When Is The Perfect Story Too Perfect? - Operation Mincemeat Part II

00:00This is World's Greatest Con. I'm Brian Brushwood.

00:08Creating a game is shockingly close to creating a con.

00:14Your players might be given some instructions, but largely the engagement comes from them making decisions for themselves.

00:23Now in the game world, the level of hand-holding can vary.

00:26Like you got board games where everything has a rule book and when there's an argument you can go consult the ancient tome or whatever.

00:32But video games, on the other hand, they drop you right in.

00:38Suddenly you're the lead character, only you don't know any of your lines, you don't know your motivation, you don't even know how the world works.

00:45And it's up to the world to teach you every bit of the way.

00:50Every character, every setting, every idle bit of chatter is something the player assumes might be important.

00:57The creator might be tempted to make this process super blunt.

01:01Just very forcefully guide the player through the story, restrict where they can go, who they can talk to, eliminate ways to waste time on missions that don't go anywhere.

01:10In the video game world they call that an on-rails experience and it's a bad thing.

01:14It's a negative mark on the story.

01:16But you can also go the other way.

01:17You can make things too open world, too open-ended, too expansive.

01:21Create a world that's very big but also easy to get lost in so you lose the thread, the story that is the whole point of the thing.

01:30Man, if you get that alchemy just right.

01:33That ability to trick somebody into thinking they were the first person on the planet to have this genius idea?

01:40Spoilers for a decade-old game.

01:42But in the game Portal 2 you're trained from the very white surface.

01:49You spend the whole game solving puzzles and then when you get lost you think, oh wait, where's the little white patch that's painted on somewhere?

01:57At some point they let it leak that this mysterious white paint was made out of moon rocks and stuff.

02:03All of these little elements being presented in front of you the whole time you're thinking it's just background color.

02:09And you get to the epic end fight where you're armed with nothing but this portal gun, the giant robot looming down over you.

02:16The ceiling cracks open and over the shoulder of the big bad robot you see the full shining moon.

02:24And you think you're the first genius to have the thought, wait a minute, this portal gun, an entry, an exit.

02:31If I do an entry here and put the exit on the moon maybe I can suck the robot into...

02:43And you won the game the whole time you've been guided down the path.

02:54But at all times it felt like your choice.

02:56And even the biggest decision of the game you get to take credit for.

03:01It feels like real magic.

03:03When I was in college I wanted to work in the video games industry.

03:10I learned inverse kinematics, bone structure, started doing tutorials in 3D Studio Max.

03:17It turns out I didn't have the patience for any of that.

03:23I ended up doing magic instead.

03:24But my brother, he went the whole nine yards.

03:28And he's worked on a dozen titles that you probably know.

03:33He had the patience to do that detailed work that filled in all the gaps that made a world believable.

03:42And I know it's a stretch, we're going from video games to cons here, but stick with me.

03:50In our first episode we learned about a crazy plan to win World War II by dropping a corpse right in Hitler's lap filled with a bunch of false information in it.

03:59In this episode we're going to focus on how our heroes of the 20 committee go about writing that information.

04:04And more to the point of the game analogy, write it in such a way that the Nazis deceive themselves.

04:11Make it something they want to believe.

04:14Our end goal is for a body to wash ashore, totally full of lies, or if you're going to be generous, story.

04:23And we need somebody to examine piece by piece every part of the story and put it together themselves and feel like they're the genius who figured out the secret that's buried within.

04:37It has to feel perfect, but not too perfect.

04:42And that's a tall order because you have to know every move the player, in this case the one getting played, might make.

04:55Jay was good at all of that stuff.

05:01He had that attention to detail.

05:05And I'm so proud that my brother...

05:10I'm so proud of the work my brother did to do exactly that.

05:16But as I record this a few months ago, my brother passed away. And it's messy.

05:28It's not like he was just hit by a car crossing the street.

05:33There were health concerns.

05:34He was battling addiction.

05:35And as somebody who loves him deeply, I want answers.

05:40I will always want answers.

05:42So I took his computer, his monitors.

05:47I put together in my office this forensic recreation of his whole setup. I've gotten clues.

05:53I can read his old emails, see some photos.

05:58I want to believe there's something here that'll let me know what my brother, Jay Brushwood, was thinking when he died.

06:13But every time I go in there, I realize I'm not going to get those answers. They're not there.

06:22There is no amazing twist to this mystery.

06:27The reality is, we don't get the puzzle room experience in real life.

06:36But I feel it.

06:40I feel how bad I want it.

06:45And I know I'm never going to get it, but it doesn't stop me.

06:51Keep booting up the computer, poking around.

06:53Then it hits me. That's their job.

06:59That's what these agents of deception are doing.

07:05And the stakes aren't to solve the mystery of how I lost my brother.

07:11The stakes are the freedom of humanity.

07:13They need to convince the Nazis that it's obvious how this man died, because if they know how he died, then they could trust the messages he carries on.

07:26These guys pull this off.

07:28They tell a story.

07:30We save the world.

07:34Cons don't fool us because we're stupid.

07:41They fool us because we're human.

07:44And this, this may be the world's greatest con.

07:54If the 20 committee is making a game, then as soon as they have their first build, they got to play test it.

08:14In the biz, they call it the QA lab for quality assurance.

08:18This is where you play the game, trying to break it.

08:21Now, remember, the stakes are simple.

08:23Our player, or in this case, the one being played is Nazi intelligence who needs to discover this body, absolutely believe it's authentic, filled with valuable intel and pass it up the chain.

08:35Lucky for us, there is a Nazi intelligence officer in Huelva ready to play the game.

08:43So let's start the simulation.

08:47A wild body appears in the Atlantic ocean.

08:52The body floats to the shores of Huelva, Spain.

08:56A fisherman spots the body and calls the cops.

09:00The cops bring the body to a doctor.

09:04The doctor performs an autopsy on the body and realizes he's been dead for weeks and couldn't possibly have crashed in an airplane.

09:13The entire plan is blown.

09:16You failed on level one.

09:19These are what I would like to imagine the conversations are like for the 20 committee between Charles Chumley and Ewan Montague.

09:28They're trying to puzzle out the perfect way to toss their human Plinko chip just right.

09:33So it ricochets right onto Hitler's desk as impressively as possible.

09:38Every decision they make on who this person is, is a deliberate choice to advance the cause.

09:46You can't even get the information into the hands of the Nazi informant who lives right there on the shores of Huelva.

09:53If the doctor who gets the corpse finds something strange about it, her game won't even have a chance to unfold.

09:59He'll know something's up.

10:02Luckily, Huelva has an advantage.

10:04Spain's a Roman Catholic country.

10:07Roman Catholics don't so much like performing autopsies on the corpses of other Roman Catholics.

10:13So our corpse becomes Roman Catholic.

10:15It'll be right there on his ID.

10:18The police will certainly check it by the time they get to the doctor. One problem solved.

10:23If the body does manage to avoid an autopsy, that means our informant, who has plenty of within Spanish intelligence, he'll know every single bit of information the 20 committee sends him.

10:35And so begins our construction.

10:38Think of it like a peanut M&M.

10:41Stay with me here.

10:43The peanut is the lie.

10:45It's going to be the Balkans and not Sicily.

10:48The chocolate is the story that's going to seduce them to that point.

10:53But a peanut covered in is just a chocolate covered peanut.

10:57It's the colorful candy coated shell that makes it an M&M.

11:01That's the artistry that sets something apart, makes it unique.

11:05Can't overpower the other two parts.

11:07They're still doing the heavy lifting.

11:09It just has to be.

11:11So let's start with the nut, the actual disinformation.

11:14Our dead body is going to have disinformation in two places, on his body and in a briefcase.

11:21All the writing has to be ink that's tested to make sure it'll stay legible if it's soaked in water for multiple hours.

11:29Our nut, our poison pill is going to be inside that briefcase.

11:33It's going to be a letter between Generals Nye and Alexander of Allied Command.

11:38It's going to read that the British 12th Army, which by the way, does not exist, is going to invade the Balkans in the summer of 1943, starting in Crete and the Peloponnese, bringing Turkey into the war against the Axis powers.

11:52The Americans would then lead a second invasion into Sardinia as the British pushed in to Southern France, leaving Sicily completely untouched. Simple enough, right?

12:04Just a couple of military bros writing each other with some military news? No.

12:10Chumley and Montague write the letter in the style of General Nye.

12:15But since this is a top mission and anyone who finds this will likely believe this for the rest of their lives, that these are Nye's actual words, Nye gets a little finicky about what he is and is not saying.

12:30Nye hates what the 20th Committee is doing.

12:34Specifically, one of the flourishes.

12:36Chumley and Montague included a joke between the Generals, one disparaging another member of the military leadership.

12:44The way you talk when you're absolutely convinced that you're on a secure transmission.

12:49It's an audacious flourish from the 20th Committee.

12:53I mean, think about it.

12:55They're using their boss's boss as a puppet to make a joke about someone else in even higher command as a writing device.

13:04Knowing that as far as the rest of the world will know, he really said it.

13:09It's the kind of bold strokes they'll continue to use as they go.

13:14Nye nicks the joke, ends up writing the letter himself. Fine.

13:18Either way, we have our payload.

13:20Now for the fun part.

13:26How to make a man from scratch.

13:34Remember John Godfrey from the first episode? Ian Fleming's boss?

13:41The guy who inspired M from the Bond series?

13:44He had one rule with this stuff.

13:46Don't overcook your story.

13:48Don't make a fake person too interesting.

13:51Make it messy, like the way you'd find your desk at work if you had to evacuate the building in 30 seconds and never returned.

14:00An experienced intelligence operative can smell an overcooked story a mile away and will dismiss it right out of hand.

14:08Even more so, the more details you add, the more you open yourself up to something that can be fact-checked and put the lie to your tail.

14:15But by this point in the war, Godfrey is no longer overseeing the 20th Committee. He's been reassigned.

14:22The regulator was off. Chumley? Montague?

14:24They're ready to get to work.

14:27As we're about to find out, these two had a much more colorful writing style.

14:32They wanted to cover this poison pill with enough information to obscure the lie, make it a rewarding find once it was discovered.

14:39Back to our game analogy, the real M would have forced a messy but small adventure that surrounded our main quest with just a little bit of scenery.

14:49Montague and Chumley, on the other hand, they wanted a very well-defined main character and a whole universe surrounding him.

14:55Let's go back to the imaginary game lab.

15:00They patched their problem with the autopsy, and now they're ready to test again. Here goes nothing.

15:04A wild body appears in the Atlantic Ocean.

15:15The body floats to the shores of Huelva, Spain.

15:19A fisherman spots the body and calls the cops.

15:23The cops bring the body to a doctor.

15:27The doctor sees the body is a Roman Catholic and refuses to do an autopsy.

15:33The cops then bring the body's military information to Spanish intelligence.

15:38Spanish intelligence leaks it to Nazi intelligence.

15:41Huelva's Nazi sees that the corpse is named St. John Radcliffe Stewart Horsefall.

15:47He calls that into Nazi HQ and Nazi HQ tells Huelva that based on their records, St. John Radcliffe Stewart Horsefall is a famous race car driver.

15:58Huelva dismisses anything he finds on the corpse and the plan is ruined.

16:04So it looks like we can't just pick the random name of a race car driver.

16:09We need a name that makes sense.

16:11Oh, but we were pretty close there.

16:13Personally, I would have gone with Johnny McAwesome, because even if it ruined the mission, at least that name totally rules, right?

16:22The 20 committee needs something that will avoid detection. Don't overcook.

16:27While looking for a list of Royal Marines, Montague notices there's a glut of Martins listed, and within that small glut are a whole bunch of Williams and Bills.

16:39And in a morbid stroke of luck, one of those Martins had recently died in the line of battle just a few months ago.

16:49This would allow the 20 committee to run kind of a vague public obituary for Bill that the real Martin family would see as a months old tribute to their guy and any German intelligence would see as confirmation that the body they found was indeed an important enough player to warrant a tribute. Now we're talking.

17:09OK, so Bill Martin has to be a Roman Catholic.

17:15He's a Royal Marine.

17:16He just died in a tragic plane crash while transmitting a private correspondence between two humorless members of the Allied High Command.

17:24Now, if the real M, John Godfrey, were still in charge, might not have gone much further than that.

17:31Throw some cigarettes in his coat, maybe a couple of quid.

17:34Newspaper says he was in London recently.

17:37If the real M was still in charge, the candy coating on our chocolate covered peanut would definitely be brown. Boring as hell.

17:44John Godfrey doesn't call the shots on this project.

17:48And you and Montague is just getting started.

17:52He and Chun-Li spend days and nights talking about Bill like he's a real person, a friend of theirs.

18:00They debate his habits, his likes, his dislikes.

18:03They casually mention his family and friends just to see if it all fits.

18:09What emerges is a real main character a young Welsh aspiring author who served his country in an office setting before deciding he needed to see more action and volunteered to see the fight himself.

18:23He's a Royal Marine, but not without flaws.

18:27His dashing devil may care attitude often makes him forgetful, overindulgent.

18:32He consistently overdraws his bank account.

18:35He's a real guy.

18:37And he relies on his fussy, era-appropriate father to cover the difference.

18:42He even loves fishing.

18:43Montague would later write, Bill Martin became real to us.

18:48And based on the amount of work they put into his backstory and the supporting evidence to back it up, it shows.

18:56Some of it's easy.

18:57He's a smoker, so he has cigarettes.

19:01How do you explain that he's forgetful, though?

19:03Not good with his money.

19:05Letters, letters that a traveling Marine would keep on his person.

19:11The bank situation would be explained by a note from Lloyd's of London, plainly alerting him to his negative balance.

19:18This was actually written by a higher up at the head office of the bank.

19:23I think that would be out of the ordinary for most people, but could be rationalized because Martin's father probably would be the kind of guy that has friends in high places, might take on the job themselves.

19:33The technical term for all this is pocket litter, little things that help sell a lie.

19:40A letter from his impatient father from a hotel he didn't like, a letter from his lawyer.

19:47It's a lot, maybe too much. I don't know.

19:50This is the kind of stuff that draws you in, right?

19:57This is the tableau, that first moment when your brain is stuffed with information and you're being walked right down the path to subjugate your better judgments.

20:05On the other hand, the marks here aren't just anyone. They're Nazi intelligence.

20:13If they believe the information about the attack, they will fact check every inch of this paper trail.

20:20They're going to look for every reason to prove that this isn't legit, which is why you have to wonder in hindsight what Montague and Chumley were thinking.

20:30They've got that nut, that poison pill center.

20:34They've got a perfectly fine chocolatey story wrapped around it.

20:39They even have a candy coating.

20:42Do you really want to turn it into a jawbreaker by adding a love story?

21:39Ewan Montague is a worldly man.

21:46Take just a moment to put yourself in Montague's shoes.

21:54A father, a husband, somebody who cares about the country, wants to join the war effort.

22:01Born in 1901, he's a machine gun instructor during the First World War at an American Naval Academy, then goes back to England where he becomes a lawyer, even notches a few impressive cases, gets married, has kids.

22:13But when I picture him sitting at the kitchen table with the missus, ragamuffins running around in the background, I would imagine the only thing they're really concerned with is the fact that their family is Jewish.

22:27The Nazi war machine is knocking on their door.

22:30Now, war hasn't even been declared yet, but he wants to protect his family.

22:36So he talks it over and they make the decision to send everybody to the United States so he can enlist in the war effort and be boots on the ground to defend his family.

22:49We do know that the love story wasn't Montague's idea.

22:55It was a female member of the 20 committee who suggested that a young strapping man like Bill, he wouldn't be without a wartime romance. Enter Pam.

23:06They only spend five weeks together before he proposes marriage.

23:11A jeweler's receipt for an engagement ring will be found on his corpse, along with Pam's love letters.

23:18They tell the story of a ditzy secretary, head over heels in love and terrified that her fiance will die before she ever lays eyes on him again.

23:27Quote, now that we found each other out of the whole world, I don't think I can bear you getting deployed.

23:35Why do we have to meet in the middle of the war now?

23:39Her backstory is built up just as much as Bill's.

23:44His letters, they read like middle school love notes.

23:47She's bored at work.

23:48She hates her boss.

23:49She gossips about the quality of men her friends are attracted to, complains about how bossy her aunt is.

23:55Montague and Chumlee didn't try to bring Pam to life themselves the way they did with General Nye.

24:03For that, they relied on two people.

24:05The words in the letters from Pam were written down by Hester Leggert, the oldest in the secretarial pool, who was derisively nicknamed Spin, as in Spinster, by her co-workers.

24:16But of course, no red-blooded man would head off into war with just the letters. No, no, no.

24:24They needed a picture of their best girl.

24:25So if Martin was going to die, he had to do so with a picture of Pam on his person.

24:30And that would fall to another secretary, one that was most certainly not a spinster.

24:35Her name was Jean Leslie.

24:37A brilliant, beautiful young secretary who had such a keen eye, she discovered inconsistencies in some of the intelligence coming in and alerted the higher-ups.

24:48She had such a big heart, she was devastated to hear that the double agent she had discovered was put to death.

24:56Leslie was chosen to be the face of Pam.

24:59And with that, had to turn over a suitable picture to make her real.

25:04The one chosen features a young Leslie fresh out of the water from a swim she's taking, wearing a one-piece bathing suit, toweling off.

25:11By today's standards, it's adorable.

25:13Wholesome vacation photo on Instagram.

25:15But in the early 40s, in England, might as well have been their version of OnlyFans.

25:21It was an intimate photo for a fiancé's eyes only.

25:26And Nazi intelligence isn't the only one who enjoys the sight of Pam.

25:32Ewan Montague, separated from his wife due to the war, became smitten with Jean Leslie.

25:38Even asked her out on a date for dinner and dancing, which begs the question, are we going too far?

25:44I mean, Montague's marriage aside, isn't this exactly the kind of thing that the real M warned against?

25:52This isn't just a delivery method for false information anymore.

25:56They're putting on a play.

25:59It's got a cast of colorful characters.

26:01The heroic but ever-evolving main character.

26:03The domineering but generous father.

26:05The doe-eyed doomed fiancé.

26:06Those are just the principles.

26:08There's a whole cast of secondary characters we haven't even gotten to yet. The frustrated banker. The fat sister.

26:16Pam's useless bean counter boss.

26:17This all seems so theatrical.

26:20This project is designed to fool Hitler.

26:23To save the free world.

26:26If M was there, I'd imagine he'd flip over a table and shout, this isn't espionage.

26:32You're making a movie.

26:33Not just any movie either. Your favorite movie.

26:36The same movie you've seen a million times before.

26:38They are in danger of hinging the fate of the free world on the monolith.

26:44And now, on with the show.

26:46Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?

26:54The answer is out there, Neo.

26:56It's the question that drives us.

26:58What is the Matrix?

26:59The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

27:08In 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote the book Hero with a Thousand Faces.

27:11In it, he describes the monomyth.

27:13This is the framework for pretty much any story you've ever cared about, ever.

27:19Goes a little something like this.

27:21Hero, average person, with flaws.

27:22Finds a call to adventure.

27:24A reason to leave. Crosses a threshold. Begins a transformation.

27:27His exit from safety brings him challenges and temptations that lead him to ruin.

27:34He hits the abyss.

27:35A death that leads to rebirth.

27:38And it's here he truly finds himself and is transformed.

27:42With this new clarity, he atones for the mistakes he made while challenged and tempted.

27:47It's then he realizes that it was the community that he left that was the most important thing after all.

27:52And the one that he can benefit now that he's changed.

27:55It's only then our hero can return to where he once belonged.

27:59They worship this book in Hollywood.

28:00We came in with The Matrix because The Matrix is this story. So's Star Wars. The Lion King.

28:11What's special about it is how efficient it is.

28:14All of the character's negative traits are punished and rebuilt as strengths.

28:19He's greedy before he becomes generous.

28:21He leaves so he can come back.

28:24He dies so he can live.

28:26John Godfrey hated espionage that was overcooked because our human brains are attracted to these stories.

28:32When you look at the story being told by Chun-Li and Montague, it's the very definition of a tragedy because it's an unfinished monomyth.

28:42Bill Martin is our Neo if The Matrix frustratingly ended halfway through.

28:47And that's a powerful story.

28:50Bill Martin has a desk job but finds his call to adventure by transferring to a more active role in the field.

29:03Crossing that threshold, he lives beyond his means as he grapples with a life which is not promised for him, including finding Pam.

29:10Pam warns him not to leave.

29:12She pleads with him but he can't resist the call.

29:15And then, as our Nazi informant will be among the first to realize, he dies before his time.

29:21Now that we're spelling out the monomyth, you probably are already completing it in your head.

29:27Say he doesn't die.

29:29Say he serves his role in the military, marries Pam, learns the value of money, makes peace with his father, eventually returns home a wiser man who could better his community.

29:40That life you just played out in your head cannot exist unless Chun-Li and Montague give you the pieces that can make it possible.

29:48Mincemeat can rightly be credited for being a closed loop story.

29:52that escape room, everyone mentioned in the letters is explained in that letter or another.

29:58Even the little things are not left to mystery.

30:02For example, the amount that Bill Martin is overdrawn at the bank just happens to be the exact same amount that his engagement ring costs.

30:10What's worse, some of the facts in the documents don't even check out.

30:15If Nazi intelligence were to fact-check Martin's father's stay at the hotel he claims to have stayed in, they'd find no such record.

30:24Same thing with the engagement ring.

30:26Now they have no excuse.

30:28This isn't up for interpretation.

30:29They overextended the story.

30:30The only thing that would save them is if the Nazis didn't even bother to check everything out.

30:38It's the night before Bill Martin lands in Huelva.

30:46The 20 committee is about to cross the finish line.

30:57They got approval from the brass, they prepared the corpse for transfer, it's loaded up with all the paperwork it needs, except for one thing.

31:06Bill Martin needs to prove he was in London recently.

31:10So hell, why not?

31:11Bill takes in one of the hottest shows in London.

31:16The tickets are purchased weeks in advance, so the date can make sense by the time that Bill Martin actually floats to Spain.

31:25But since Bill is currently in a submarine, and also technically not a real person, it's the 20 committee that takes in the performance.

31:33The torn ticket with the date on it should be an elegant way to prove that the letter came from the UK, en route to the Allied stronghold in North Africa.

31:44It's a review show, with some era-appropriate gallows humor.

31:47The audience is told they will be informed if bombing begins, but under no circumstances will they be offered a refund.

31:53In a weird way, this is the last time the mind of Bill and the physical form of Pam will ever be together before the plan begins.

32:04We don't know if Montague strayed with the pretty young secretary.

32:08Throughout the war, Montague wrote to his wife in America with flowery prose.

32:15He was up front that he took Jean out to dinner and dancing, but we'll likely never know the full truth if there was anything beyond that, because the man who controlled the narrative of the very story we're telling was Ewan Montague.

32:29Montague was the first one to ever publicly acknowledge this operation even happened in 1953.

32:36He wrote a redacted memoir about the story called The Man Who Never Was.

32:43Three years later, it was made into a movie.

32:48Other than Montague's own words, and the movie based on his own words, there's some limited war records and exactly one book on this subject.

32:55Although it's more interesting to tell a story about a good man whose pressure at his job led him to cheat with a co-worker, it's maybe not the truth, because the truth is more complicated.

33:10To be honest, you'd be fair to ask why we even included this will-they-won't-they romance in the narrative of this story.

33:16Just consider it our tribute to the 20 committee that we added our own salacious little candy coating to this episode.

33:24But if the curtain is about to raise on the real Operation Mincemeat, we gotta run our playtest one more time, right?

33:34A wild body appears in the Atlantic Ocean.

33:37The body floats to the shores of Guelva, Spain.

33:40A fisherman spots the body and calls the cops.

33:45The cops bring the body to a doctor.

33:48The doctor sees the body is a Roman Catholic and refuses to do an autopsy.

33:55The cops then bring the body's military information to Spanish intelligence.

34:00Spanish intelligence leaks it to Nazi intelligence.

34:03Guelva's Nazi sees that the body is named Bill Martin.

34:07He calls that in to Nazi HQ, and Nazi HQ tells Guelva that, based on their records, there are plenty of Bill Martins in the Royal Marines.

34:19Guelva's Nazi intelligence begins rifling through everything found on the body.

34:23He finds a ticket to a show in London, and an identification card of Bill Martin. In better times.

34:31A healthy man who didn't know his death was around the corner.

34:35He believes this was a real accident.

34:38He believes all the information, our player, has been played.

34:42Our player's been played, did you hear that?

34:44We just won the game. We made it.

34:47We got the info enthusiastically in the hands of somebody who's going to sell it.

34:52If anything's going to get screwed up after this, it ain't going to be our fault.

34:58We delivered the goods.

34:59And yes, maybe it's an overwritten video game, but it works, and we know it works.

35:03So in your face all you doubters, you haters, everybody on my 20 committee discord.

35:08That's what I imagine the 20 committee is talking about.

35:11Anything beyond this is something that none of us could have seen coming.

35:16Sure, the story might be overcooked, and maybe there's parts that won't stand up to scrutiny, but we are now as sure as we can be that it will get into the right hands, and that in and of itself is the victory of this moment.

35:31Once these materials are received, they're going to be poured over by the best of the best in the disinformation business.

35:38All of this has to stand up to the strictest scrutiny, which brings up that little detail of the ID card and the grisly story behind it.

35:48The initial hope was that they were going to use the corpse itself to take a photo for the ID.

35:56Chun-Li and Montague went to the morgue.

35:59They dressed up the body in the appropriate uniform. They posed it.

36:02They snapped the photo. It was disgusting.

36:04Weekend at Bernie's meets The Walking Dead.

36:07They wound up using a living soldier who looked vaguely close enough to like the corpse for the ID.

36:15I mean, it's one thing to create a life on the page, but create one in the flesh?

36:21More importantly, how do you move that corpse in reasonable shape from London to the coast of Spain without it falling apart?

36:30How do you drop it out of a plane without it dissolving into a million pieces?

36:36The answer begins with a tragic cast off of society who's going to eat rat poison, die, and return to life as a war hero.

36:45But would it all be for nothing?

36:50Would the disinformation suffer because the 20 committee just couldn't help being too Did they lean too hard into telling a story that we want to hear instead of a simpler one?

37:07That's more brutal and ugly like real life? I don't know.

37:11And sorry for going back in my personal story here, but there was definitely a moment that made me think about this.

37:19I'm not trying to win a world war, but I am a grieving brother with a lot of pocket litter right in front of me and that hunger for simplicity, that discomfort with the mystery.

37:33I feel it every day.

37:35I found a simple notepad text document on Jay's desktop labeled to do.

37:40When I opened it, it said, write will, power of attorney, write email to Brian, write letter to my ex-wife.

37:57It was so on the nose.

38:03In the moment, it looked like a to do list of somebody getting their affairs in order because they fully expected to die.

38:21It was the kind of note that as horrifying as it was, would let me close a chapter and quiet all those questions running through my head night after night. It was simplicity.

38:39And it wasn't until three days later that I even thought to check when it was written.

38:48It had been written three years ago after one of his rehab stints.

38:56Exactly the kind of to do list you would put if you were getting your life together.

39:08What I really had was another complicated, jagged edge that real life is made of.

39:15The morbid end that would have brought me clarity was just an illusion because it was really just a beautiful, fresh start that wasn't meant to be.

39:27If I hadn't thought to check the date of that note, me and my family might have lived the rest of our lives having a tidy end to a tragedy.

39:37And it could have gone either way.

39:39So ask yourself right now, which is more real, the reality you desperately hope for or the In the next episode of World's Greatest Con, holy cow, do things explode.

39:59Everything's been written and everything gets set into motion.

40:20We got race car drivers, we got dead bodies, we got frozen feet.

40:35There's even machine guns and submarines.

40:37It's all coming up in the next episode of World's Greatest Con.

40:41Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

40:44Dog and Pony Show Audio.