Operation Mincemeat Questions - Operation Mincemeat Part V

00:27This is world's greatest con. I'm Brian Brushwood.

00:32It is hard for me to believe that we are a scant three weeks away from having launched this series, eight months of effort, untold rewrites.

00:46The day we pressed publish, the day we finally stopped keeping this a secret, I expected to be excited.

00:55I expected to be overjoyed.

00:58What I didn't expect was to be terrified.

01:02And so when I called my co-creator, Justin Robert Young, he asked if I wanted to go out and celebrate.

01:09And quite honestly, I responded, no, I'm just going to sit here and cry for a little bit.

01:18And that's not to invoke sympathy.

01:20I'm not trying to do that.

01:22But when you undertake something this big and you sit with it for so long, I know we talk about it in the show, but there truly is that moment when you go from totally in control to totally out of it.

01:35And there was a wave of realizing how personal I had been, how authentic, and I was terrified.

01:45And thankfully, you guys seem to love it.

01:48So this is our victory lap.

01:50We asked you guys for questions, and that means I get to introduce to you the reason this show exists, my partner in crime, Mr. Justin Robert Young.

02:00How are you, Justin?

02:01Oh, very, very good.

02:02Thank you so much.

02:03Was that was that suitably natural banter? No, it's good. This is good.

02:07We're doing good banter now.

02:08For anybody who hasn't heard us talk about it on other podcasts, we've noticed that it's very easy to slip into fake sounding talk.

02:17And that was something that we never wanted, especially on this show.

02:22And that's part of the reason that it took so long for us to produce was that there are some of those takes that are so raw and authentic that we've never tried to give them a second try. No.

02:34But but in the meantime, we got a ton of feedback, a bunch of emails.

02:38Grace wrote in and said, I loved your podcast about Operation Mincemeat. Thank you.

02:43Quick question, though, in the early episodes, you stated that Martin was supposed to be a Catholic, which would have prevented the Spanish medical examiner from conducting an autopsy.

02:52However, in the final episode, you stated that the autopsy was performed, which was where that evil smelling gases were escaping Martin's corpse.

03:01Can you please clarify this detail? Perhaps I misheard.

03:05As I understand it, the hope would that there would be no autopsy. Yes.

03:10The hope would be that there would be kind of a just move it along.

03:15Nobody likes this part of it.

03:17But for national security interests, there needed to be some amount of investigation to verify that the body was authentic.

03:25But by making sure again, you're playing the odds in these situations.

03:30And the 20 committee, they had no guarantee that they were going to get anything.

03:35I mean, they're dropping a body off the coast and crossing their fingers, which, by the way, a few people wrote me asking if we were aware that the 20 committee in Roman numerals is XX.

03:49And according to chatter, that was to imply double cross, which, if true, that's one of those just so stories. That's pretty good.

03:58I like it quite a bit. Yeah.

03:59I don't know if that's if that's something that, you know, just makes a lot more sense after the fact or if it was there in the moment.

04:08But I mean, they are the the the the the the committee that comes up with clever names.

04:13I was about to say it would be very in character if it was an on purpose thing.

04:18But in terms of answering your question, Grace, I mean, goodness, there's so much we don't know for sure about all of this.

04:24But yes, there was definitely an examination of the body, an attempt.

04:29I don't know the difference between a full autopsy or not, but it does seem that they had success by making everybody very uncomfortable to keep people from looking too closely at everything.

04:43And it was it was barely an autopsy.

04:46So in in if his religion played any role in that, then it was successful because there was not a full autopsy that was done, which is really what they were trying to avoid.

04:59Mike writes, what is it about Spain that the 20 committee and others had in mind to drop the body off by?

05:06Why not somewhere else?

05:07Well, and we touched on this, man, you could write a whole book on the intricacies of Nazi sympathies versus allied sympathies.

05:16Spain, again, was officially neutral, but they had specific targets that they knew were working out of Spain.

05:26And if they could make it happen, that that these known corrupted individuals were placed in a room with it, then the assumption was that it would get in the hands of the Nazis.

05:38And as as we heard in episode four, it almost didn't happen.

05:42Yeah, Spain was there because Spain would leak it to the Nazis.

05:46And it was it was they were very, very, very confident because they had other things had passed informationally up the chain.

05:56And so and remember, remember, and we tried to hammer this home several times.

06:02It's not enough to get the information in their hands.

06:05They have to convince themselves.

06:07And it's so hard to do that.

06:09You can't just drop a body by parachute in the middle of, let's say, you know, just outside of Berlin.

06:15Yeah, you would find a body.

06:16But the people who would examine it would know to look for counter espionage and to say, well, why would this body be here?

06:24This makes no sense.

06:25Discount whatever is in here.

06:26You had to dangle it just enough that they were able to seduce themselves.

06:30And it would have a head of steam by the time that it gets to Hitler's desk.

06:35Haley writes, what are some of your wildest personal theories on some of the gray areas in this story?

06:42There was one plot line that we kind of had to cut both for time and because it was getting into the weeds just a little bit.

06:52But in Ben McIntyre's book, Operation Mincemeat, he portrays Spin, a. k. a.

06:58Spinster, as somebody who is writing on behalf of the fictitious Pam. Yeah.

07:04As somebody who is channeling all of her repressed desires, the wish that she could be young and beautiful and bubbly and all these things.

07:14But Justin and I talked a bit about it and we have no evidence to prove this.

07:19But I personally love the narrative as you described it, that this is a parody.

07:24You know, if your nickname is Spinster, you're like younger, more pretty and available co-workers.

07:33It seems equally as likely to me that what she is writing is this empty headed character as a parody of of, you know, the girls and women around her that feel so comfortable mocking her that they gave her the nickname Spinster.

07:49And if they're gobbling this up saying, oh, this is so good. Wow.

07:54Then that probably makes it even more fun for her to quietly mock them back.

07:59But again, that's all stuff we can't possibly know.

08:02But I do like that version of it.

08:04That's our own headcanon.

08:05Steven writes, are there any plans of featuring special guests in future episodes?

08:10Personally, I'd love to hear Brian speak with Maria Konnikova and Apollo Robbins.

08:15Yeah, Apollo Robbins is a friend of the show who I've known for about a decade.

08:22A really, really good guy.

08:24I mean, he's a true gentleman.

08:26We could do interviews and I don't I don't want to tip too much.

08:31This is where I get the glare from Justin about overstepping things.

08:35But we've sketched out a possible, a probable season two and an almost definite season three.

08:43And I know that season three is electric because we have access to first sources, very intimate access to first sources.

08:53And we are hoping as we get through and you'll understand why as we do this Q&A where we're headed here.

09:01But my goodness, man.

09:03Being able to interview some of the people that we're talking about interviewing, I think would be electric.

09:08Mathis writes, I wanted to say that I really dig the show, especially the radio play vibes.

09:16It was great fun hearing about Operation Mincemeat while poring over actual Nazi documents.

09:22He then adds, parenthetically, I work at an archive. Don't worry. That is amazing.

09:28And it does bring up the interesting question of how much is too much when it comes to production?

09:35You know, we like very much the idea that we're creating a travelogue, a soundscape, and you feel that you're in different places at different times.

09:45Sometimes you're with Brian on stage.

09:47Sometimes you're in the trenches.

09:49You know, you're on a submarine playing shooty guns, as we put it.

09:56Early feedback, we got differing opinions, but it sounds like in general, most people have really dug the rich soundscapes.

10:05And I know I do when I listen to it.

10:08Yeah, I think it's a big part of what we want to do.

10:12And we really want to bring this stuff to life.

10:14You know, if there is an element that I try to bring with the production side of it is just to really make history kind of alive, like bring you there.

10:25And Brian has such tremendous passion in his voice.

10:29I think it's a lot easier to do when, you know, we're working with that kind of that kind of audio.

10:38Lilith writes one pedantic thing.

10:41The name St. John is pronounced Shingen because Brits.

10:45I'm not even going to let Brian talk here.

10:48I'm going to say blame me, Lilith, blame me 100 percent.

10:53Brian repeatedly said Shingen and I kept saying Shingen, Shingen, Shingen.

10:58Sorry, I kept saying nobody knows that it's going to sound weird.

11:03And so I edited it and I made I put him at gunpoint even before I moved to Austin.

11:08I put him at gunpoint and I said, say St. John.

11:11It is it is totally my totally my decision that we kept it St. John and not Shingen.

11:16Part of it is because we hear the name twice and the first time we hear it, we hear it in a quasi robotic video game voice. Yeah.

11:23Which, by the way, a number of people ask me who we got to narrate that.

11:28I saw our friend Cargill, C.

11:30Robert Cargill, the writer of Dr. Strange and many other awesome movies who has a great voice.

11:36They were like, like, hey, like, congratulations on your cameo on episode two of World's Greatest Con.

11:42And Cargill's like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

11:46Yeah, that's actually me reading it in sort of a Pokemon infused clip style.

11:52And then Justin pitch shifted me down, which is also a trick I did for that skewer through tongue that I couldn't find anyone to narrate the skewer through tongue instructions to my satisfaction. Yeah.

12:03So that's exactly what I did, which was read it the way I wanted it.

12:07And then pitch shifted my voice down.

12:09But so in that case, the whole point was that's a that's that's a bizarre name.

12:14So we wanted to lean into it like St. John Stuart Radcliffe, whatever's fall. Yeah. Horsfall. That's right.

12:20And then we had to touch on it again since we had already said that.

12:25But one hundred percent busted.

12:26I agree with you, Lilith. A. B.

12:29writes, this is this is a this is a bit of a story here.

12:33Sometime in 2000 or 2001, I was in a bar in the British embassy in Warsaw a few times and got to talking to these embassy guys who were moaning about their colleague.

12:42The embassy at the time was on Yujidao Avenue.

12:44It's not there anymore.

12:46And we used an entrance on Aleja Raz to get access to the bar.

12:51The drinks were irresponsibly cheap.

12:52And our contacts, an embassy attache, used to meet us there for catch ups and chats.

12:57The hated colleague was one of those posh wankers you come across at British embassies all over the world, overpromoted because of the school he went to.

13:07The guy was a senior undeclared intelligence asset, much better paid than the other attaches as a result.

13:13But he wasn't good at his job.

13:15There are several details that I won't bore you with that would give credence to this guy being terrible at his role as an undeclared asset, as it was well understood by this time that half of Warsaw knew that he wasn't an administrative attache.

13:29So nobody felt too bad about talking it over over some very cheap Guinness.

13:34He got his big job because in his previous posting in a Balkan state, he had worked with a local senior police officer who was a British intelligence asset to make it appear that a dead man was the actual British intelligence source.

13:49They stuffed the dead man's pockets full of incriminating evidence and left him somewhere where he'd be found.

13:55The local policeman was the source, led the investigation in a convenient direction.

14:01I was told that the hated colleague had come up with the plan because his own incompetence had almost exposed the policeman, as it has said.

14:11So he was only covering his tracks and he was very open about his inspiration being a World War Two job he'd read about at Cambridge called Operation Mincemeat.

14:22I've always remembered the name.

14:23It is very visceral.

14:25What's funny is we and we say this in the show.

14:29There's nothing new under the sun, man.

14:32Like even the people doing Operation Mincemeat knew like two words, Trojan horse.

14:37Yeah, it turns out it still works.

14:39The fundamentals don't change.

14:40Number one, I was just in love with the idea of like, like, let me tell you about the time that I was just drinking with a bunch of spies in Warsaw, British spies in Warsaw.

14:50I just I want to be there.

14:52I would like to be at that bar specifically for what I hear about it, but that's as far as I want to go. Andy.

14:58And this is something that we got a lot of feedback on.

15:02Thank you, Brian, for sharing the story of your brother.

15:04That must have been difficult.

15:06Yep, it was, and that's one of those that we've never replaced the audio.

15:10We've done a bunch of little nips and tucks and punch-ups, but on this particular day, episode two on paper was gonna be one of the most challenging to write because episode two is about, so anyway, the guys wrote a story, but the more we talked about it.

15:28And then at the end, the victory is they wrote the story. Right, exactly.

15:32But then the more we talked about it, there was some moment I was on an early morning walk and I was talking to Justin about, we had been talking about how cons are like video games and how it struck me very hard that I was going through a real-life version of exactly what they were putting together.

15:51I was going through digital pocket litter in my brother's computer, and there was this moment that I was just fully in state.

15:59And I remember Justin said, Brian, if you don't mind, I would like you to stop talking.

16:04I would like you to walk into the studio right now.

16:07I would like you to call me on Skype and press record.

16:10And almost everything you hear, part of the reason that it sounds raw is because it is raw and unscripted in that moment.

16:19And that's one bit that we never changed.

16:22No, and it was, as your friend, I did not realize that you wanted to move this part of your life into the public square.

16:34I didn't know either.

16:37I just knew that I was talking it out with you, and then you were like, press record, and I always knew like, well, if I become uncomfortable, we can not play that.

16:46Yeah, but that really defined the series.

16:49I mean, I think there were two moments where in the process of recording, the show became something different than it was on the page.

17:01And it was in the first episode when I had written that speaker scam thing as just a generic scam thing that- So funny.

17:14I thought for sure you knew that I had been through that. Absolutely not.

17:19I had no clue.

17:20That was just a speaker, like it was just a thing that I know is out there, and other people that I had known have gotten got by it.

17:31And so when you made it, you were like, oh no, let's tell the real story.

17:37And I'm like, yes, indeed, let's tell the real story.

17:41And then that had gone so well, and I really liked where episode one was that when you were talking about bringing this up with Che, which I need to express to everybody, like that, we all went through a lot through the pandemic, and a lot of people lost friends and family to the disease and to many other ancillary things.

18:08That was, especially in that moment that we were recording it, an extraordinarily raw thing for Brian and anybody in that orbit.

18:19So making art out of it was not only, I think, very brave, but also it was, I think it put a lot of pressure on us that this thing needs to be good, right?

18:34Like you don't want to put that out there and have it not be the best thing that it could possibly be.

18:39And I think it got close.

18:41Most would be the possibility that it would feel exploitative.

18:46And that's part of why I wanted that moment.

18:49If it was going to go in there, it had to be as authentic and genuine as possible.

18:57And I feel like it's all the truth and it's about as real as you're going to get in podcasting. Yeah, absolutely.

19:08And I think it also is an important thing thematically because if you are willing to be this honest with the audience- Which by the way, if you haven't figured it out, all of the Brian stories, Brian is not the hero.

19:27Brian is the guy who gets scammed by the speaker, who loses a loved one, who panics and shoves deer tongues in his mouth.

19:37I mean- There is, yeah.

19:38I mean, and I think that we've talked about this, that part of the ethos of the show is that there's a million different pieces of art from movies to music to TV shows where the con artist is cool and smart and- Suave.

19:57Suave and maybe they're dastardly, but they're smarter than everybody else.

20:03And I think we try to tell things from the opposite perspective.

20:08Yeah, I guess we could say it from the sucker's point of view.

20:13And it was only after we finished episode four that Justin called me as he was putting the final touches on it.

20:21And he said, do you realize what you've done?

20:24I'm like, what, what?

20:25It's like, you've made Hitler the sympathetic Rube.

20:28He's the sucker in this story and it opens with you being the sympathetic Rube.

20:37Yeah, and it's complicated. Life is complicated.

20:41And I think that's kind of the larger ethos of the show is that if we can explain cons, we can on some level explain comprehension and life because it is one of those moments where if you can break it down, if you can break down reality and make somebody do something that is hilariously against their own self-interest, then it really just kind of shows some of the underpinnings of society itself.

21:05There was one pushback.

21:06We opened with the sentiment of you can't con an honest John.

21:11And somebody on Twitter said he thought that was tripe and balderdash.

21:16And I disagree because he was like, there are plenty of honest people you could con.

21:21And it's like, no, no, no, no.

21:22There are plenty of honest people you can defraud.

21:25You can, you know, because if they trust you and they're giving you $300 for what you're telling them is a PlayStation 5, you can load it full of bricks, but that's not a con.

21:35That's just straight up fraud.

21:37It's getting people to step outside of their own boundaries.

21:41It's that seduction that makes for a good con or a good deception.

21:45Wall writes, hey there, I was wondering where I might find the podcast soundtrack.

21:52I think it was amazing.

21:54I will say that our main theme is story of a hero by Max H.

22:00But in general, the music was, you know, I think great. I've enjoyed it.

22:08Well, the way Justin put it to me was as, cause he's the one who had to listen to me walk through all of these half-baked poetical ideas and stuff.

22:21And Justin said, I just realized Brian lives at all times with a John Williams-esque background music playing.

22:30I do think that the show is at its best when it's at its most John Williams.

22:36John, I'd love to have you on board for season two.

22:42Will writes, I have to question the effectiveness of the entire operation.

22:47In the podcast, it is for obvious reasons left at a high level in that Operation Midsmith saved thousands of lives and quote unquote, turned the tide of the war.

22:57Can you expand on that?

22:59Had the access powers forfeited their positions in Sicily, do we have a picture of how the outcome of the invasion and the rest of the war would have played out?

23:06Man, there are books upon books upon books of speculation of exactly how effective anything is.

23:11There's also the question, as I hear from historians, and I think we make no bones about the fact that we're not historians so much as people who are fans of great stories. Yeah.

23:24The stuff we do know is what we were able to report at the end.

23:29We know the when and the how many and the what of what got misallocated to what were definitely the wrong positions. Yeah.

23:38We know that, what was it, within three weeks of Allied boots hitting the ground in Sicily. Mussolini's dead. Yes.

23:45Which to me, again, maybe they could have done all of this without Operation Midsmith, but I strongly believe that it wouldn't have looked the same, and we talk about the possibility of the Nazi quagmire, the idea that it's not a matter of did they win the war.

24:06The question is, how many lives did they save?

24:09And as with so many of these questions, there's no way to know for sure, but you can look at the numbers, and I think the more I heard the more compelling and obvious and unqualified success this appeared to be to me.

24:25Yeah, I think Brian hit on it.

24:28We go over it in episode one that the Allies were genuinely terrified of a stalemate.

24:36And yes, they had momentum, but we've seen wars where people have momentum and then lose it.

24:44So this is, of course, they did a billion different things. Yeah.

24:49These are our last questions here.

24:53I'll read them both, because I think that they both kind of go together.

24:58Daniel writes, do you have another story or season or arc planned?

25:02And Rachel writes, I wonder if you intend to keep this podcast strictly in a historical context.

25:09What I mean by that is do you have plans to cover modern-day cons or only cons of the past destined for this podcast?

25:15Doing either or a bit of both are great options.

25:18Just curious what your plans are.

25:20So Brian, what is the future of World's Greatest Con?

25:24We already have an arc sketched out for season two.

25:29Season two will be more of an anthology series, individual stories all tied together by theme.

25:38Season three will be a much more recent tale of deception and an audacious plan that we would like to go even more in-depth on.

25:50This was a very heavy first story for us to take on.

25:58Season two will be lighter, but I think possibly more entertaining for it, but.

26:04A little bit more human, a little bit more dirt under the fingernails human, because it's. Individual stories.

26:10Yeah, and it's a little messier, a little bit more recent, and I think Brian and I both share a DNA of, especially when you're introducing something, go big or go home, don't work up to a big thing, just drop the big thing immediately, and so that's why going after Hitler was the natural place that you go when you want to make an impression, but yeah.

26:37But really, both of these questions open the door to the big question, which is, are you gonna take another eight months to make four more episodes again?

26:49And this is the part where we lay our fate at your feet.

26:55This is the part where we announce that we wanna do this forever and ever and ever, and truthfully, if nobody lifts a finger, we'll continue to make four episodes every eight months, and we'll do our best with what we have.

27:10But we've heard a bit about the realities of advertising in podcasting, and when we match that to the one-on-one reviews and experiences, the way people's eyes light up when they talk about various parts about what we've done, it's pretty clear that this is the type of project that deserves to be listener-supported.

27:38More episodes, better episodes, faster episodes.

27:59We'll be able to keep you guys up to date with progress as we pull together each season, maybe even be able to drop hints, we'll see.

28:08There'll be better episodes, because there'll be no ad.

28:11There'll be more episodes, because we'll be able to pay for so much of the support that we desperately need, and there'll be more, much, much more, and that's gonna be all because of the people who have decided to step across the line and directly support independent storytelling like this.

28:32It is available now, and you guys, if you would like to kick us a monthly donation, then we are going to hopefully have these things out you know, as good and better than season one in a much faster timeframe, because we know, I mean, they got faster as we.

29:03Oh, they got faster even as we figured out our own voice. Yeah.

29:09But to put it in perspective, for about 60 bucks per year, you could be a founding member and essentially triple our output, and I think that's worth it, and I'm hoping you guys will join us as insiders.

29:23Now, if this was a scam, I would give you a specific reason and say, and that's why we need your money right now.

29:32It is a bit of a box we've painted ourselves into.

29:37You know, it reminds me a lot of our friend Andrew Main, who had a show called Don't Trust Andrew Main on A&E, and when they came up and pitched him the title, they were like, oh, this is great.

29:55hilarious because you're like a trickster magician and he's like, yeah, here's the problem.

30:00My real name is Andrew Main and that means that for the rest of my life, I'm going to have people saying, I don't know, can I trust you?

30:09I mean, take it from the scam school, scam nation, hacking the system guy.

30:13So so yeah, it is.

30:15It's there for you.

30:16We're we're very, very, very excited about where we can go and and we really do have big stories planned and we can't wait to tell them as fast as we can. Yeah. Yeah.

30:31The the the fate of the show is in your hands.

30:35Your listener is that a life of the big Lebowski?

30:39Life is in your hands, dude.

30:42Oh, don't say that.

30:44Her life is in your hands.

30:46Look, we love you guys.

30:47Thank you so much for joining us on the journey so far.

30:52Here's to many, many years until you eventually figure out that the world's greatest con is that we keep coming up with great stories.

30:58Each one might in fact be.

31:00The world's greatest con.

31:01Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

31:07Dog and Pony Show audio.