Bad Elizabeth co-hosts Kathy Egan-Taylor and Gideon Evans look into the life of Queen Isabella of Castile, known to many as Queen Isabel of Spain. And, yes, "Isabel/Isabella" is a legit variation of the name Elizabeth.

The show is as much fun as you can have while also discussing some very dark subjects including The Spanish Inquisition, Torture, and Colonization. If you don't laugh you cry, right?

Kathy and Gideon talk about how Isabel and her husband Ferdinand had an equal partnership in ruling the land that would become Spain. And we are joined by special guest, writer, actress, and expert podcaster Julie Klausner. Julie weighs in on Isabella, and advises us on the rules of podcasting with an equal co-host (apparently we are allowed to cut one another off - it just means we're excited).

We also talk to Julie about her amazing career. Along with hosting the podcasts How was Your Week? and Double Threat (with Tom Sharpling) she also created, wrote and produced the very funny Hulu series Difficult People. We also discuss Julie's love of musical theater, which culminated with her work on the Broadway send-up Schmigadoon. Apparently there was a third season of the Apple TV series that was written, but never filmed. Learn all about Julie's plan to "Free Schmigadoon Season 3" in her interview.

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Jett Road Studios - Website - YouTube - Instagram - Substack

Bad Elizabeth - Instagram - YouTube - Substack

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SOURCES:

Isabella of Castile

Europe's First Great Queen

Giles Tremlett

https://a.co/d/06E9hrh2

Isabella of Castile part one

The History Chicks

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/isabella-of-castile-part-1/id415983183?i=1000446257098

Isabella of Castile part two

The History Chicks

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/isabella-of-castile-part-2/id415983183?i=1000447312094

How Was Your Week? with Julie Klausner

https://www.patreon.com/cw/HowWasYourWeek

Double Threat with Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling

https://www.patreon.com/cw/DoubleThreatPod

Schmigadoon!

https://tv.apple.com/us/show/schmigadoon/umc.cmc.1tqmf2znhr4oui4vo69ircyui?ctx_brand=tvs.sbd.4000

Difficult People

https://www.hulu.com/series/d865868f-0a63-4595-b48d-d651e7f67f7b

Welcome to Bad Elizabeth.

I'm your host Gideon Evans,

and I'm your host Kathy Egan Taylor.

The premise of the show is exactly what it sounds like.

Each episode we profile a different Elizabeth or derivation of that name like

ELs, pf,

or Busy,

or Birdie,

who deserves to be called bad.

Some Elizabeths are very inquisitive

about your religious beliefs.

That's our producer and engineer will Becton of Jet Road Studios

Ag Ask.

Our episode today is about Queen Isabella of

Spain,

the Inquisition.

What a show show.

Singing is not my contract.

Welcome to Battle Elizabeth.

I'm Gideon Evans.

And I'm Kathy Egan Taylor.

We have Will Beckton here.

Hello.

And Amber is somewhere doing something.

I'm sure it's magical.

And we went out for dinner last night.

I know with a whole bunch of us with Will and Amber, and then some different

friends from different areas of life.

And like four of the people I think we had worked with at like Michael

Moore stuff, which was how we met.

We were all babies when we started out together, you know?

Yeah, that's so, it's been many, many years, but we've maintained

these friendships, which is great.

Yeah.

You guys were probably thrown in the fire, huh?

Was that TV Nation or?

Yes.

TV Nation.

That was TV Nation and Wow.

Those were crazy times.

And you know, there weren't shows like Jackass on back

then, so the idea of doing like.

Stunt journalism with gorilla tactics that wasn't used

Well, it was like sort of theatrical tactics.

Right?

Definitely.

What kind of stunts would you do?

I'm trying to remember.

Oh yeah.

Well, one of the ones we talked about last night.

I played Joe Camel at one point and, and I, like, I was stressed it different time.

Yeah, it was, he was banned as Master

Mascot.

Well, yeah.

Connected.

It was a, it was a lawsuit because they, they, they thought the Joe Camel character

was kind of like lovable and would attract children to want to smoke cigarettes.

Right.

It was a cigarette company and Joe Camel was kind of the mascot.

So, uh, they basically abolished Joe Camel.

So we decided I'd dress up like Joe Camel and go to RJ Reynolds or

whatever the company was, or Philip

Morris or whatever it happened to be.

Yeah.

And film them without.

Them knowing we were gonna stop buying this ridiculous costume.

And, and I used lines from Death of a Salesman because Joe Camel

was essentially fired, so Oh, work.

So it was like, don't, you can't eat the orange and throw away the peel and stuff.

So

it was Joe Camel as Willie Lowman pretty much.

Or Willie Lowman as Joe Camel.

Exactly.

How were you dressed as Joe Campbell?

Well, I was just, he always looked suave with like a male body.

Wearing cool clothes and then the head was like foam.

Didn't they also say it looked like a scrotum or something like that?

Oh, right.

Totally.

It had sort of a phallic resemblance.

Well, there was that big thing about using sex, like where you

didn't realize you were seeing the word sex in like a glass of ice.

Yeah,

so I think Joe Camel was this idea.

If you look closely enough, it looks like a penis, like his nose is like a penis.

It's almost

like a Georgia O'Keeffe kind of thing where you're like, that looks

something.

That's definitely a vagina.

Something's

happening.

Yeah.

Yes.

But she wasn't selling cigarettes.

But no.

Yeah.

Well the other thing, we were talking about stunts.

There was a Republican fundraiser in Cobb County, Georgia Uhhuh, which

was where New Greenwich was from.

So we infiltrated, but I just remember I went to K-Mart 'cause we wanted to

look undercover or whatever in disguise.

Incognito.

Incognito.

So I went to K-Mart and I bought everyone Atlanta Braves baseball hat.

And I'm like, oh, nice, smart.

We're definitely gonna mix him with this crowd.

Everybody was wearing Braves.

No, I just was like, just, just so we looked like we're not New Yorkers.

Right.

Right.

We're from Atlanta and we're Braves fans.

This is fantastic.

I remember that segment.

And you'd like close down a highway.

I just remember I'd be like, go to bed at night, like up in bed by 11 o'clock

tonight and this will be over with.

Right.

You know, like 24 hours from now it'll all be over.

Even though I, IM,

I'll be in bed and hopefully no one will have attacked me.

Right.

Or get arrested.

Or get arrested.

You got arrested, right?

We talked about it.

I got to pain that Disney World.

Yeah.

Dressed as a giant chicken.

So, uh, what was the chicken?

There was this McGruff, the crime dog character that was a real thing.

He fought street crime and Michael was like, there should

be a mascot for corporate crime.

So the chicken was crackers, the corporate crime fighting chicken,

and they made a giant suit.

It's kind of

like big birdish.

Yeah.

There were like maybe two or three people that wore the suit and

it really smelled inside of it.

It's kind of like the masturbating bear like, like, oh yeah, like Michael

Gordon was always the masturbating bear, but every once in a while, yeah, but

every once in a while somebody would have to like, you know, pinch hit and

oh boy, that's pretty gross.

And be the masturbating bear on his bath.

Were you on Conan as the The

crackers of Chicken?

Oh yes.

Well, yeah.

Michael was a guest on an episode of Conan, but it was the NBC Conan.

Yeah,

late night.

The late night.

Anyway, Paul Rudd was a guest that episode, and Fred Schneider from B 50.

That is a great team.

I know.

And Michael brought me along as the chicken to promote the show.

And so at some point in the interview, Michael's like, oh, and I brought

crackers and they cut to a camera and I'm in the hallway of NBC.

And then all of a sudden Conan had that ostrich character.

Oh, what was his name?

Yeah, tamari.

Oh, tamari, right?

Yeah.

That

was Dino's character.

Yeah.

So I'm in the hallway and they're shooting me.

They cut away to me in the hallway of NBC 30 rock, and then.

Tamari shows up and he's like, hi, behind me, who is

an aggressive ostrich.

All of a sudden he starts wailing.

He's like, and like I wasn't even prepared to get like smacked that hard.

And I'm like, ah.

And I start like running down the hallway and the camera just kind of

turns and shows like this giant chicken getting chased by this giant ostrich.

And I think Paul Rudd, when he came on as a guest, he was like, can I

come on with the head of the chicken?

And Michael was like, no, you can't do that.

We had certain standards here.

You can't kill the chicken.

We draw the

line

there.

Exactly.

So before we dive in, I do want to say we have a great Elizabeth, but also

we have a great guest coming up later.

Julie Klausner, who's such a funny performer and writer, of course she did.

Difficult people with Billy Eichner.

She is the host of two podcasts.

How was Your Week And Double Threat with Tom Sharping?

So stay tuned for that.

Yeah.

So today we are gonna look at Queen Isabella of Castile, and I

know you might be like Isabella.

Is that in Elizabeth?

Yes.

It is a variation of Elizabeth.

Queen Isabella, or some people call her Queen Isabella.

Isabella is kind of the Italian version because the Pope called her that.

Oh, interesting.

And she was the Pope's favorite queen.

Is it Castile or Yes, Spain or, well, was Spain at this point, was it sort of

like Italy as far as like it was broken up into a lot of smaller territories or,

that's exactly right.

I mean, a lot of Europe was like that.

The countries we know today really weren't always like that.

The people in Spain didn't even call them.

So Spaniards really, they were Alians or Ragonese.

'cause there were these different regions.

Some of them were kingdoms.

There was Granada, Castile, Aragon, and El Lucia.

Castile was the largest region.

And let's look at the dates here.

So Isabella, Isabella, she was born in 1451.

Yes.

So we're talking 15th century.

There was a lot of infighting between the regions.

So not only were there tensions with other countries like Portugal,

there was like civil unrest.

There were different religions.

So it was a tough time.

And a lot of the rulers before Isabella were pretty weak.

So a lot of the people of this region weren't looking at

rulers as like powerful beings.

'cause they had many years of like shitty rulers.

Well, the other thing too, that at the time of when Isabel came into

the throne, there's like lots of wild bandits running around the country.

Definitely to like highway men.

So it was just very, very unsafe

lawless.

It was like New York City, 1975.

Exactly.

So Isabella's parents.

There was a King Juan II dose, I guess you could say.

He was the king and his wife was another.

Isabella.

This is another confusing thing about this story.

Many Juans and Juans and many Isabellas, but the parents of Isabella, of Castile,

who our episode is about, were King Juan II and Isabella of Portugal.

They also were not very strong leaders and there was a guy who was also had

a lot of power named Alvaro de Luna, and he was kind of running things a lot

of the time during King one II's rule.

And I know these names kind of throw off a lot of people as if in 500

years from now, people look back at us and we're like, who is Steve Bannon?

Hopefully.

Yeah.

Who is King?

Steve Bannon,

right?

Yeah.

No, they all are named for each other.

They all have numbers after their names.

All that stuff.

You really need like a John Madden flowchart like football.

So Juan II and Isabelle, Isabelle's mother had some kids.

One was Enrique, he was the oldest, and he would be the heir

basically by being the oldest male.

And then there was Isabella, and then there was another boy, Alfonso.

So Alfonso and Enrique were seen as the heirs 'cause they were the boys.

So Isabella was not even seen as an heir and she didn't expect to become a queen.

Similar to our Elizabeth, the first episode, she was educated.

Yeah, she was really into embroidery.

She knew how to read.

She could speak languages.

Yeah.

So.

She was not just sitting around, you know, looking at Jules.

Well, and Queen Elizabeth.

I first didn't expect to really be exactly running for the monarchy either.

Really?

Yeah, they have that in common.

Anyway, at some point the nobles rose up and they killed this guy, Luna, who

is kind of the real guy running things.

They executed him with a dagger.

It was like the Stephen Miller of the

uh, yeah, it sounded like he kind of was.

And then Juan II and Isabella died, so it was time to pass along the crown.

So King Enrique became the next ruler of Castile.

Remember, we're not talking about all of Spain.

A province.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of a province, but it's also almost like a kingdom in and of itself.

I think basically kingdoms were declared as like, we can get people to build walls.

We'll have a kingdom.

Yeah.

Well, there's still the Basque region that's still kind of fiercely

independent at, at least in spirit.

Definitely.

So King Enrique was not ideal as a ruler in many, many ways.

Let's also remind people that incest was going on all the time.

In breeding.

In breeding.

That's a better, I mean, it's sort of incest if cousins marry.

Anyway, the parents, Juan the second, and Isabella were first cousins.

So you knew there was gonna be some problems with some of the offspring.

Yeah,

so Enrique had like tism and he would dressed kind of weird.

Didn't he have a big forehead or something?

He

or, well,

Peter, the Great was also a giant they said, said, oh, interesting.

I think he was like six, seven or something.

Oh wow.

He was very tall.

Presidents and talk show hosts tend to be tall.

Yes.

Abe Lincoln.

Right.

One other manifestation of the inbreeding was that King

Enrique sperm was not very good.

It was apparently very watery.

Wait, they knew this.

Yeah.

And I wanna interrupt right here.

Yeah, of course.

Um,

this is a good place to interrupt.

I have many opinions about sperm.

We're

talking about watery sperm.

Yes,

go ahead.

I was reading some research about Ferdinand, who later became her

husband and his father had some sort of cataract surgery going on.

And the, the way they were describing it, like, and there was no anesthesia.

Well, of course there's no anesthesia.

Yeah.

Like how did they diagnose cataracts?

Like, we gotta get that off your eyes.

You know what I mean?

I know.

So it's pretty amazing.

So the fact that they know that the sperm wasn't good is

pretty

cool.

Well,

apparently I read that there were like staffers that would like masturbate

him and stuff, not to get too graphic.

So his sperm seemed more translucent than whatever the control group was.

Yes,

exactly.

And this was a very important thing of like.

He wanted to have a child.

Well, he needed an heir.

He needed

a legacy.

Well, it was Alfonso would become king.

Yeah, his brother.

So it's like if the king could have a male kid, then that person

would become king after he died.

Was Enrique okay?

Mentally?

I think he was functional mentally, but I think he was very kind hearted in a

weird way, which is a wonderful trait to have as a human, but a terrible trait

to have as a king to have as a king.

So like he was friendly with all these ottoman people and like a lot

of the people that were Muslims would give him gifts and he didn't like

killing people, didn't like bloodshed.

And I think he was just ineffectual,

not the man for the job.

Yeah.

And the other thing on top of that is like in certain regions, female queens

were not even recognized, you know?

Definitely.

So there's a lot on his shoulders.

So he was trying to have a kid with Juana.

Yeah.

And they were trying to get pregnant, but they called him Enrique the Impotent.

Ah.

That was his nickname.

That hits on every level,

doesn't it?

Yeah.

You don't want to have that nickname.

You don't want that to stick.

They actually, I think it was very historic, 'cause they probably

did artificial insemination for the first time in this story.

Man.

They're doing

cataract surgery.

They're

doing

artificial insemination and

they like had a tube, like we always talk about the Turkey baster.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

But they created some sort of tube where they put the watery

sperm into, you know, wana.

Yeah.

And I guess eventually they did have a kid, but it was a girl,

which was a huge disappointment.

Tell me about it.

Not to me.

So it was successful, but then a disappointment.

Yeah.

And then the child of Enrique and Juana Oh, I think was also Juana.

I, it's, well,

it's, there's another one coming up too.

Oh my God.

Every time you say Enrique, by the way, I think of Enrique Andes.

He's like pop singer,

right?

Well, yeah, he's Julio Igl a son,

and I don't think he was impotent.

I don't, I don't think

he's at all.

No, he's the opposite.

Did he sing to all the girls I've lived before with Willie Nelson?

Yes.

Yeah.

Anyway, Isabella was a very strong-willed person and very smart

and very self-assured, and people were trying to marry her off.

She decided she would get final say, and that's pretty damn ballsy.

I think her first potential suitor was like 42 when she was 12.

Yeah.

And she was like, let's go a little younger

for her to say, you can suggest names, but I'm only marrying who I want to marry.

That was pretty amazing.

She did a lot of terrible things.

We're gonna get to that.

Very soon.

She married Ferdinand?

Yeah,

when they wanted to get married and they met like two days before they

were married because they were related.

Somehow you needed to get permission from the Pope and so they faked a letter of

recommendation from the Pope and they were like not quite sure if the archbishop knew

if it was real or not, but did it anyway.

Yeah.

Everything that happened in Europe, pretty much if you were Christian,

had to gain like a seal of approval.

From the Pope.

From the Pope.

And actually part of this whole question of like, was Isabella an heir?

It changed because there was a pope in power who.

More pro Enrique and thinking maybe like Juana, his daughter would become the heir.

But then that Pope died.

Isabella was like, yes.

'cause then Sixes came in another Pope and he somehow just was very pro Isabella.

So that really helped Isabella.

But Enrique was still alive at that point.

So they got married and it was kind of like with William and Kate.

Yeah.

Where Charles is alive, but they're in waiting.

Yeah.

There was a big wedding.

There was 11 days of celebration.

Awesome.

This was political because there had been whispers for many, many

years that it would be cool if the Castilian and the Ragonese kind of came

together and crossed their bloodlines.

Were unified.

Yes.

Yeah.

And Ferdinand getting together with Isabella is sort of like.

The spark of a unified span.

At a certain point, Enrique gets sick and he starts dying.

And I think there was a story like the people around him when he was

on his deathbed, he was like, can I have an hour longer to live?

And they were like, no.

And then he died like an half an hour.

So he was even weak in like trying to delay death.

Well, I think we all might be

guilty of that as well.

Yeah, you don't really control that.

So Isabella became queen.

This was God's choice.

That's the way everybody thought of these things.

So Isabella eventually won.

She came out on top, and I think even when she married Ferdinand, she was kinda like.

I'm the one who's kind of the real queen and he's kind of my contour.

But then it went back and forth and it seems like she really dug him.

I think that they had mutual respect for each other.

Yeah.

You know, part of the issue with Spain at that point in time was that it was

pure chaos with all these regions.

When she became Queen, she was extremely strong and there was war with Portugal.

Ferdinand would be on the front lines with the soldiers fighting, and she was

kind of like a quartermaster general where she was in charge of making sure

food and supplies got to the troops.

She set up hospitals,

but they also had lots of different new ways of waging war.

Like really heavy artillery.

They had cannon balls Yes.

That were flaming.

She organized a group of militia men, so to speak, to bring a cannon to a mountain.

Like to carry it up to a mountain.

Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty incredible.

Oh, to

get the high ground, they would build like moats around a city.

Yeah.

Not just a castle.

Wow.

If he was too weak need about causing bloodshed,

yeah.

She would be like, I'll do it myself.

And she would go and just kill tons of people.

There was lots of violence during that time.

I thought Queen Elizabeth the first did some really violent things, but

it is nothing compared to Isabella.

Wow.

One other interesting thing, and I want to get into the Inquisition,

there was a printing press available, so there was propaganda was getting,

pamphlet was really big.

Yeah.

They had these chronicler that would talk about stuff that was going on now, but

then they'd also write about past history.

Ah,

and reshape, like Granada is a Christian place, not a Muslim place.

So

controlling the current day narrative and then some revisionist

history thrown in as well.

And she was all about the propaganda and she would bring like musicians places.

When she went to the battlefield, there were always musicians that

would be like, here's the queen, and then the musicians play.

And in a weird way, that's propaganda too.

It's the pomp and circumstance.

Definitely.

And she was really rough in Seville.

There was like, as you mentioned, bands of

highway men and bandits.

Yeah.

Just robbing.

There

was just crazy crap going on.

But she really ruled with a heavy hand and there were executions.

People all over the place were being thrown onto fires and being burned.

People were hung for sodomy and they'd like cut off their balls and attach

them to the dead body's necks and, Ugh.

Horrible shit.

That's very mean.

Yeah.

It's fucked up.

But her tactics started working.

People were kind of like, I'm so scared of this woman, but I love her too.

It did work.

And she became kind of like a model.

For future authoritarians like Franco.

And you could see why this idea of law and order and forcing conformity on people

cleaning things up.

Yeah.

And she's created this cult of personality, like everyone just buys into

it, which plants seeds for future leaders.

Definitely.

And she's having babies.

She ended up with like four kids.

So there was like a season for war and then take a break and then

they'd go to war again and she'd have kids when war wasn't happening.

So she'd say like, the more is like see in September,

but that's kind of amazing.

What was that movie with Diane Keaton?

Uh, something Mom.

Oh, Annie

Hall.

No, no,

baby boom.

Oh no.

Anyway, sorry.

So now let's talk about the Inquisition.

'cause we all kind of know about it.

Some of us from the Mel Brooks history of the world.

Part one, it's a dark period.

Basically it's this idea of purifying the country.

In quotes, purified, spreading Christianity,

Christianity and erasing the Jews and the Islamics.

Is it Catholicism specifically?

It is Catholicism, but they call it Christianity

because that just was

Christianity.

It was Christianity, yeah.

Henry Vi VII changed if it wasn't

Catholicism.

Yeah.

And her daughter ended up marrying Henry vii.

Oh right.

Catherine

Ragone.

Oh my gosh.

So Henry VII is one that stratified the church.

And that was later?

Yeah, that was later.

So.

So they're just calling this Christ.

Gotcha.

And there was like a pope.

Yes.

And you have to also.

Keep in mind that the Ottoman Empire was extremely powerful.

Also, later known as the Turks took over Constantinople, which was a big

Christian city, and it became Istanbul.

It's part of Turkey now.

And they were Muslim, right?

They were Muslim, but they weren't Arabic.

There was Meme meme who was the Sultan at the time of Isabella and Spain, and some

of England had all these weak leaders.

So there was a fear that like Christianity was gonna recede and die.

It was gonna

disappear.

Yeah.

So that was part of what Isabella wanted to do.

She was like, I'm gonna kick ass for the Christians.

And she wanted to kind of.

Purify Spain, and it's such a chilling word.

Was the Inquisition contained to Spain?

Was that a Spanish phenomenon or?

It's called the Spanish Inquisition, but it's also the region of Spain.

That's not quite Spain as it was.

Right?

Well, it was invented by both Isabella and Ferdinand.

Wow.

So they did really invent it.

So you can blame them or give, if you're, you know, hate Jews and Muslims.

I don't think we

need to give 'em credit.

No,

I think you're right.

I think we just blame 'em.

I think you're right.

But I think one thing I didn't understand about the Inquisition was it wasn't

necessarily going after Jews per se at first, because there was this idea that

the Queen only ruled over Christians, and she actually was tolerant of Jews

and Muslims for a while, but she was kind of like, you're not even my subjects.

Ah, because you're not Christian.

So really what the Inquisition was, Isabella and Ferdinand

met with this guy Toka Mata.

He was this Dominican monk who pushed this idea of like, we need to do something

about these Jews and Muslims, and he kept pushing them so we can blame him as well.

Who, who was the target of the Inquisition?

Initially?

The Inquisition was Muslims and Jews.

It's a little weird because basically what the Inquisition was going after were

Converso, which were people that were converted from Judaism to Christianity

who kind of were backsliding back into Jewish traditions or Muslims the same way.

Yes.

They called it judaizing.

Basically, if you like hold a Passover Seder, but you're a Christian,

that's like not a good thing.

Is that like a Jew with a Christmas tree?

But I think, yeah, these guys, the Converso probably would have

like a Christmas tree, but they'd get in trouble if they had a mea.

Yeah.

Me.

Yeah.

You

know?

Yeah.

Maybe they didn't wanna really become Christians, but their

neighbors like hated Jews and they were like, maybe I should just,

I wanna be able to live through tomorrow, so.

Exactly.

So maybe I should just do this.

But it became a terrible thing, the Inquisition and

a lot of people were killed.

And also there were all these laws that you could confiscate property

of these converso if they got caught and were killed and put on

the garot or burned at the stake.

So because there was money involved that you'd get the property.

It kind of became about money too.

So

that incentivized people to rat on other people.

Totally.

It's like the witch trials.

Like let's who, who can we focus that we're gonna call her a witch?

And that's why it was called the Inquisition.

Like an inquiry.

It sounds so innocent, but it's like, hmm, maybe come in to our auto defay.

Somebody told us that you're not eating pork or like lighting

candles on a Friday night.

Maybe we should investigate this.

So Otto Defay, is that sort of like a trial?

Yes.

It's kind of like a ceremony where there'd be these inquisitors, you know, they were

the ones who were kind of the judges.

And I think once you found somebody guilty of backsliding, then you'd

hand the case over to the secular folk who would do the execution.

Oh man.

Yeah.

Bad shit.

They would torture people until they confessed and then after they

confessed, they'd execute them.

She burned a lot of people at the stake.

People who were accused were subjected to the rack.

There was this kind of waterboarding thing.

People were crushed by cords.

I'm not exactly sure what that means.

Not Wrangler jeans

doesn't sound good.

They're not corduroy

pants,

but they really believed in this.

I think at one point the Pope was even like, have we been treating

people terribly for too long?

Maybe we should ease up on it a little bit.

And Isabella and Ferdinand were like, no, no, no.

We like this.

Well, it's curious 'cause I was telling you that I listened to a podcast that I

didn't realize was a Catholic podcast.

Oh,

interesting.

Like from an organization

or a church organization?

Yeah.

I was just sort of like looking to see who's talked about her and

what their take on the story was.

And like the Pope adored them and they were the Catholic

sovereigns, the Italian Pope.

They adored her and he calls her, she was the first Catholic

queen and all that stuff.

Oh wow.

So she's very, very respected by the, obviously the winning side.

Did they sound like they admired her too?

Or were they taking her to task the Catholic podcast?

No, they, she was like a hero of the church.

Oh.

Oh, wow.

You know what I mean?

It was like people put her up there with Joan of Ark,

as awful as the Inquisition is, and then later in 1492, there was the

expulsion where they basically did kick Jews and Muslims out of the country.

Which is also an interesting year because after that happened,

Christopher Columbus came back.

What a year.

Yeah.

Well, she had to wait till she was done with all the expulsions.

Right.

But one question we do have to talk about, okay.

From a modern perspective.

This looks so terrible.

And the expulsions were almost worse.

Probably.

I had never even heard of that.

So it's the Inquisition and what's the other one?

The expulsion.

Well, if you can't convert 'em, get rid of them.

Yeah.

If they didn't convert, they just wanted them out of the country.

So

March 'em to the border, or put'em on boats, or how would they?

I think

all of the above.

Wow.

Like people would self deport.

It's a matter of survival.

We can't stay here or we won't live.

Keep in mind too, there were tons of people in this area that had

Jewish blood or Muslim blood.

Tomata was like.

Let's put things on people's clothes to know who's Jewish and who's Muslim, and

we know where that sort of thing leaves.

That sounds similar

to something

else.

Yes.

Well, I mean, even if you say we we're looking back at the time in

the context now it sounds awful, but I mean, a hundred years from now,

people might look at our time and say, how the hell did that happen?

Absolutely.

And also when you do disparage a group as bad people, there's all sorts of violence

that happens to them by this other citizen where they're like, these people are bad.

So some of the Jews tried leaving and then they just threw them

off a boat into the ocean.

So the dehumanization, which is born of propaganda,

definitely as we talked about at the beginning of the episode,

this wasn't called Spain, they didn't call themselves Spaniards.

It was a hodgepodge and really chaotic and violent with all these different groups.

And to some degree, this idea of purification of

let's drive these people out.

Not nice and not good, but.

It did lay the groundwork for this is gonna become Spain

and we're going to introduce future populations to the Siesta and Tapas.

Oh my God.

Well,

in Ria,

what was the drink that Griffin, Matthew said?

I know, I have to look it

up.

Tinto.

Verano.

Yeah.

Verano.

Such a wonderful culture, and I'm sure wherever you are in Spain

and I've only been to Barcelona, have, have you been to Spain?

I've been to, I've been all over.

I mean, I've been to San Sebastian, which is in the northern part, that's

the Basque region that we mentioned.

I've been to Bilbao where the Guggenheim is Barcelona, and I've been to Madrid.

It's still pretty regional.

I mean, if, if you go to Barcelona, that's definitely Catalonia.

Yeah.

It's very, very regional.

And this expulsion of the Muslims was very complicated because Isabella

had to wage war against Granada, which was a very rough terrain.

And I've never been there, but it sounds beautiful.

Yeah.

There was amazing architecture there.

It was like the jewel of that region.

It was just this beautiful place and you've visited, but when you go

there, you do feel like, oh, this area feels more Muslim influenced or

have more architecture.

Yeah.

Or something like the tiles, whatever they use.

You know,

so many countries in the world, the wonderful things about them were born

from blood,

from terrible stuff

and human sacrifice,

slavery.

Yeah.

Speaking of colonization.

Let's talk about Columbus a little bit.

Christopher Columbus.

Yes.

So he had approached the Queen before, you know, I went to mm-hmm.

Explore the New World and she was all for it, but hey, we gotta get over

through this war right now, and I don't really have the money to finance it.

So he returned in 1492.

Yeah.

And he was Genovese.

So he wasn't even Spanish.

He was Italian.

Italian.

From

Genoa.

Yes, exactly.

I love their salami.

I was gonna say, me too.

So yeah, Columbus had been wooing Isabella and Ferdinand for a while, and

he was this just this kind of crazy guy.

Not crazy, but he was like a Seduces.

He was the Admiral of the seas.

Well, he asked them for that title

in his head.

He was the admiral in the Seas.

Yeah.

And then he became it vision board.

Yeah.

And he didn't need that much money.

I always imagined this was gonna be a really expensive endeavor.

Excursion.

Yeah.

And it was just three ships.

Nina, the Pinto and the Santa, the Maria.

Exactly.

Good job.

Thank you.

And there were 90 men, but Isabella kept kind of pushing him off.

She was like, who knows if he's really gonna find anything?

He wanted to go to the Indies.

Yes.

And eventually there was someone in Isabella's court that was like,

maybe we should do this thing.

And that turned out to be a huge deal.

So Columbus was Italian, but sailing under a Spanish flag.

Exactly like anything he happened to find and plant Isabella's flag on it.

He'd be able to write Isabella and say, you're now the ruler of this.

Here's its territory that I have for you.

Yes.

He used the Canary Islands as his launching point

that I guess is near Spain.

They sailed for a long time and the crew wanted to do a mutiny.

They didn't know that they were gonna bump into anything, and then eventually

they just start hitting islands lands.

Yeah, yeah.

In the Caribbean.

Mm-hmm.

And

Espanola.

Espanola is now Dominican, Republican, Haiti,

right?

Is it?

Yeah.

That's the connected island, yes.

Okay.

This reminds me a little bit of.

It just has to do with like when you're ruling or whatever, but the way

Queen Elizabeth was the Shakespeare queen, she's the Columbus queen.

Definitely.

Yeah.

The Manifest Destiny, you know?

Yeah.

So this was the beginning of the colonization of the Western hemis.

They kind of Western culture, quote unquote, became expanded not just from

Europe, but now it was the new world, and Isabella was super happy about this.

Did missions start right away?

Like was there a goal to make the New World Christian kind of

right away?

Yeah, absolutely.

That was one of the main things, other than like finding valuable spices and

gold,

perhaps gold.

Hey, look, there are indigenous people and they seem open to taking Christ.

That's their savior.

All right, so Queen Isabelle, what do we think?

Do we think she's bad?

I think she's definitely bad.

That's a loaded question as it always is.

I, I think she's definitely bad.

She did some many atrocious things, but also the context of her time

and who she was and her position.

I just think that she did so many bad things beyond just being a colonizer.

She really did engage in some terrible things.

It's easy for me to say she goes into the bad category, but she

deserves credit for some things.

When you look at Spain.

I mean, she made it.

She started to make that, whether you like it or not, that was part of what she did.

And also being a woman at that time, being a monarch at the time, being a monarch

who was respected and seen, so to speak.

Yeah.

With any king or queen,

it's complicated.

You admire their cruelty in a weird way.

I think a lot of people do.

Right?

I mean, there is a certain amount of respect.

But we are talking about her too.

We're not talking about Enrique.

Yes.

And he was kind of nice in a weird way, and tolerant.

And those people don't get remembered by history.

Well, he's kinda milk toasty.

He didn't really do anything.

And then the 15th century ruling with an iron fist is.

Pretty understandable, but I guess when you throw in the inquisition and things

that basically border or overlap with ethnic cleansing it, it kind of gets

tricky.

Yeah.

And it really was ethnic cleansing.

You hear that word?

This is exactly that.

The idea of like purifying our nation by getting out non-Christians.

It's a curious thing because, you know, you brought this up earlier that she

said that she didn't like bull fighting.

Yeah.

She didn't dislike it because the bulls were harmed or killed.

She was like, why are we wasting a perfectly good Christian on a bull?

See, I would say, why are we wasting two viable kidneys?

Yes.

But they probably weren't that advanced back then.

No, I doubt they did.

They did have a semen tube.

Yeah.

And rudimentary cataract surgery.

Exactly.

Queen Isabella did a lot of bad things as well as a few good things.

At the very least, we can call her a quote unquote difficult person, and

she was in cahoots with many difficult people like to, and Christopher Columbus.

So joining us is someone who knows a thing or two about difficult

people she created and co-starred in the hilarious Hulu series.

Difficult People.

Welcome from New York City, actress, writer, performer, and dare I say,

queen of Podcasting, Julie Klausner.

Hi Julie.

Thank you for being here and joining us.

Thank you for having me.

So great to see you, Julie.

Likewise.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here.

You know, I'm a huge tomata and you know,

who isn't

the Jews?

I mean, look, I just know from, you know, history of the world.

Hey, Tomata, what do you say?

I know we've been quoting a history of the world a bit.

So this episode is about Queen Isabella,

and we must start by saying, we know you are not a historian,

I should say an historian and

historian, right?

It's like the H is considered a vowel in this

case it's really lame, even though that's the correct way.

I love it.

Do you, you like saying an in front of H words?

No, just an historian.

Okay.

None of us are historians, so we'll muddle through this.

But yeah.

Queen Isabella had no problem being feared more than loved.

I mean, it worked for her as a queen.

Is that an effective tactic for working in showbiz?

I think it's an effective tactic for any woman over 35.

You have to just sort of appreciate your liberation from the male gaze, GAZE.

May we never be liberated from the other kind.

And so can you be feared and love simultaneously or is

it just one or the other?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I mean, look at my relationship to nineties James Spader,

like that hair.

And I know it didn't last.

It was just one of those things that was just like too good to be eternal.

But when it was brushed and blow dried, I mean like around sex

lies and video tape we'll say.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

What an American accomplishment.

The film or the man?

Yes.

Both.

All of it.

Yes.

So this is about Queen Isabella.

We also do an, uh, about Elizabeth the first of England.

These women were both ruling monarchs, so they actually really

need to work extra hard to prove themselves as a female comedian.

As a female in show business.

Like how, how has this impacted your sort of drive, just being a queen?

Oh, being a, a woman of empower.

It's good to be the queen.

And they also, these queens, at the beginning of their reigns, everyone was

always like, women can't be leaders.

And they had to really prove, yeah, extra hard.

Sure.

I mean, there's definitely the backwards and heels element of it, but we don't get

nearly as many oil paintings done of us that are extremely flattering and dresses

that have no stretch next to like small dogs, which I think needs to be addressed.

And not with ai,

you can't put that into a line in the budget of your shows

that as the showrunner and the writer, you get an oil painting.

Lately the contracts are written in blood.

Like I was watching that America's Next Top Model Doc and the

contestants were saying what the conditions were in the contract.

And I'm like, is that still up for, uh, where can I sign?

Not that I was ever a contender, but at the time you'd think, oh, reality

shows and their contracts are so crazy.

And now you're like, there's a contract.

Things have changed.

Changed.

Well, you're happy to get a, a cup of tea, you know,

a cup of anything.

The green m and ms is the cliche one.

Right.

That was what Van Halen got.

It was actually a way of them.

The rumor is, or the myth is that it was a way for them to test that people

were actually reading the rider.

Yeah.

They found someone picking out green m and ms. Like, we're good.

Yeah.

And just a way of exerting power and control.

So as Gideon sort of ingeniously pointed out, the Jews were really

pressured to convert to Christianity, uh, during the Inquisition.

So a lot of Jews celebrated Christmas and they had to resist backsliding into

Jewish traditions, you know, so you were part of a wonderful video project

called Christmas Time for the Jews.

That was my first credit for like anything for, for television comedy writing.

I think that was so cool.

It's famous.

It it's a great short, it was a TV fun house and I was like so

delighted to be able to submit.

Jokes for this project, and I, I just sent like a whole bunch, and Robert Smigel

chose the one about going to see Fiddler on the roof with actual Jewish actors.

Oh my God.

That was when Rosie O'Donnell was in Fiddler as, um, Golda.

It was, um, Rosie and Harvey Firestein and the sexual

chemistry was just overwhelming.

I mean, I,

it just lit the place on fire

that was mine and I got a credit.

And the cool thing about that is like, the way the credits are

paced out to the music, like it holds on the names a little longer.

So I always get emails around Christmas when they rerun it saying, wow, that's

so cool that, you know, you wrote this.

I'm like, well, one of the jokes, but I'll take it.

'cause it's such a cool thing to be a part of, right.

I guess for our listeners, I mean, and we'll put it on our, on our show

notes and whatnot, it's basically Darlene Love who sings that famous

Christmas baby, please come home.

So she sang a song about what Jews do on Christmas, going out for Chinese food,

that type of stuff where like the Jews have the town to themselves for the night.

Did

you do that, that stereotypical thing?

I mean, stereotypical of eating Chinese

food.

Absolutely.

Jews and Chinese food is like a really long, beautiful tradition

for many different reasons.

Definitely.

But, and yeah, and Christmas is getting harder and harder to get a table.

I love doing that.

The go to a movie thing, it depends on the movie, I mean.

But yeah, we absolutely used to do that growing up for sure.

And what do you think they were doing to, I mean, the Jews, it was a rough

time during Christmas, I imagine during the Spanish Inquisition.

Oh geez.

Like if you were living in Spain at the time, or what was pre-pay,

would you be able to pretend you're not Jewish and pass as, uh.

A Christmas celebrating, uh,

one of those things where you're gonna have to ask the person with the weapon.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Well, the funny thing is people think that I'm Jewish and I don't understand why.

Well, I think because I grew up culturally mostly with Jewish

friends and in Jewish households and know more about Shabbat dinner and

Oh,

great.

Those sort of traditions.

The

Shabbat on Fridays and you got the, so you know how to like tear out a

piece of the challah and pass along.

One of my best friends converted and she makes ghi, which is

the, like the Persian stew.

I mean, I still dream about that.

It's so good.

Oh, Persian Jews are never, ever turned down an invitation from a

Persian Jew for Shabbat dinner.

Exactly.

Back to Isabella, Christopher Columbus was her henchman, so to speak.

When you were growing up, what did they teach you about Columbus in

school?

1492 that he sailed the ocean blue and I know the three names of his boats.

Ooh.

Which were,

okay, go for it.

The Nina, the Pinta Pinta or Pinto Pinto's car, I

think, right.

Pinta

Pinta was the explosive Car D Nina Genta and the Santa Maria.

And that was pretty much it.

We didn't, I didn't get into the like Howard Zi of it all until high school.

So by Christopher Columbus.

Education was the flashcard version and the, the just whatever, like curriculum.

I don't know.

I wanna say Eisenhower signed off on, I'm not that old, but it's like,

no, I hear you.

It was just kind

of an antiquated idea about who he was and what he did.

Well, it's weird, a little bit.

We're not Gen Z. Right,

right.

It's weird because obviously Columbus was such a dick wad.

Mm-hmm.

And just did a lot of horrible things.

Sure.

But as a non Gen Z or non-millennial, I do have that moment when they're

like, Columbus Day is canceled.

And I'm like, really?

Maybe just because I associate it with missing school.

Well, you still get a day off, but now it's indigenous.

I know day, which it should be indi, but it is weird how we hold onto the things

from our childhood for no reason, but

so as a kid, a day off is a day off.

That's true.

Right?

That's true.

You get to watch prices.

Right?

Even though it's the Drew Carey hosted one instead of the Bob Barker one.

Now there's allegations about Bob Barker, but

we don't have to go into that.

Those those have been there for a while.

Those have been around for a while.

That's what, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're talking about Columbus.

We're talking about looking at the history that we learned when we were

growing up versus what's happening now.

Like even Caesar Chavez is in the news.

Yes, they're gonna have to change a lot of streets here in la, but they're gonna

have to recast him in at least three projects.

Exactly.

Hmm.

The world is full of difficult people.

Agreed.

Can we talk about your show, difficult people,

please?

I would love nothing more.

It's one of my favorite go-tos when I just wanna tune out to the world.

I've seen probably every episode, like at least six times.

It makes me laugh.

That's

amazing.

Every time.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So let's talk about how that came together.

Obviously it's based on your experiences as a working performer

in New York City, and you're Julie Klausner, but you play Julie Kleisner.

Oh, uh, KLE.

Kessler.

Kes.

Kes.

Kesler.

Kessler, sorry.

Julie Kleer is my burlesque name.

I, I know, I saw of those shows.

Yeah.

What I do with an accordion is disgusting.

So when you were creating this character, how did you differentiate her from

yourself and also make yourself an appealing character because you're

compelled to watch it because you love to see her fail and sort of, yeah, and,

and you love to see your sharp edges.

You wanna play the asshole or the clown or the fool.

Like those are the most fun parts to play as a comic.

You don't wanna be the ingenue, like I, I can't imagine anyone,

there's just nothing to do there.

There's nothing to find as an actor.

So I always wanted to play like a Kenny Powers or Larry David, and

just characters that mostly men have gotten to play in the past.

They give themselves the best parts 'cause they're the most fun.

Yeah, I guess the differentiation was something that I had

to constantly be aware of.

And Scott King, who you know, was in the room with me all the time, was

very, very good about pointing out, well that's a Julie Klausner thing more than

a Julie Kessler thing, because Julie Klausner has more insecurities and beats

herself up more and, and Julie Kessler just blames everything on the world.

So when I would be tempted to be like self-deprecating on the show, that was

always helpful to remember that that's me.

That's not her.

She thinks she's perfect.

You bared your teeth and everything.

Like this is what Gideon and I were talking about, like the

things you must have gone through through standards and practices.

'cause the bombs you dropped Oh wow.

That, no, not at all.

Like we had a great

lawyer.

Really?

There weren't any like celebrity burns that you, uh, were told that's too far.

No, they were fine.

They were Oh wow, cool.

Like, oddly enough, yeah, we got some notes legally, but we were

pretty good about saying things like allegedly on occasion and

mm-hmm.

But we weren't told like, that's off limits.

And like enough with the Kevin Spacey jokes, that man's a dear friend of mine.

That

is so funny.

That was really important to me to like include a Kevin Spacey

joke in every script, and most of them got through, but there was

one in every episode at one point.

They just get edited out.

But that was like a huge, you know, point of contention for me that he

hadn't suffered consequences at the time.

Well now he is, I suppose

I saw one of the episodes recently and I was kind of amazed You had

a Charlie Rose pervert comment.

Yeah,

and I think that was before the Me Too stuff.

The whole show was before me too.

But how did you know he was a pervert?

I had a feeling,

oh God.

You were genius.

You could just look at someone.

No, there's just, you know, spidey sense that.

I hadn't heard anything at the time.

It was just a vibe.

Wow.

Number one, it's a creepy black box set.

Yeah.

And just the way that he would talk, speak with women differently

than he would speak with men.

And you could also look at where his eye line was going sometimes.

Oh,

interesting.

Yeah, his eyes were weird.

They were a little odd.

His eyes.

They were,

yeah.

When he was interviewing his a woman, his eyes were all over the place.

Really?

I have to look back at those.

Yeah.

No one wants to go back.

Don't go back and visit those.

Okay.

I won't.

I love all these documentaries where they do a documentary about a famous

person and they'll use as archival footage like a Matt Lauer or a Charlie

Rose interview, and they just have to like, cut around the interviewers or,

or you just hear the voice otherwise

distract you.

You can't even look at

it.

I'm trying to learn about what Diddy did, like now I'm thinking

about what Matt Lauer did.

I'm thinking about like, all my music selection, half the artists that

I listen to have been canceled, so

Oh, really?

You have like an r Kelly super mix or what's, what, what's on there?

Ignition is a great song.

Come on.

Listen.

It is.

Oh, we wouldn't be, honestly, we wouldn't be talking about him if

Ignition were not a great song.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So like, I, I read an interview that when you were making the

show was coming out, but you said basically it was like a fever dream.

Like if Scott Rudin said to you, Julie Klausner, I can give you all the money

in the world, you can do whatever you want, what would your show be?

And that's how you said you wrote the script for difficult people.

Absolutely.

Although I don't think I used Scott Rudin as an example, did I?

Mm. He's trying to make a comeback now.

You basically cited anyone who had all the power in Hollywood that

could give you whatever you want.

Oh,

interesting.

It was absolutely a dream show.

I, I treated it like I was granted a, a wish to just, and also I treated

it like it was the last chance that I would ever have to make something,

which time will tell if I was right.

But I will say every.

Season finale.

I treated like the series finale.

Everything I wanted to do, I tried to stuff it in like an everything cookie.

You know, one of those cookies that has like cereal and oatmeal and

cranberries.

Yeah, everything.

And we were so lucky because of the timing and the circumstance, and

we had Amy on our side defending us when, you know, people are like, oh.

Funny.

And she's like, it is.

And they're like, okay, cool.

And Hulu was very new.

We were really like their first scripted shows before like Handmaid's Tale even.

So

yeah,

we had a lot of liberty to kind of set the tone and they were so great to work with

and they, they gave me so much freedom.

I'm always gonna be grateful to them.

Well, it was also like to cast Andrea Martin.

Yeah.

Who must have been your comedic hero growing up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, as your mother.

Yeah.

And every one of the characters is a difficult person.

Oh, absolutely.

I was just thinking about some of my favorite episodes, the John

Mullaney with the Penny Farthing bike.

Yeah.

John Mullaney, who plays this sort of steam punk character.

Sure.

I love that you being a New Yorker and like, you know, having lived there and

Will and Gideon now lives there too.

People don't realize that these people exist.

These precious people exist in New York City.

Sure.

So I love that you shine a spotlight to see like, yeah, this is what

we walk around with every day.

And we as New Yorkers, we don't even really respond to it.

No, that was fun.

That was fun.

Well, we still laugh at you though, I mean,

yeah.

I also loved Patches.

The clown I thought was brilliant.

Mm-hmm.

I don't understand why people call Patches a clown.

She was just an actress.

Just a character

with balloons.

Yeah, she had balloons and overalls.

And I guess like there are some clowns that wear overalls and I guess

the name patches is a clown's name.

But it's funny 'cause she's not a clown.

Can you explain the premise of that episode?

It was basically that Brits and Aussies are getting all the roles in Hollywood.

Mm-hmm.

And when they do American accents, it just sounds insane.

And so I went out for, at the time there was that show,

what the hell was it called?

It was the one with the guy from the wire and the lady from the thing.

It was like the story of their like affair.

It was the affair.

Oh, the affair of the

affair.

Right.

Oh, right.

McNulty the guy who played McNulty.

Right, right.

And so Right one was British and one was Australian.

And so their American accents would have a lot of hard Rs.

And so Scott King and I were talking about a funny thing of mine.

It'd be like, maybe if I'll, I'll land this part if I pretend I'm

Australian and I'm like landing these.

Hard Rs and the casting directors thought I was someone who was

like developmentally challenged.

And so they cast me and then found out that I was faking it, but I wasn't faking

being that I was faking being Australian.

And so there was a lot of farce around that that ended up with

us in a Outback steakhouse.

I dunno if we were able to say Outback though.

Anyway.

And the other one I, I loved is when you and Billy had double

lives in New Jersey, like

Yeah,

you had a bad hair day and you ended up in Ho Hoboken and you became

like a real housewife of New Jersey

Italian pinatas.

Definitely.

Like one of my favorite, my favorites are patches is up there.

Italian pinata.

Absolutely.

And then, um, strike Rat, which is the Woody Allen one.

Oh

yeah.

The Strike Rat.

Yeah.

And you had Cole Cola who's always so funny.

Oh yeah.

Are you allowed to take credit for his success?

Why not?

I mean, what am I gonna get?

A cease and desist?

What are the consequences of taking credit?

Zero.

You should make him cast you as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Oh,

I dunno if casting works on the blackmail method.

Too bad.

Well,

no, I love Cole.

I wrote that role for Cole.

Oh, he's fantastic.

Yeah.

And Billy is great.

Billy and also Cole was also in the writer's room as well

for seasons two and three.

So Cole's voice is all over the show in addition to his

incredible on camera talent.

You know, we wanna also talk about after Difficult people is also, you've

been sort of the queen of podcasting.

I think you started back in 2012, correct?

Yeah, yeah.

It was that before your time kind of curse where before your time also means

before it was like monetized properly.

So Yes.

Yeah, I was doing it a long time ago and I brought it back recently

and I'm having a great time.

It's just so nice to be back behind the mic.

Was it called Podcasting when you started?

Yes.

It was called Podcasting.

It wasn't called, I dunno, something old timey.

I remember.

It was very influenced by Marin's.

Oh, podcast.

And also Tom Sharping had a radio show on WFMU, that was a podcast as well.

They'd sort of put out the show the next day as in podcasting form.

And Pat Oswald was very encouraging to me because he always liked it when I

went on Tom Sharp Link's show and said publicly like Julie should have a podcast.

And I sort of took that as a cue.

And yeah, I do my own show, which is How was your week?

And then I do this show Double Threat with Tom Sharp Link

with Tom.

Oh yeah,

yeah.

That lends itself to another Isabella question actually.

Oh.

Because she shared power with Ferdinand.

Oh, funny.

That was a really

unique thing.

Yeah.

Rare thing, like they basically could make decisions without

even asking the other person.

It was kind of a wild thing for Monarchs to be like that.

A

brain.

And he was like on the front line of the wars, but then she was like the

quartermaster general where she would make sure the troops had enough food to eat.

Oh.

So it's kind of amazing.

Interesting.

But that's hard to share power.

So you and Tom, how do you guys share power on your podcast?

I find that podcast hosting is probably the lowest form of power,

if we're using that word as it's defined or as I know it to mean.

But, um, Tom and I have a great rapport.

We are absolutely in that place where we'll, we'll say the

same thing at the same time.

We'll both think of the same joke and that's always so satisfying and that we

try to keep each other on our feet to kind of not predict the next thing, but to.

Sort of throw a wrench into whatever pattern because we're both used

to talking alone into Mike's.

Yeah.

So to have another person there to kind of interrupt that is always a

fun challenge because it, it makes it more fun to like build something.

And I think we both kind of know the rules of it, which is, you know,

we never like rag on each other.

We just rag on other people, which was the rule in difficult people.

Also, Billy and Julie would never fight and we never didn't know what

the other was up to on the show.

That was like a big rule for us.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, because there's a lot of duos where there'll be a fight or a

misunderstanding and we just didn't think.

That was fun, that it was very much us against the world.

And I do feel that with Tom as well.

Like I think it's a matter of sort of figuring out that the

two of you are on the same team and everybody else is fair game.

This is really, so

that would be good advice to us.

I was gonna say,

yeah, I was gonna say,

yeah, Kenny and I were texting even last night and we were texting about something

and I, and I was about to text him.

We were talking about Hope Davis.

Oh, he wrote the day.

Trippers was a great movie and at the same time I wrote the

day, trippers was a great movie.

Aw.

We often have, look at that Shared brain syndrome.

I haven't

seen that since it came out.

It was so good.

I need to revisit it.

There was a Wallace Sean play that I saw last night and she's in the cast.

Yeah, she's incredible.

And it made me think of the day triggers, but her understudy

played the role last night.

Oh,

you missed out on hope.

You were

hopeless.

I know.

But the other, that's really smart.

But this stuff about, you have these rules with Tom that's

really interesting for us to hear.

'cause we are so new at co-hosting a podcast and like I've noticed,

like we, we get almost all positive feedback, like on, on the comments.

Great.

But there are a couple of negative ones and one was like, you guys

interrupt each other way too much.

Oh well that's gonna happen.

That means you're enthusiastic and you're in the flow.

So we shouldn't worry about that?

No.

Okay, good.

That's Will's problem.

Totally

right?

The editor.

It's okay.

Oh, will, will, will Beckton.

No, I was gonna say, I thought that was the commenter's name.

I mean, it could be both, but

yeah.

Maybe.

Are you going on Apple Podcasts and trashing us?

That's really funny.

I just added a couple letters and numbers behind my name and

Oh no, it's so passive aggressive.

I did wanna ask a couple of questions about Shme Doon.

Please.

Can I do that?

Of course,

because I love it and I'm a huge musical theater fan.

I used to collect records of all those shows and I just see everything.

Yeah.

I used to see like bombs intentionally.

Oh yeah.

Those are the best.

Just

for the fun of it.

Absolutely.

Like I saw my favorite year, the musical and Oh God, like Nick and Nora

Uhhuh.