Daryl Cooper, host of The Martyr Maid podcast, joins me to talk about his journey to becoming a podcast host, how he got his start, and why he decided to start his own podcast. He also talks about how he ended up co-hosting with Jocko Willick, and how he became the host of his own show.
00:02:24.980That's kind of always how I passed the time since I was a little kid.
00:02:28.080You know, I moved around a lot as a kid.
00:02:29.680So I kept my nose in a book for some continuity.
00:02:33.540And, you know, I would always be reading and talking to my friends about stuff that they probably didn't care that much about.
00:02:40.720And one day I was complaining that Dan Carlin, you know, only puts out episodes every six or eight months.
00:02:46.040And somebody said, well, why don't you make one?
00:02:48.120And so I so I made one and, you know, it became kind of a little cult classic or like a like a like a cult hit podcast where at a small audience, which, you know, is to be expected for seven hour long history episodes.
00:03:03.380Um, but very, very enthusiastic and dedicated.
00:03:07.220They're really great, uh, small audience.
00:03:09.200And then I guess it was must have been two years ago now.
00:03:17.480Um, I wrote that thread just on a lark.
00:03:20.200You know, it, uh, I had like 7,000 Twitter followers at the time and it was really just me talking to them, which is the way I always think of my podcast.
00:03:29.120Even now is it's just me talking to my own listeners.
00:03:32.600If other people want to come in and listen, that's great.
00:03:35.160What, you know, glad to have them, of course, but I mean, I don't try to please everybody.
00:03:39.900I try to just, I work for my own listeners.
00:03:42.220And so I was just talking to this small group of people after I'd had a conversation with my friend's mother, who's an upstate New York sort of Fox News, normie, MAGA Republican.
00:05:16.720Uh, but Jocko called me up one day after I put out one of my Jonestown episodes, I got to learn to stop spinning back and forth and fidgeting.
00:05:26.680Um, after I put out one of my Jonestown episodes, Jocko called me up and he said, Hey, why don't you quit your job and just come down here and work with me full time?
00:05:33.500And I said, no, because, you know, I like my job.
00:05:37.620When he called me, I was literally on a, on a six month long assignment out in Kauai and the government was putting me up in this beautiful resort because it was the only thing available.
00:05:47.560It was just a great job, you know, and with all the travel and everything, I was making good money.
00:05:52.700And again, I was 20 years toward a retirement and, you know, I grew up very poor.
00:05:57.860And, and so being that close to a good federal retirement is like, you know, just making it into the middle class.
00:06:04.060When I finally hit that threshold, it was this huge weight off my shoulders.
00:06:08.160And, uh, so I told him no, but Jocko can, uh, believe it or not, be very convincing when he wants something.
00:06:15.880And, uh, and so I'm in San Diego now and, um, and we do a podcast together called the unraveling, which we haven't done in several months because our schedules have been ridiculous, but we're supposed to record this week.
00:06:27.860So, you know, in that podcast, uh, we deal with historical topics, um, but mostly not all, but mostly more recent history, 20, we, we, we've been doing a lot on the cold war, 20th century history, but also contemporary politics.
00:06:41.720And then, uh, the martyr made podcast obviously is where I go real deep on, on historical topics.
00:06:47.720Absolutely. And it's something that you, you don't shy, uh, shy away from controversy. You don't shy away at some of the hard stuff. It's nice because it doesn't feel like you're chasing it. It doesn't feel like you're, you're doing it just to be, you know, salacious or to, to, to get any kind of street cred for being edgy.
00:07:04.460You're doing it because it's essential to kind of the truth and what you're trying to convey, which I really respect. And I think, uh, you need a lot more of, especially in history, history, uh, is a lot more controversial than people think it is.
00:07:16.640When, once you start digging in, once you start telling the truth. And so, uh, I encourage people to check that out. But one of the, that's one of the reasons I want to talk to you today is a lot of people kind of have a conception of the United States,
00:07:28.640especially a lot of conservatives that I think is, uh, is a little, uh, rosy, a little something that is not facing a lot of difficult parts of history.
00:07:39.160And I think that's not because they're not willing, willing to look at those that, but because they've never often heard it from people who I think love the country and care about the country.
00:07:48.060The only people they've heard it from are people who hate the country, people who despise them, especially red America. They can feel kind of that, that animosity coming off of them.
00:07:56.000And so one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it with you is because I feel like, you know, with, with your military background, with your experience, uh, you know, I, I think you read as somebody who people respect and people understand comes from a place of, of caring about the country and its people.
00:08:11.460And so when we delve into these topics, I think you're the kind of guy that, that unpacks in a way that, that other people who have that kind of background can relate to. Uh, so we're going to dive into that guys, but before we do, I do need to go ahead and hear from our sponsor today.
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00:10:43.960All right, guys, so let's go ahead and jump into it.
00:10:47.640Now, Daryl, I think one of the places that I usually start when I'm talking to conservatives about kind of what's going on is they, of course, care a lot about national security, right?
00:10:56.140They want to know that we have a strong military that keeps the United States safe, that is out there making sure that their homeland is going to be protected, that their interests are being taken care of.
00:11:06.680And I think that's a good general conservative stance to take.
00:11:10.960I think that's a healthy thing, a respect for the military, respect for people who are protecting you, those kind of things.
00:11:16.080I think that is something that is really essential.
00:11:18.180But I think what can often confuse many kind of American conservatives about our current situation, our foreign policy, is they don't see America as an empire.
00:11:29.020They see it as kind of this nation, and it's got its own interests, and it's all wrapped up around these 50 states right here.
00:11:35.260But they don't think about it projecting power and the way that that kind of impacts other areas.
00:11:42.080I wonder if you could talk a little bit about kind of the idea of America as an empire, if you think it is an empire, and if it is, when did it become an empire as opposed to kind of a more traditional or standard nation?
00:11:56.460Empires come in a lot of shapes and sizes, right?
00:11:59.020The Athenians always insisted that the Delian League was not an empire.
00:12:02.080Of course, it was an empire, and we recognize that now, and historians in the future will look at America and recognize that we crossed that threshold sometime in the early to mid-20th century.
00:12:12.300I guess you could debate, you know, when we embarked on the Spanish-American War, that was an imperial move to a degree, but we did kind of retreat into isolationism after that, even after World War I.
00:12:24.600But after World War II, I think it's, you know, it's undeniable that America is an empire.
00:12:32.260I mean, we receive tribute in the form of having the world's reserve currency, you know, which that's exactly what it is.
00:12:40.560It's a form of tribute, a very advanced form of tribute, allows us to do things we would otherwise never be able to do without it.
00:12:48.880And we involve ourselves in the affairs of every country on the planet, you know?
00:12:54.560We consider it our business, how Arab states in the Middle East relate to one another, and not just, you know, this is our ally, Saudi Arabia, and so you better not threaten our ally, you're going to deal with us.
00:13:09.100But to actually manage their affairs, foreign affairs and their domestic affairs, and you see it in Ukraine, you know?
00:13:16.620You would think just standing back from a historical perspective, if you were to say, should America or Russia have more influence and say in, like, what's going on in Ukraine and what military alliances and clearly, you know, it's Russia.
00:13:37.300That doesn't necessarily mean that you throw Ukraine to the dogs and let Russia dominate them.
00:13:43.020You know, Russia's a part of Europe, and so they're a part of the civilizational structure that we're a part of, and so we can have dialogue there.
00:13:51.680But it's an imperial impulse to think that we should have more control over what's going on in Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine, than Russia does.
00:14:00.360And Americans, you know, we've always, and this goes all the way to the top, I think.
00:14:05.220I really do believe this, like, you know, that the people at the top, there's obviously some cynical actors up there.
00:14:13.020But I've talked to a lot of people who have spoken to or know very well, people who were very high up in the Bush administration, the second Bush administration.
00:14:21.620And when they said that we were going to convert the Middle East to a bunch of, you know, democratic republics, and they were going to welcome us in the streets, and we were going to, they believed it.
00:14:33.580And it's crazy to think about the fact that the people making decisions on our behalf around the world are operating with delusion at that scale.
00:14:43.660But they really did, a lot of them did believe it.
00:14:47.460And, you know, Americans, you know, we were born out of a revolution, right?
00:14:53.940And we like to think that we threw off the yoke of tyranny.
00:14:57.140Of course, the American Revolution has, you know, there's a revisionist version of that, too.
00:15:01.360But we threw off the yoke of tyranny, and it's our role to kind of go around.
00:15:05.180And if there are other people out there who need help, just as the French helped us, then we should help them.
00:15:11.880And that's how Americans have always seen our foreign interventions.
01:06:32.380And it's an incredible book because you go through and he's talking about, you know, he's talking about countries in Africa and, you know, Somalia and so forth.
01:06:41.440And what could be done to, to help these places and other, other failed states in the future.
01:06:45.960This was like, I think 2010 or 11, he published it.
01:06:49.780And I was, I'm reading it, you know, I, while Afghanistan's falling apart, I got curious.
01:06:55.160I'm like, how was this book reviewed in like foreign policy magazine, foreign affairs magazine, et cetera.
01:07:00.540So I went back and look glowing reviews.
01:07:03.840And I went and found, uh, the one, there was one negative review and it was in publishers weekly.
01:07:10.800And they were quoting certain parts of the book.
01:07:13.180And they were talking about how, you know, he's the, the examples he's drawing on are like Singapore, you know, all these, he's using all these like modern sort of techie catchphrases about like synergistic interrelation between blah, blah.
01:07:28.240And all these just absurd things, just completely absurd when you're talking about a country like Afghanistan.
01:07:33.640And obviously it was proven to be absurd, but I guarantee you when that guy walked into the office of some guy at the state department or whatever, their pants just fell off to their ankles.
01:07:46.240You know, they're, they love this guy that he was saying all the right words, saying all the things because, you know, to them, that that's reality to them.
01:07:55.460These people live in a world of symbols, you know, in a world of words where, where that's what matters to them.
01:08:01.480And that's what they think matters in the world.
01:08:03.640Um, and you know, they go out and they execute policy based on that assumption.
01:08:08.080And when they run into real world, actual resistance, you know, you see what happens.
01:08:13.780I mean, they, they basically freak out and panic and just completely lose their minds when they need any resistance around the world.
01:08:21.140And, uh, but yeah, I think that's, what's going on.
01:08:25.120I think, I think that, you know, these people, they, they think in terms of perception, they think in terms of symbols and words.
01:08:30.720And the idea that there's a reality beneath that, that they're going to have to contend with at a certain point has just, that's not been their experience for, you know, most, most of their lives.
01:08:40.860I mean, you think about like today, think about the whole foreign policy establishment, all your GS-15s, all your SES, you know, executive service guys who are running the state department, the DOD and all these things.
01:08:53.360You know, the Cold War ended, what, uh, 32 years ago now.
01:08:57.980And so all those people, their entire careers have been, like all of their professional experience has been when America can just do whatever it wants.
01:09:09.360We can lose two wars and it's like, ah, that's embarrassing, but whatever, right?
01:09:13.500And that's their whole, that's, that's their whole experience.
01:09:16.560And it's not a, you know, it's, it's not a mistake that, uh, all of the guys who were very much against NATO expansion and cautioning, you know, uh, counseling caution toward, in our relations toward Russia after communism went down.
01:09:29.240These were all old Cold Warrior guys, you know, George Kennan and stuff who would actually come up in a world where, no, you, you can't just do whatever you want.
01:09:36.760There are other powers out there who can and will resist you and you have to learn to live in that world.
01:09:42.300People in charge now have never lived in that world.
01:09:44.740You know, they've only just recently been confronted with it, with Russia, and they're going insane and pushing us to the brink of nuclear war.
01:10:02.600He's already given me a good bit of his time.
01:10:04.800But before we switch over to the question of the people, Daryl, where can everyone find your excellent work?
01:10:10.360Oh, um, so I have a sub stack where I put all my podcasts and I write essays and occasionally do interviews.
01:10:18.880If I was as good as you at doing them, I would do them all the time, but they make me nervous and I'm not great at them.
01:10:24.780So, um, but I, I, I write essays and there's audio versions and all my podcasts go there and there's podcasts there that are for subscribers only.
01:11:28.480What would Daryl think of the right, uh, really pushing that the left learned about the Franklin scandal from the 80s on the back of the Epstein, uh, interest?
01:11:37.860I feel like that could be very effective.
01:11:43.580So, you know, the, the Franklin scandal is not the one I would focus on.
01:11:49.560Uh, just for, for one reason is that it's very easy for that story to become very complicated.
01:11:56.480A million different moving parts that, uh, you know, a normie that you're trying to explain this stuff to could very easily get lost in.
01:12:05.320Um, I don't know exactly like, um, what to think about some of the stuff in the scandal.
01:12:10.680I mean, there's something, there's something going on there for sure.
01:12:13.920Uh, but I think it's a tougher one to explain than the Epstein stuff, for example.
01:12:19.600I mean, Epstein, that should be a bludgeon that we just beat the regime over the head with from now until they breathe their last freaking breath.
01:12:28.260You know, I mean, there, it is all laid out and everybody knows it.
01:12:32.440How crazy is it that, what do the polls say?
01:12:36.080Something like 70% of Americans, they don't think either Epstein killed himself or they think he killed himself or that he was assisted in being killed in a, in a prison in Manhattan.
01:12:56.460If you're trying to like drive a wedge to open up people's minds about the nature of this regime.
01:13:00.960I mean, this is somebody who, uh, you know, he was a serial mass pedophile and child rapist who had relationships with all of the people now making decisions in our lives.
01:13:13.820Like, you know, telling us what to do, what we, what we can do and not do during COVID and, and everything else.
01:13:20.200And he's got deep intelligence connections that cannot be refuted, you know, um, that, you know, that personally, I think Epstein is the one that, that, that I would beat him over the head with.
01:13:31.900Once people learn about Epstein and they start, they start going down that rabbit hole, then Franklin for sure is, you know, it's going to be their next, their next stop.
01:13:40.620And you've laid those details out both in podcasts and in, in an article for, I think I am 1776, right?
01:13:47.140Yeah, I did a, uh, I did an article for I am 1776.
01:13:51.220That was a sort of, I guess it was sort of a summary of the third episode that I did out of the three Epstein episodes, which was talking more about, you know, the, uh, a question that really, this is a question that nagged at me for a long time.
01:14:07.440Until I sat down and did the podcast and really kind of answered it to my satisfaction, which is, you know, look, I get that these people at the top are grifters, that they're amoral and, and so on and so forth.
01:14:19.860But, but how is it possible that this guy Epstein could move around in these powerful circles for years and years and years in a place like DC?
01:14:31.460Like if you, if you go to DC, I mean, you know, this is a town where they will find any tiny little thing twisted out of context.
01:14:41.320If they have to, to destroy you, if you know, you're on the other side of a mundane issue, that's being debated like this week or something, right?
01:15:06.080So they, people knew what was going on, right?
01:15:09.140And so you ask yourself, like, if I'm Alan Dershowitz or Bill Gates or Bill Clinton, like any person I know, every single person that I know in my personal life, right?
01:15:20.980If they were to walk onto somebody's private plane and find a half a dozen underage girls who are not related to the guy you're there to meet at all, and he starts asking if you want a massage from them, I mean, they're either going to kill that guy or they're going to flee screaming off of that plane.
01:15:37.820Every single person I know, probably every single person you know, that's how they react.
01:15:42.900And yet none of these people react that way.
01:15:44.960And you say, well, what, why, why is that?
01:15:47.940Like, is it just, you know, the, the money or what?
01:15:53.360I think it's that when you actually go through everything and you see the way these people live, when you look at like the, you know, and I cover this extensively in the podcast.
01:16:01.700And anybody who was like sort of up on Pizzagate and everything is probably already familiar with this part of it.
01:16:06.880But you look at the, the art collection of somebody like Tony Podesta, where he is, you know, he's got pictures in his house that are being featured in magazine photographs that are profiling his art collection in his home.
01:16:21.580And they are pictures of dead kids on his wall, like just plain as day.
01:16:28.420And you say, well, okay, this is the most powerful Democrat lobbyist in Washington.
01:16:32.440How is nobody, this is the brother of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.
01:16:36.160How is no Republican hammering away on this every single day?
01:16:40.740Why does no Democrat talk about Denny Haster?
01:16:51.480And I think that, you know, you have a, and this is not unique to America.
01:16:56.280This is something that happened in Europe a long time before it happened here, happened with the British gentry, happened with the French in the pre-revolutionary period, where the elites become so decadent and so immoral.
01:17:07.100And they reach this place where I think they, you know, you know, you're, you're the king of the world.
01:17:14.480You're, you're the, you know, you have, you're a billionaire or you're the president of the United States.
01:17:23.320Like how much free, what can I actually do and get away with, you know, can I do the worst thing possible, you know, according to a normal person?
01:17:30.580I think if you were to ask a normal person what the worst thing possible is, you know, it would be pedophilia.
01:17:36.980And, you know, elites become decadent and they become arrogant with their decadence over time when they get away with it for a long time.
01:17:48.560And that's the great thing about the Epstein story is they were so arrogant with everything, you know, and, and that a lot of this stuff happened, especially the intelligence connections and things that everything that substantiates all that happened back in the 80s and 90s.
01:18:02.260Before anybody realized that there was going to be this thing called the internet where every document, every piece of information ever was, you know, going to be in the wild.
01:18:10.940And, and, and it was going to be much harder to control narratives on things and control information that, you know, because of that, people were sloppy back in the day.
01:18:19.000I mean, when you go back and look at whether it's the JFK assassination or a lot of the CIA ops back in the day, these things are not covered up very well.
01:18:27.520And it's because he didn't really have to, because Walter Cronkite wasn't going to talk about it.
01:18:30.640But there's a lot out there and I'll let you move on because yeah, probably want to get to more.
01:18:48.840What do you think, who do you think is driving policy at this point?
01:18:52.480The US, the EU, a collaboration of oligarchs or the oligarchs attempting to, attempting to power grabs?
01:19:00.840So let's focus that question a little bit, I guess.
01:19:03.300Do you think that, that formal governments are still the ones driving the majority of these decisions or are overarching, you know, financial or international policy concerns, the ones that are more kind of leading the approach of kind of the global American empire?
01:19:19.460Hmm. You know, that's a, that's an interesting question because the part of the government that does actually control everything, right?
01:19:32.200It's, it's not one of the three branches you learned about in Schoolhouse Rock.
01:19:35.820It's the federal bureaucracy, you know, 99% of what gets done by the government is done by the bureaucracy and they operate independently of elections.
01:19:44.160You know, even though they're supposed to work for the executive and, uh, you know, those people, they go in and out of government all the time.
01:19:52.220And so to say like whether government is, you know, government certainly implementing the policy, how it's being driven and whose interests it's geared toward.
01:20:01.000I mean, there's a certain element of it where we'll put it this way. There's no, in my opinion, there's no cabal of elites that are in a smoke filled room, sort of coordinating all the different things that we're concerned with.
01:20:14.220You have interest groups who are very, very focused on this issue.
01:20:18.120And because they are, and because they have a lot of money to push that, um, and a lot of, you know, they can hire people to dedicate all their time to pushing it, um, that they get, you know, they tend to motivated minorities, right?
01:20:30.800Motivated and concentrated minorities get their way on the issues that they care about because they care a lot more and in a lot more organized and focused way than the majority doesn't care.
01:20:40.020That's why no subsidy ever goes away in the government, right? Because you give somebody a subsidy and all the people who receive that have a massive interest in making sure it stays.
01:20:49.820And your average American voter is kind of like, you know, I don't like it, I guess, but whatever, you know, I'm not going to change my vote over it.
01:20:56.740And so that's, you know, it's a, it's really a combination of public and private interest in that sense.
01:21:01.800I mean, I think like, uh, um, when you talk about something like Ukraine, you, you really see the, the sort of, you see how these things mix and meld together in Ukraine, right?
01:21:16.840Because obviously there's a lot of private interests over there, um, going right up to the president and his son, as we're finding out now.
01:21:24.120I mean, the level of corruption that the Bidens were engaged in Ukraine, not the level of it, the brazenness of it is just insane.
01:21:32.420But, um, so obviously those private interests, you know, I'm sure there's, I'm sure Halliburton is looking forward to rebuilding Ukraine with American tax dollars or, or seized Russian assets or something.
01:22:07.940I think this is a really important thing.
01:22:09.320And I've argued this with many people, but I'll continue to stand by this guy's political formulas are a confluence of true belief and interest.
01:22:19.680And when you, whenever you try to separate them, you're always going to fail an analysis.
01:22:23.740You have to look at these things as, as kind of co, uh, one coherent thing.
01:22:28.220You know, one of, uh, George Kennan's essays, early essays about the Soviet union.
01:22:32.420Um, I don't think it was in the long telegram, but in one of his early essays, he says exactly that as people want to know, like, did these communists over here, do they really believe this?
01:22:40.980Or is it just, you know, they're in charge and they don't want to give that up.
01:22:46.700And he said that, you know, these things get mixed together and not just, you know, a person who's a true believer and a person who's cynical about it.
01:22:54.960And they're happy, they happen to be working, you know, for the same purpose.
01:22:58.340These things exist within the same person.
01:23:00.900You know, um, I remember even something on a smaller scale.
01:23:04.260Like when I was, uh, it was a question that kept coming up when I was studying the Jonestown cult.
01:23:09.200Is it this Jim Jones guy, did he actually believe in all this stuff that he's saying, or is he, you know, he just gets to have sex with all the women and do whatever he wants.
01:23:22.760I mean, it was really both, you know, and that's the case in government too, especially when you talk about these career employees in places like the state department.
01:23:36.660So, uh, can either of you recommend a book on the difference between being right wing versus being conservative?
01:23:43.200Uh, I'll say that I'll just get mine in real quick.
01:23:45.360Um, I, I can't think of a book that, uh, specifically outlines the differences here, but if you want to understand this, read people who are a little outside of the liberal tradition, especially, uh, older books.
01:23:55.840If you want to get an interesting comparison, look at the difference between Joseph de Maistre, Thomas Carlyle, and Edmund Burke, all talking about the French revolution.
01:24:04.580That's a seminal event that kind of splits, uh, I think a lot of kind of the way people think about politics and turns it into kind of the modern way that we think about politics.
01:24:13.560And each one of them, I think brings a very interesting, um, uh, way to look at that.
01:24:19.080So that's not a direct answer, but I'd say that that's a good place to start.
01:24:22.660If you kind of want to grasp the difference between kind of where, where right wing or conservative thought branched out, uh, kind of in one place.