29
got to realize what the book is. I'll be honest, once I heard it
00:24:32
was a JFK thriller, I immediately went into it knowing
00:24:36
there's going to be some crazy wild stuff going on.
00:24:38
So I think I was kind of prepped for that.
00:24:40
Although what threw me off was I did not think we would cold open
00:24:44
the book in Dealey Plaza with the.
00:24:47
Assassination. With the shot, with the
00:24:48
assassination I had, I did not think it was that.
00:24:51
Was a nice touch. I didn't.
00:24:52
Think it was going to be that, like historically in tune.
00:24:55
I thought the JFK stuff might be in the background.
00:24:58
It might. There might be some documents,
00:25:00
might be some characters motivated by it.
00:25:02
But to see that we were going to have Jackie and who we thought
00:25:06
was Jack in the car having conversations and the shot be
00:25:10
taken, I didn't expect that to happen.
00:25:13
Yeah, and honestly the best part about this book is like for me
00:25:18
was learning like all the other like stuff, you know, whether
00:25:23
it's real or not conspiracy. Like obviously he's drawn like
00:25:25
from a bunch of different things.
00:25:26
Like that was the coolest part to me, like was getting the
00:25:30
quasi history of what people think, you know, talking about
00:25:35
the locations and and you know, the Lily Harvey Oswald of it
00:25:38
all. And you know where he was
00:25:40
arrested and you know his his whole back story and that kind
00:25:43
of stuff. His other actions where he went
00:25:46
to who he was talking to, his, the trips to Mexico City as
00:25:49
well. I very interested in all that.
00:25:53
And that's where the fact part is like that I, I have to
00:25:56
believe, was all based in real history and the house.
00:26:00
Or like. I think it's like.
00:26:02
Whatever. Whatever you want to like,
00:26:03
whatever we can take as facts. Sure, A.
00:26:05
Fair, fair, whatever is. Yeah, exactly.
00:26:08
But at the same time he he didn't go into some of the more
00:26:12
off base parts of the conspiracies.
00:26:14
No, he I feel like he stuck to more of the mainstream
00:26:16
narratives. So any way you slice it, you're
00:26:20
going to get people coming out of the woodwork yelling at you.
00:26:23
But I feel like he didn't cater to either of the extremes in the
00:26:26
conspiracy thing. So I I feel like he's still
00:26:30
towed an OK line with what he declared as history and Juan
00:26:34
Verdugo's eyes as he's telling it to us as the expert.
00:26:37
He didn't have a character like Juan Verdugo all of a sudden
00:26:40
pulling out the craziest shit of all.
00:26:42
And trying to force it as fact down people's throat, like the
00:26:45
wild conspiracy. Yeah.
00:26:47
Then again, the president's still alive.
00:26:49
So maybe he does try to do that. But.
00:26:51
But I delineate the two. I think the historical sites
00:26:54
they go to, like the restaurant, Mexico City, the embassy, the
00:26:58
house where he lived, all of that I think was very clearly
00:27:03
delineated in the story as like, we're, we're trying to uncover a
00:27:06
little bit of history and kind of teach the audience something.
00:27:09
And then the whole part of the president being alive and there
00:27:11
was multiple shooters and body double s, that part, I was like,
00:27:14
OK, that's fiction. Like clearly he's crafting a
00:27:17
story. But even each of the clues right
00:27:20
were things that existed. The real.
00:27:23
And you know, like the autopsy, the the video in like people say
00:27:29
that there was a guy with a camera.
00:27:30
So like we we don't know what was on that.
00:27:33
Like they probably made a video of him getting shot in the front
00:27:36
of the head versus the back of the head, you know, But the fact
00:27:40
that potentially at one point there was a camera like that
00:27:44
kind of stuff. And an autopsy and like nobody's
00:27:46
seen the report and nobody heard from that Doctor Who did it.
00:27:49
And like that I think they killed him.
00:27:51
So it's like, what if we were able to read that report?
00:27:54
What if we saw it? I think it was very clear when
00:27:56
he was wading into that territory of what if ISM.
00:27:59
And I was OK with that. And it was also very clear when
00:28:01
he was trying to teach you like, no, he did.
00:28:05
Lee Harvey Oswald did go to this place he was at.
00:28:07
He was or reported to be at this place, so I 100% agree.
00:28:11
I thought that was dealt with very well.
00:28:14
Yeah, yeah. What do you think about the
00:28:19
Catholicism of it all? That was a strange, strange
00:28:24
angle to me. As a Catholic, it was a little
00:28:30
strange. I mean, I'm not like a
00:28:31
conservative Catholic, so I don't go to the Trinity Mass and
00:28:34
that kind of stuff. I guess you had to pick like
00:28:36
some sort of villain and he's trying to set up this thing like
00:28:40
the movement, right? And so, you know, I guess
00:28:44
because JFK was the first Catholic president.
00:28:48
So in order to take a stance to establish this idea of a
00:28:55
theocratic state, right? And because there are like
00:28:59
conspiracies around, like why he got, you know, he wanted to pull
00:29:04
out of Vietnam. He wanted to, you know, sort of
00:29:08
end the Cold War, you know, embrace socialism or not
00:29:12
embrace, but like not fight to. But like, I think it I think
00:29:18
Howdy says at the very end of this book, like the movement
00:29:20
they treated as their last crusade, like this fight against
00:29:23
socialism and like these godless people.
00:29:26
At the same time, you know, and maybe he's just doing it to show
00:29:29
like the hypocrisy of people like that are in these
00:29:33
situations. But he does say like the
00:29:34
Christante, like, you know, beds his, his, his, his.
00:29:39
I think Wardrobist, obviously, like you have the main
00:29:45
character, main villain who thinks he's blessed by God, but
00:29:48
he just commits rampant murder like everywhere and is a judge,
00:29:53
jury and executioner. So you know that it was a
00:30:00
little, it was a little strange, but I'm not going to lie.
00:30:04
But I guess you had to make a choice, right?
00:30:07
Who else is going to be the Cabal?
00:30:08
That's that set up this entire thing.
00:30:10
You're building a cabal. People had real concerns about
00:30:14
Kennedy and his faith. I mean, there were, there were
00:30:16
headlines about like the Pope is going to be running the country
00:30:19
or some shit, right? Like the Vatican controls the
00:30:21
American government because of Kennedy.
00:30:23
So I, I, I could see you kind of trying to address that angle of
00:30:29
the conspiracy theorists. But there is a huge like the
00:30:33
whole Trentine like like sect, like you know, and there's even
00:30:38
people that are even further that have essentially like
00:30:42
denounced this idea that every Pope after they're illegitimate
00:30:48
are are are anti popes, right? Yeah, they're heretics.
00:30:51
They're illegitimate. Thing is, what is it?
00:30:52
SPSXX or something like that? SSPX.
00:30:55
I'm sure there's groups out there.
00:30:57
So what struck me at first, I really didn't like it, but I
00:30:59
came to say, OK, you're basically taking an extreme, a
00:31:04
very minuscule extreme, and you're highlighting that to make
00:31:07
a villain and a cabal. And you're clearly showing
00:31:10
they're misguided, but they're also true believers.
00:31:12
They're hardliners, so it kind of works as a villain.
00:31:15
It's just really wacky. I will say it's better than in
00:31:18
Deep State. In Deep State, there was a weird
00:31:22
character, I don't even remember much, one of the assassins, and
00:31:25
every time he'd kill, he would like, say the Lord's Prayer.
00:31:28
And there was like no other background to it, right?
00:31:31
It was just, this guy does this for no reason.
00:31:33
And to me that was a big problem.
00:31:35
I was like, it doesn't make any sense this whole he's Catholic
00:31:37
saying the Lord's Prayer and going off and killing, like, I
00:31:39
don't understand it. At least here we got the back
00:31:43
story of a Santos. We saw how someone could be
00:31:46
radicalized into these really deep dark holes.
00:31:51
I think it speaks more to mental health issues and like how you
00:31:54
become radicalized and and what fundamentalist strains of any
00:31:58
religion look like. Because part of me when I was
00:32:01
saying I was uneasy with this and I was like, it doesn't make
00:32:03
sense. There can be people who want to
00:32:06
learn Latin, do the Tridentine Mass, use Latin and have a very
00:32:10
conservative church who are not going off and saying that gives
00:32:13
me the right to kill people and go on missions as a holy
00:32:15
crusader. So I was like, you're kind of
00:32:17
grouping anybody who's more traditional and strict in their
00:32:20
faith, and you're all of a sudden associating them with
00:32:22
conspiracy theories who want to take over the American
00:32:25
government and make it a theocracy.
00:32:27
So I was like, I wasn't too comfortable with the, and I'm
00:32:29
sure in some instances the white nationalist supremacy of it all
00:32:34
to be a theocratic state is built into and, and there are
00:32:37
some places things like the Richmond memo, right?
00:32:39
Like that got out of control that the FBI was circulating a
00:32:42
memo that they could spy on and monitor Catholic churches and
00:32:46
interrogate priests and ask people for rosters and things
00:32:50
who go to the Latin masses and automatically associate that
00:32:53
with radical white nationalists and white supremacist groups.
00:32:56
To me, that's an utter, utter breach of the, the Constitution
00:33:01
and our our rights. The people who are going to that
00:33:03
mass should not therefore be labeled and put on a watch list
00:33:06
and be tracked by the FBI for being associated with these
00:33:09
groups. And I thought for a minute I was
00:33:10
like, is that what Chris Howdy is kind of like pushing and
00:33:13
trying to state? But then in the end, once you
00:33:15
get Santos's back story and where he is in life and how
00:33:19
Chris Dante is really this manipulator and he uses the
00:33:22
faith stuff, but he's really no different than any of these
00:33:25
other egomaniac billionaire elitists of the world.
00:33:30
So I was like, you know what? I don't think he's painting with
00:33:32
broad strokes to say everybody who does this is this way.
00:33:35
He's really building specific characters who might be the ones
00:33:39
that end up going down that path.
00:33:40
And another part of me was like, if I'm ever going to look at,
00:33:44
let's just say Islamists or fundamentalists who turn towards
00:33:48
radical terrorism, it's the same thing.
00:33:50
It exists, right? It exists.
00:33:52
And to say it doesn't is is wrong.
00:33:56
But then also to say everyone is that way who's associated with
00:34:00
the faith, the two have nothing to do with each other.
00:34:02
So I had to become comfortable with as a Catholic myself, as
00:34:05
someone who does like some of the more traditional
00:34:07
conservative parts of the faith, you should not GroupMe into
00:34:10
doing what Santos and Cristanti are doing.
00:34:12
Like, that's absolutely wild. But the same time I have to
00:34:15
realize there are some who go down that path and some who end
00:34:18
up doing that. And I think it speaks more to
00:34:20
mental health issues in this country than anything.
00:34:24
I mean, is it would you argue that it's similar to someone,
00:34:27
let's say, who is a a thriller fan but happens to be of the
00:34:31
Muslim faith and is reading a bunch of you know, Brad Thornall
00:34:35
of us like completely, completely, you know, whatever
00:34:37
we read. Let's say what's the what's the
00:34:40
one big one? Thomas Jefferson.
00:34:41
But you know. I completely agree.
00:34:44
Yeah, so it's, it's a little uncomfortable, right?
00:34:46
Like it was especially, but, well, both of us are Catholics.
00:34:49
I put myself in those shoes though, those exact shoes and
00:34:51
said I do think any any Muslim who is also either an American
00:34:56
or Western educated or or live somewhere outside of one of
00:34:59
those communities could be OK with these books.
00:35:02
Particularly like a Vince Flynn who writes in a very delicate
00:35:05
way, who doesn't group everyone together, who says, like, these
00:35:08
strains of radicalized folks who are in bed with bad people doing
00:35:12
bad things are not representative of everybody in
00:35:15
that faith group. And I felt like, oh, it was
00:35:17
interesting to have the tables turned on me and say, same
00:35:20
thing. Catholics who were in the IRA
00:35:22
who use bombs, you know, in the Troubles or whatever, or who,
00:35:26
who joined a white supremacy group and they try to say it's
00:35:29
because of their faith that they're OK having those extreme
00:35:31
beliefs. I'm like, no, you're scum,
00:35:33
you're wrong. I do not like you.
00:35:35
But often times other people may associate that with your
00:35:39
religion and you have to kind of try to navigate.
00:35:42
That's not who we are. You have to condemn it.
00:35:44
You have to sideline it. And you, you just.
00:35:46
Have to problem with generalizations, right?
00:35:47
That's the problem with stereotyping.
00:35:49
Exactly. Yeah.
00:35:51
I I think ultimately it was just picking you.
00:35:56
You had to pick this idea of typically like a cabal is is
00:36:01
like these godless, you know, a group of godless like atheists,
00:36:05
like loving people. But in this case, because JFK
00:36:09
was Catholic and he was trying to to twist the story in the
00:36:12
sense that, you know, he was essentially chosen by these
00:36:16
people who are like minded, but he defected from them.
00:36:19
You had to make them Catholic too.
00:36:20
You had to make them like the ultra.
00:36:23
And I think he wanted to show that in every case, there's
00:36:27
people that are at these higher, you know, billionaire, whatever
00:36:31
the the highest end and claim to be one thing, yet they're super
00:36:35
hypocritical, whether it's, you know, evangelical Christian, you
00:36:40
know, we've we've seen numerous examples of having, you know,
00:36:43
scandals of these mega churches completely same thing with, you
00:36:48
know, the moms like and, and, you know, or, you know, an
00:36:51
atheist at a embezzling money at a company, right.
00:36:55
So at a nonprofit, At a charity. Yeah, completely.
00:36:58
So yeah, it just, it, it definitely hits different when
00:37:01
as a Catholic, you know. It does, but it also kind of
00:37:04
forces you to put yourself in their shoes and see how that
00:37:07
could be a perspective. I mean this is like the story
00:37:11
the the plot of angels and demons, right?
00:37:14
Where he Dave David Brown, not David Brown.
00:37:20
Dan Brown. Dan Brown, you know, makes Opus
00:37:23
day like the. Exactly.
00:37:25
They happen to just be a little bit more of the conservative
00:37:28
sect of the of the Catholic faith so.
00:37:31
Yeah, but ultimately, Opus Day is basically a charitable
00:37:34
organization trying to promote the social justice aims of the
00:37:36
church. And like, I don't think it's
00:37:40
harbouring assassins who are flagellating themselves and, you
00:37:43
know, going on these crazy missions for God, but you make a
00:37:47
story out of it. So I, I had to be OK with like,
00:37:49
that's what you chose to make your villain.
00:37:51
And in the end, I think the best barometer of it is, does it fit
00:37:55
the story being told? And like you said with the
00:37:57
Kennedy stuff and real history people, Protestant America had
00:38:02
issues with a Catholic president.
00:38:03
Like that's real. Like this makes sense that you
00:38:07
would highlight the extremes to tell a story of that time
00:38:10
period. What did you think of the the
00:38:12
during that one meeting? They they they bring up JP 2 and
00:38:15
say he he was chosen but then goes goes he he went astray.
00:38:20
He goes off reservation. Yeah.
00:38:21
And he wasn't lockstep with them.
00:38:23
That was pretty wild. Yeah.
00:38:26
Faction Man is like, yeah, I don't think he was doing
00:38:30
anything in an intentionally egregious, intentionally
00:38:34
aggressive way for no other point than pissing off a slice
00:38:38
of sure, whatever faith. I think he was simply trying to
00:38:41
craft a story and doing what works for the villains in that
00:38:45
story. What would their motivations be
00:38:48
based on this plot? And I think it works.
00:38:52
I I just think it works. My buying was still really low
00:38:55
for all the other crap, but my buying isn't isn't going to be
00:38:58
digging too much for that. What did you what do you think
00:39:01
of the villain? Like I I obviously we have this
00:39:06
villain of the of the movement, but no, I'm talking about Santos
00:39:09
like the you're talking about Santos.
00:39:11
Yeah, that's a a clear. I don't want to call it RIP off
00:39:15
but inspiration of does the guy even have a name in?
00:39:19
Javier Bardem, yeah. Javier Bardem's character in.
00:39:22
Anton. Oh yeah.
00:39:24
Anton yeah, but but I I just, I I was thinking the whole time,
00:39:28
every scene. Javier Bardem with just that
00:39:31
crazy ass look in his eye, a menishing, towering figure
00:39:36
lumbering around with his club Mace thing.
00:39:40
And the scariest, freakiest part of it was the bus.
00:39:43
Anton Sugar, Yeah. When he just when when he went
00:39:47
ham on the people on that bus accident, I was like, yo, this
00:39:51
dude is off the deep end. I think if I didn't have the No
00:39:55
Country for Old Men guy in my mind I would have had a harder
00:39:58
time, kind of like. Figuring out who this Santos was
00:40:02
and what he was doing and why he was so crazy.
00:40:06
But for some reason having that image in my mind of like I had a
00:40:09
clear cut how this guy would lumber around it, it just helped
00:40:13
me kind of place it. So I ended up being creeped out
00:40:15
by him and and liking him as a villain.
00:40:18
And then, you know, like it's similar just walking up to an
00:40:22
accent that you created, just walking around looking for
00:40:26
somebody and then walking away like, you know, leaving the
00:40:29
cops. Oh, there's a I'll I'll touch on
00:40:32
that later. But you know, or just going in
00:40:38
and, or getting pulled over by the by the cops and then take
00:40:43
taking her out and having this, this single shot.
00:40:48
I sent you the I sent you the weapon, a YouTube video.
00:40:51
It was pretty cool. Yeah, What was that YouTube
00:40:54
video exactly? Because I didn't get to watch
00:40:55
it. I know.
00:40:56
It was so it. Was like a real life example of
00:40:58
it. Yes, I was just struggling to
00:41:00
like understand like how you would fire this thing.
00:41:04
I sent it to you. So like was it the well rod war?
00:41:09
The well rod like was yeah, it was made by this British company
00:41:13
like secretively for you know, MI6 spy type stuff.
00:41:18
And it's cool because the well rod, the original well rods,
00:41:22
they they have like built in silencers.
00:41:24
So it's all like one along thing they have like there the silence
00:41:29
was like built in. So originally the well rod, the
00:41:32
handle itself was the magazine. So you would like lock it in.
00:41:38
And then there was just this little tiny like bent metal
00:41:40
trigger. And so like you could, you could
00:41:43
have it and it would be up. Your sleeve and you just.
00:41:45
No, but then they made a a secondary one.
00:41:48
This is called the sleeve. Well rod.
00:41:50
That's literally you have to unscrew the back, load a a
00:41:57
bullet, change this one thing, screw it back in and then you
00:42:01
can hold it like like this. And with your top thumb, you
00:42:06
have to take your hand off like you have to pull and push to
00:42:10
like get this. It has a safety.
00:42:13
And then once you do that, you can then push down and it like
00:42:17
it causes the firing mechanism to to go and you get one shot.
00:42:21
Yeah, I know It was a single shooter.
00:42:23
It was pretty cool. The guy didn't shoot it, but but
00:42:27
he showed like how it was pretty cool.
00:42:29
Yeah. It's like a super this.
00:42:30
There's only like a couple of these in existence.
00:42:33
Makes me think of the scene in The Americans.
00:42:35
Keri Russell, I think, has to assassinate somebody on some
00:42:38
steps outside a building just in the middle of the public and she
00:42:41
has some weapon that's just folded up inside a newspaper.
00:42:45
So it's like you can just hold a newspaper like under your arm
00:42:47
and then just it like kind of just shoots out of it.
00:42:49
So I would imagine that had to be like cylindrical tubular in
00:42:54
there. Yeah, that was probably like a,
00:42:56
well, rod gun too. Yeah, jeez, man.
00:43:00
I kind of like when the villain has this quirky, it doesn't
00:43:04
always have to be a weapon, it is in this case, but some sort
00:43:07
of quirky like device or technology that gives them like
00:43:10
an edge. He also had the knife, the
00:43:12
knife, the club, the he had like a a cache of weapons.
00:43:15
Yeah, yeah, 'cause he killed a lot of people with the club.
00:43:18
Kill a lot of people. Yeah.
00:43:20
So when we introduced with the club and then eventually his
00:43:22
attachment to this weapon, I kind of like that you have a
00:43:25
memorable little niche of a of a villain, so.
00:43:31
And he's a super, super weird dude.
00:43:34
Like, yeah, definitely messed up in the head.
00:43:37
Like has his oh girl to the woman to this this girl on a
00:43:40
prostitution app or not prostitution app, but like
00:43:43
webcam app and you know, ends up leaving her a bunch of money.
00:43:49
That reminded me of Catcher in the Rye.
00:43:51
When was that the book, one of those books you read in high
00:43:55
school where he just wants to sit with the stripper or
00:43:57
something like he I just. Remember that catcher in the
00:44:00
rhyme? What am I thinking about?
00:44:04
There was some book, but I I guess that's a common trope,
00:44:06
right? Of sure, loneliness and
00:44:09
expression. And so you use prostitutes or
00:44:11
use other call girls or people and you don't actually want the
00:44:14
thing that they're providing, but you're paying them to just
00:44:18
listen to you. So yeah, I feel like that was a
00:44:20
trope, but they gave her millions in the end.
00:44:23
So I was like, this guy is really off his rocker.
00:44:25
Like he he need he needed community.
00:44:28
And I think the over reliance on religion is an attempt to fill
00:44:34
that void. And when that thing, that faith,
00:44:37
maybe you're not exercising it properly, maybe you don't have
00:44:40
the right people involved in your community isn't filling
00:44:43
that void for you. You just keep going down that
00:44:46
spiral and maybe you get more extreme in that thing, thinking
00:44:50
I'm not doing it well enough so it's not filling my lonely void.
00:44:53
Or I need to do the religion more extremely.
00:44:55
Or I need to know more prayers or more languages, read more
00:44:59
ancient texts and memorize them. Just keep trying to fill this
00:45:01
void of fulfillment. And he wasn't getting it from
00:45:05
religion, so he needed the girl to listen.
00:45:08
Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:09
I'm so crazy. A.
00:45:10
Couple of things that bothered me plot wise.
00:45:14
Similar to what we brought up earlier, but solely focused
00:45:18
around the villain. So Grisanti has all this money
00:45:23
right to hire this guy? He even has all this money to
00:45:27
hire two people to assassinate 2 cops that are after he gets
00:45:31
caught. Like to assassinate 2 cops to
00:45:35
get him out of prison. It's crazy.
00:45:40
Yet he he can't. He's having a hard time tracking
00:45:43
this priest like. They got rid of the cell phones.
00:45:51
Yeah, maybe it was this this too much of an A Mac Guffin of like
00:45:54
if we get rid of the cell phones, we're 100% fine.
00:45:57
We can't be tracked. But then Christante in the La
00:46:00
Jolla network has all these other methods to.
00:46:02
Why? Didn't Christante kill Verdugo a
00:46:06
long ass time ago? It's a good point.
00:46:12
Well before he even like thought like he would figure it out or
00:46:15
as soon as soon as he starts to become, oh, this is not going to
00:46:19
be you don't think this is going to be a problem.
00:46:20
The guy's grandson is a freaking JFK nut.
00:46:23
You know he's not going to try to figure out stuff about his
00:46:27
grandfather. Maybe it was knowing him as a
00:46:31
boy. Maybe there was some hope that
00:46:34
he'll be able to live without interfering and but but
00:46:40
Kristanti never expresses that. He never like expresses he has a
00:46:42
fond. He had a fondness forum or
00:46:44
anything so that doesn't check out.
00:46:46
And they have all of this, you know, technology at their
00:46:51
disposal, yet they as soon as they know them that wouldn't
00:46:56
wouldn't they be like pulling up like facial recognition program
00:46:59
facial. Recognition for sure.
00:47:01
Yeah. He's like the guy who could just
00:47:03
place a call to anybody and get shit done like he has this 10.
00:47:06
I guess that's how the two cops track them to Texas.
00:47:11
The house. They don't say but I guess
00:47:13
that's how that's how it happens.
00:47:15
But. Yeah.
00:47:16
When those two women cops show up, it's kind of like, yeah, I
00:47:23
don't know. But then at that point, if
00:47:24
you're that good, just you could have been doing that to Verdugo
00:47:27
at any other time, or you could have been monitoring him at
00:47:29
Georgetown and like confronting him earlier, spook him off, off
00:47:34
the trail. Yeah.
00:47:35
Am I thinking too much about that?
00:47:36
I don't know. It may, maybe, but here's the
00:47:40
thing. This is a book you can't think
00:47:41
too hard about. I think that's that's the other
00:47:44
thing you just. Can't think too hard about it.
00:47:46
Like Mingus, we didn't even talk about who may be the main
00:47:49
protagonist of the book. I think he's more of like the
00:47:54
the main vehicle we see things through.
00:47:57
Yeah, he does have a little bit of a redemption arc, but to me
00:48:00
in in this case, it's the the main, the main protagonist of
00:48:04
the book is, is the Perdugo. Perdugo.
00:48:07
And like this unraveling of a story, you know.
00:48:12
Yeah, that's that's why again, if you think too hard about it,
00:48:17
it kind of falls apart of why Mingus is even involved in the
00:48:19
1st place. It was like very much a reach
00:48:22
that he just happened to be dating that woman and she seemed
00:48:25
to protect she. Knew who would be able to
00:48:28
protect Verdugo. She Yeah, he has skills.
00:48:32
So I liked his back story. Like the explanation growing up,
00:48:35
you know, in Calvert County, Maryland, being kind of like the
00:48:40
lower class out there, always involve problems with the law
00:48:44
and then gets kicked out. Oh, and then bring it in.
00:48:46
Talk about faction. The Rio scandal with the Secret
00:48:49
Service agents ripped, ripped from the headlines like that.
00:48:53
That was all it. And now we get a character who
00:48:56
was the guy, you know, like who was the guy who was messing
00:48:58
with? The Yeah, I like that whole
00:49:00
Secret Service Brotherhood thing where like, he stood up for his
00:49:02
brother and then at the very end, yeah, even though this guy
00:49:05
'cause I thought in the very beginning when we saw that one
00:49:08
Secret Service agent come into the strip club, I thought he was
00:49:11
going to become how be a villain.
00:49:12
Yeah. And then when he shows up later,
00:49:14
like I'm like, oh, I mean, ultimately I guess he puts
00:49:18
Christante in, but he thinks it's all on the up and up.
00:49:21
Exactly. And then he flat out was like,
00:49:23
all right, no bro code or Secret Service code.
00:49:26
I'm I'm not helping you out. It was a nice touch, but the
00:49:31
whole Mingus thing, if you think too hard about is really just a
00:49:33
there's no reason for him to be involved in this.
00:49:36
It's it's just is like happenstance that he gets
00:49:39
pulled. I don't know.
00:49:41
I liked him so much that I don't want to criticize him, but I
00:49:43
criticize his role. It's like national treasure when
00:49:48
the lady who's at the archive gets pulled into it, right?
00:49:51
And then she's along for the ride.
00:49:52
Because you just need her. Yeah, Yeah.
00:49:56
You need somebody to fill it, fit the bill.
00:49:58
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:59
You can't think about it too hard.
00:50:01
I think that's my main message from this book.
00:50:03
Here's the thing. I really enjoyed it.
00:50:04
I've so many. Yeah, I know.
00:50:06
That's the thing. Like you're pulling me down
00:50:07
like. No, it's not pulling me down.
00:50:09
We're just, we're just talking about it.
00:50:10
We're just talking about it. It was fun reading it though.
00:50:13
It was. It was very whole.
00:50:14
Lot of fun. It was an enjoyable, it was an
00:50:18
enjoyable book. It's just it has its plot holes.
00:50:22
We pick them apart and most people aren't going to go this
00:50:25
far into it and they're they rightfully should just enjoy
00:50:28
this book and that's it. Move on.
00:50:31
There was one other thing I wanted to bring up that was
00:50:33
wild. You can keep talking.
00:50:35
Let me think about it. I just had it.
00:50:38
Anyways, it'll come back to me, but let me know.
00:50:40
Yeah, no, I. I've got one that might come up
00:50:43
in my winter so I'm trying to avoid it.
00:50:45
OK, OK, OK, OK. Yeah, let's get into the
00:50:48
scorecard. Yeah, let's do it.
00:50:51
We we said what needs to be said.
00:50:53
So I think this is just a chance to put like our stamp on it of
00:50:56
like where we finally come down and and I do have to give credit
00:50:59
to action suspense. Oh, I think I remember what it
00:51:02
was. That's oh man, we're gonna have,
00:51:04
we're gonna have to fight over it.
00:51:05
Goes in plots, so we'll we'll talk about it in plots.
00:51:08
OK, maybe I have a different one then.
00:51:09
Action suspense. I'm going 9 out of 10.
00:51:11
Call me crazy. I I think if you just are along
00:51:14
for the ride, the action in suspense is edge of your seat
00:51:18
stuff most of the way through. So I need to make up a little
00:51:21
bit of ground and I think rightfully so.
00:51:23
Action suspense is where I do that 9 out of 10.
00:51:26
None. Yeah, No, I I agree.
00:51:27
I think like if I want to give the points, you know, because I
00:51:31
like this book, you know, a decent amount, like I'll give it
00:51:35
there for sure plot. So the thing that the the other
00:51:39
like thing that's kind of crazy is remember they show back up to
00:51:43
the the hotel and their rooms are ransacked.
00:51:48
Right, right, right. Right.
00:51:49
And Mingus just walks in and he takes the stuff, and then he
00:51:54
walks out. And then, like, I think even one
00:51:55
of the cops says, where the hell are you going?
00:51:57
Yeah, Like what? He just leaves.
00:51:59
Wouldn't the cops like want to stop them, question them, and
00:52:02
then wouldn't there be an APB out?
00:52:04
Because apparently Verdugo is dead, right?
00:52:08
It doesn't. That did not make any sense.
00:52:11
Yeah. Anyways, that was another one of
00:52:13
those major plot holes. That is a perfect example of why
00:52:17
I'm going to Ding plot here, and I'll take a little bit from
00:52:20
little from little bit from buy in, because there are just a
00:52:25
number of things that were just wild.
00:52:32
So I think I'm going to go like the six Harsh.
00:52:36
No, I I think rightfully with all the plot holes that we
00:52:39
pulled out, if you think too hard about it, you are well
00:52:42
within your rights to go honestly, even 3-4 with plot.
00:52:46
I think I'm being generous with the six.
00:52:48
But but here's why I'm going to see you on the six, and I'm
00:52:51
going to join you in that generosity.
00:52:53
You have to account for the clues.
00:52:56
Yeah, no, that's, that's what's saving it, right?
00:52:58
Like the the. The context of finding the clues
00:53:03
were utterly ridiculous, but getting the faction along the
00:53:07
way to learn the facts of the real places where the story
00:53:09
played out was pretty cool. And I have to say at least two
00:53:13
bonus points for the twist. I think literally the reveal at
00:53:17
the end automatically bumps up the plot just because.
00:53:20
It's also wild. It's so wild, it's so bizarre,
00:53:23
but it's also so awesome. It's so cool, so I.
00:53:28
I think if somebody were to tell me 3 out of 10 on plot, I'd say
00:53:31
gotcha. It's ridiculous.
00:53:32
If someone were to say maybe 7 on plot, I'd say, OK, I see you
00:53:35
because there's some stuff there.
00:53:37
But buy in though. I am not the only thing, the
00:53:40
only thing saving me a point, I'm going one as well.
00:53:43
The only thing saving me a point is I'm bought in, in terms of in
00:53:47
terms of the enjoyability. Sure.
00:53:49
That's the one point. The one point is the
00:53:51
enjoyability. Yeah, it's kind of a page
00:53:54
Turner, so. Yeah, no, it is like I, I, I was
00:53:58
wrapped in it. So last night, like I even
00:54:01
Caroline was reading and I didn't have a physical.
00:54:04
I don't think we did. We get sent a copy of this.
00:54:08
Good question. I think I got a paper copy early
00:54:11
on. I may have given it to somebody
00:54:13
because I knew I was going to wait for the audio book.
00:54:15
Anyway, so I'm I'm just sitting there like coughing style and
00:54:18
she's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm just listening
00:54:20
to my audio book. Yeah, I I would have no problem
00:54:24
with this being a summer release and and it being a summer like.
00:54:27
This came out what? December.
00:54:29
Yeah, it was December. Interesting time for this book.
00:54:31
Yeah, it is. I don't know if it has those
00:54:34
vibes, but yeah, that's a four point Ding on buy in just
00:54:37
because the utter ridiculousness of it and and the plot holes.
00:54:41
But a one on buy in that point is for it's a heck of a page
00:54:44
Turner bad guys. We kind of had to talk about
00:54:52
this already. Yeah, I like Santos, sure.
00:54:56
Like I I think he's an interesting character.
00:54:59
And Chris Dante, OK, OK, We didn't have like, I mean, I
00:55:05
guess he's involved in like the twists and the plots, like the
00:55:09
whole way. He's the man in the chair.
00:55:12
Not a great man in the chair, like, not like a memorable man
00:55:15
in the chair. I will remember Santos before.
00:55:16
I remember Chris Dante for sure. I Chris Dante's exit also of
00:55:23
Santos just leaning super weird, killing him right there.
00:55:25
I was like, I want to see him at at least have his moment, like
00:55:28
have his moment of doing something Uber cruel and like
00:55:32
really getting involved, getting his hands wet.
00:55:35
But he didn't even have the opportunity.
00:55:36
He just, he just offed. Chris wrote him to be like this.
00:55:40
You know, essentially like Stephen Miller type.
00:55:44
But who talks really soft and like, yeah, yeah, he was
00:55:49
Stephen. Miller meets Mr. Burns.
00:55:51
Yeah, exactly. But or did.
00:56:00
Stephen Miller already meet Mr. Burns.
00:56:02
I don't know. But yeah, so I don't know.
00:56:07
I'm think I'm gonna go like 2 1/2. 2-3, two or three.
00:56:10
I'm gonna go 3 because the back story of Santos and the Cuba
00:56:13
stuff and his radicalization, that's another thing.
00:56:17
There are a very very aggressive sect of Cubans who are so
00:56:25
virulently anti communist because of what happened to
00:56:28
their families that I could see them going down a path.
00:56:31
Well, I mean, that's why I like Florida has is no longer a
00:56:34
purple state, you know, exactly so.
00:56:38
So the Cuban connection made sense to me.
00:56:41
Good guys. Mingus and Ferdugo, I don't want
00:56:44
to bang them because we already did a buy in with why they're
00:56:47
involved. And I think if you take them
00:56:49
individually. Correct.
00:56:51
Yeah, it's a four out of five for me if you just take them on
00:56:55
individual characters. I, I, I, I agree.
00:56:58
I think like I was. Even though when you put aside
00:57:03
the ridiculousness of, like, this pairing of a Jesuit priest
00:57:06
and a disgraced Secret Service agent, I think each of the
00:57:10
characters were well developed. Yeah, Individually, yeah.
00:57:16
So forth for me. Yeah, and, and even the arc,
00:57:19
they go on, like it was really, really nice.
00:57:22
Mingus. And you're always going to be a
00:57:23
Mingus. You're down on yourself.
00:57:25
He wants to get back in the game, wants to do the right
00:57:27
thing, wants to prove himself. And he takes the bullet for the
00:57:30
president. There's nothing more Secret
00:57:31
Service than taking the bullet for the president.
00:57:33
And he gets to do that in a very, very, yeah, bizarre way.
00:57:37
So setting it, that's something we didn't talk about too much.
00:57:42
What I mean, Dealey Plaza, we we open right there.
00:57:46
Then we go to all the different spots in in Oswald's life.
00:57:49
Like that was pretty neat. I felt like we went a lot of
00:57:55
places we didn't. I did feel like Howdy did a good
00:57:59
job of describing, you know, each of the individual
00:58:04
locations. You know, I felt like, you know,
00:58:08
the different spots in Dallas, going to New Orleans, the light,
00:58:12
the, you know, the vibrancy of Mexico City.
00:58:14
Then we move over to the, you know, sort of shadier part of
00:58:17
Mexico City, perfectly described Baltimore.
00:58:22
You know, I wanted more DC, but we didn't.
00:58:24
We didn't really say in DC that, you know, we were there for like
00:58:27
a hot 2nd. So it's not like the best I
00:58:31
think we've seen from either him or definitely from other
00:58:34
authors, but it was it was still quite good.
00:58:37
So I think I'll go like 3 1/2 four.
00:58:41
Yeah, I'm with you. I could round up to four.
00:58:44
I was a little closer to a 3 1/2.
00:58:48
It's not a three like. It's not a three that's.
00:58:50
Better than a three, but it's not quite a four, so 3 and a.
00:58:53
Half, yeah, put me down for 3 1/2 as well.
00:58:55
The other thing is it could have been a little higher, except
00:58:58
there's it was almost too much, too much of a good thing.
00:59:00
Like, and again, like we said, best of bread, Thor.
00:59:03
Worst of bread Thor. He's a globetrotter in his books
00:59:06
for sure, but he started outgoing a little over the edge.
00:59:10
Some of the early Brad Thor books where we're globetrotting
00:59:12
for no apparent reason than to just see cool hotels in exotic
00:59:16
cities on five continents in one book.
00:59:18
It it just felt like too much. It kind of felt like that here,
00:59:22
a little jam packed like New Orleans and the zydeco was kind
00:59:25
of cool. He finds Verdugo in the in the
00:59:29
in the Music Hall and play the washboard.
00:59:33
They stop at that, you know, they they stop in Bristol, TN
00:59:37
and get dinner and like, Yep, describing that rural life.
00:59:41
The BBQ, Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep. All you know, round me up to A4.
00:59:45
Some of those little snippets were cool.
00:59:46
It's just too much of a good thing.
00:59:48
So it's it's too much of a good thing.
00:59:51
But it was done very well. I think it was done so well that
00:59:54
I want to round up to A4. OK.
00:59:59
Cover What's your take? The cover's intriguing.
01:00:04
It's it's pretty cool it. Kind of is.
01:00:09
And when you think about this idea of like a doppelganger, you
01:00:13
know, getting double vision, you know, I'm trying to like,
01:00:20
describe, like, think of like how to describe this, but like
01:00:22
when you start a movie and like, if something glitches.
01:00:25
Like you know exactly. You're starting like a thriller
01:00:27
or a, you know, some sort of spy like it glitches like that's
01:00:30
what I'm it's invoking to me A. 100%.
01:00:34
So I really like that don't love like the the font style for
01:00:39
Chris Howdy and and dead ringer. It's not super original, but the
01:00:43
choice to put JFK's face and to have this like, you know, like
01:00:47
is, is a nice touch. So definitely like you walk by
01:00:51
like I'm going to pick that up and read the back. 100% agree.
01:00:55
The double vision the the film movie glitch makes sense to me
01:00:59
actually choosing JFK right because it's a JFK thriller like
01:01:04
you have to all that hits for me.
01:01:06
The one thing is the color choice a little too rainbowy
01:01:12
vibrant and I get that idea of like falsehoods fake.
01:01:15
It's kind of throwing you off your game.
01:01:17
I I just. Don't want that so those are the
01:01:19
three colors that are in like photographs and so like this
01:01:22
thing has a lot to do with like old films finding you know
01:01:27
because you you have to have those three come together to
01:01:29
make the so. I and I get all that that makes
01:01:33
sense to me, but I just don't think these colors evoke the
01:01:36
tone of the story. The tone of the story to me was
01:01:40
not upbeat holly jolly. So yes the film makes sense.
01:01:45
The historical aspect of it, the the double feature of the face
01:01:49
that were the double fake of the face makes sense to me.
01:01:51
Just the colours don't fit the tone of the story.
01:01:54
So that's probably like a point Ding. 3 1/2 I rounded up before
01:01:59
so I'll go 3 1/2 here. 3 1/2 Yeah, I'll see you there.
01:02:06
All right, Who is your free space?
01:02:08
Mike, dude. There's only one African colour
01:02:12
possibility. Cal Cal Ripken, junior.
01:02:17
Like you. Asshole.
01:02:19
I took it. You asshole.
01:02:21
Oh my God, Yeah. I was hoping you didn't remember
01:02:24
that all, but then I scrolled down.
01:02:26
I saw what you said. My ending supposed to be that
01:02:29
was like the cutest, like, you know, I don't know, just
01:02:34
quirkiest like thing to put in there and this like little
01:02:38
passion that he has that he, you know, gets him through his
01:02:41
sobriety. Why the hell not put it in
01:02:44
there? And like, that's the one thing
01:02:48
that he, like, cares about the most.
01:02:49
You know, he doesn't have anybody in his life.
01:02:51
But yeah, no, that's a great one.
01:02:53
That is a great one. Who?
01:02:55
How am I going to top that? Yeah, I, I didn't want to steal
01:02:59
that from me, but I was so excited.
01:03:00
So I'm OK with a, with a shared free space if you want.
01:03:04
Oh, we couldn't. No, I want to say the security
01:03:11
guard at Arlington, because how he comes back in the end is
01:03:15
nice. I.
01:03:15
Like how he came back in the end, he was like, was getting
01:03:18
like a degree. Agree, Agree.
01:03:20
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the same time he's a
01:03:21
bozo. Like he let them in, he didn't
01:03:23
arrest them on the spot. Like what an idiot.
01:03:28
Yeah. Oh, the the woman at the end
01:03:31
taking care of the president in that house, Was she a nun or
01:03:35
not? Was she like a sister?
01:03:36
And I wasn't sure of religious. She wasn't.
01:03:38
She's just an old lady. Yeah, she.
01:03:39
Was a nun. Yeah, yeah.
01:03:42
She's a possibility. Just give it to JFK.
01:03:45
Sure, give it to the audio book narrator for Yeah, I wanted to
01:03:49
ask him. Oh yeah, as soon as that guy
01:03:52
kind of gave it away a little bit.
01:03:53
Yeah, but he transitioned. He.
01:03:56
Slowly brought it out, yeah. Exactly.
01:03:59
Yeah, that was well done, well played.
01:04:01
I was going to say, what did you think of him overall?
01:04:06
I thought it was OK. Mark Sanderson, I think his name
01:04:08
is. That moment shined the most.
01:04:12
I guess he differentiated characters like some of the
01:04:15
women cops and then the random lady at the motel who Verdugo
01:04:19
was trying to help the homeless lady with her child.
01:04:21
Yeah, who screws him over by posting on social media?
01:04:24
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Again, that's probably another
01:04:27
one of those plot holes which is just so forced.
01:04:29
It's so derivative. It's like it's ridiculous.
01:04:35
Yeah, I thought he was good. I thought he was good.
01:04:37
I think in the end he really pulled it together.
01:04:39
Obviously the best voices you have to do are Mingus and
01:04:41
Verdugo and that was perfect. Christaki is a tee up.
01:04:45
You just lower your voice and make it sound all smarmy.
01:04:48
So Santos, you just have like, again, that Javier Bardem kind
01:04:52
of scary, very bass like vocal presence.
01:04:58
So I feel like he nailed the big ones he had to nail.
01:05:00
Yeah, not annoying, but not like my.
01:05:07
Favorite. Not a lead.
01:05:08
Not a lead. Singing in Spanish was a lot of
01:05:10
fun as well. That was funny, that.
01:05:14
Was a funny little metaphor when I heard that song like what,
01:05:17
five times he, he made him sing it like a bunch of times.
01:05:20
I was like, there's some metaphor analogy going on here
01:05:23
about something and. Yeah, that made sense.
01:05:26
Yeah. All right, that leaves us with a
01:05:31
34.5 for me and a 35.5 for you. I think about where I put it,
01:05:38
mid to high 30s. Yeah, like we wouldn't talk
01:05:43
about a book if it scored in the 20s, you know?
01:05:47
I think this one also is unique in that it's so different it
01:05:50
it's so out there in a sense. If you're willing to take it for
01:05:55
what it is and recognize this is going to be like a mid level 30s
01:05:58
book, but still just go and enjoy it.
01:06:00
I absolutely would recommend it. It's not like I would not.
01:06:03
If you tell me you're a fan of Brett Thor, Steve Berry, Dan
01:06:05
Brown, National Treasure, Indiana Jones, I'd be like, oh,
01:06:08
are you also interested in JFK assassination conspiracies?
01:06:12
I got the book for you. Was I disappointed that I spent
01:06:16
9 hours listening to this book? No, not at all.
01:06:21
Was I read it again? I don't know.
01:06:23
No, not at all. So I'm just, I'm, I'm ready for
01:06:29
the next Haley Chill book. I need that to come in my life.
01:06:32
Which we also got a reveal of. Did you catch when he's at Fort
01:06:37
Meade going to the National Cryptologic Museum?
01:06:40
The guard who they pass on the way in, She's reading the next
01:06:45
Haley Chill thriller, Bang and Burn.
01:06:50
He puts the name of one of his own books that isn't published
01:06:53
yet in this book. Bang and Bird.
01:06:55
Totally. Missed that.
01:06:57
I totally miss that. Dude, the guard is reading a
01:06:59
book. By the way, I wanted to see
01:07:02
highly advise against this. I wanted to see if that was
01:07:04
actually announced as a Haley Chill book so I googled bang and
01:07:07
burn. Please don't do so podcast
01:07:10
listeners. Not safe for work.
01:07:14
You have to type in like Haley Chill.
01:07:16
Like, I didn't think about that bang and burn.
01:07:18
I just. I should have done Chris Howdy
01:07:20
novel. Yeah.
01:07:21
Don't do it on your work computer.
01:07:23
Yeah, there are a few films that have adopted that name, just put
01:07:27
it that way. But no, no announcement or
01:07:29
anything but. Pretty.
01:07:35
Meta for him to put one of his own books inside of his own
01:07:38
books. That's going to be amazing if
01:07:41
that's subtitles book. All right, All right.
01:07:48
So what are we covering next time, Mike?
01:07:50
That's a good question. I think actually right about now
01:07:53
we're going to sit down and work on the 2026 reading list.
01:07:55
So check our socials, visit thrillerpod.com and you will
01:08:00
find our 2026 reading list posted sometime in the next few
01:08:03
weeks so you know exactly what's coming at you month by month for
01:08:06
the rest of the year. So still working on it.
01:08:10
We will let you know, however, Cold 0 is being released by Brad
01:08:14
Thor and Ward Larson over the next few weeks.
01:08:17
So I think that's a February release.
01:08:20
So that's definitely, definitely something coming at you real
01:08:23
soon. Yep.
01:08:26
All right. Well, we have can't leave
01:08:28
without thanking our patrons, our deputy director Sherry F and
01:08:32
Braddy, our special agents, Adam, Mike, Ben, Daryl, George,
01:08:35
Matt, Dawn and Chris. Like Mike said, you can find
01:08:40
us@thrillerpod.com. Please subscribe to all three
01:08:42
seasons or look us up on Twitter and Instagram at Thriller
01:08:45
Podcast. And as always, just like cow, be
01:08:51
cow. And we're back.
01:09:09
Do you have a Limerick for us this week?
01:09:11
Can't believe I missed this. I just want to assure the people
01:09:14
this was written pre pod. I put some time into it.
01:09:17
It was non AI generated pre pod. Forgot to breed it out on the
01:09:21
pod. So you're getting this as a
01:09:22
little post credit here. There once was a brother named
01:09:27
Juan with Joe Mingus who brought all the brown.
01:09:31
Many clues they will trace as conspiracies.
01:09:34
They chase a conclusion that no one has drawn.
01:09:38
Much better this week. Much better.
01:09:41
Not trying to rhyme. Where is it?
01:09:42
Don't rhyme with each other. Yes, I like it.
01:09:45
I like. It I don't think anybody in the
01:09:48
JFK conspiracy verse has come up with the conclusion that he is
01:09:51
still alive. Conspiracy.
01:09:53
Actually, when I was Googling it, there are there is a
01:09:56
conspiracy out there that JFK is still alive.
01:09:58
Is it because of a body double or is it that the footage we're
01:10:00
seeing is not real? Yeah, I didn't separate and go
01:10:04
down the down the rabbit hole, so.
01:10:06
Yeah, I guess when it comes to conspiracy theories, you're
01:10:10
going to get everything. Everything.
01:10:12
He was abducted by aliens. Yeah.
01:10:14
Then he's living under the Denver airport.
01:10:17
Yeah. What?
01:10:18
What is supposed to be on the Denver airport?
01:10:20
I have no idea. There's a whole bunch of crazy
01:10:22
shit. Area 51.
01:10:25
All right. Well, good, good job on your
01:10:27
Limerick bro. Appreciate it.
01:10:28
We'll make sure to read it on the on the the pre credit next
01:10:32
time. Yeah, let me go feed my
01:10:34
sourdough starter.