East Meets West – Podcast

I was leafing through the Best Buy ad today and saw that the release of "Diary of the Dead" includes a copy of "The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead" by Scott Kenemore. Of course, this immediately made me think of Tom. Mr. Merritt's obsession with Zombie movies has made me wonder if I'm missing out on something. My question to Tom would be if this bundle deal might make a good introduction to the genre, or if he has a better approach to getting started. Thanks. By the way the bundle is $17.99, available Tuesday.

Oh and I'm not advocating Hitler or Racism of any sort, and Hitler wasn't making any sense withtout a doubt. I just wanted to make it clear. Keep up the great work Roger and Tom.

Hi, it's my first time to post substantial comment here. I've started listening recently and I love your podcast's variety of topics. English isn't my first language so my post will be wacky, I apologize in advance, Sorry!

I don't really think Hitler was the type of racist who discrimates by skin color.

There were racial studies performed in Europe at the time which are now regarded as pseudo-science. The studies determines that certain asian races have a racial kinship with Germans. For instance "Aryan", which hitler gave supremacy to over other races, can also became the name of middle eastern country; "Iran". The famouse german scholar of this dicipline in WW2 days even included japanese in this aryan category(from Wiki).

It is kind of stupid to start a racial argument based on skin color, because such an argument doesn't make any sense, or rather any kind of racial argument (none of which make sense, as Jared Diamond points out). However I think that Jewish people in Europe are arguably white/caucasian and so I just don't feel right calling Hitler a whiter supremacist.

Nice Pod cast. The difference between Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Che is less than you think. Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was done as an economic policy taken to its logical end. The minority group that had wealth (Jews in Germany was mainly middle to upper class) was stripped of their goods so as to help Germany come out of the Great Depression. Not a lot of people know this but Germany was hit the hardest by the Great Depression and was only one of a few countries to come out of it before the start of WW2. They did this using various methods and one of them was to take the material goods from the Jews and give it to German businesspeople. This is a utilitarian economic model where the greatest happiness means that a minority group is opposed so be it. At the end they did not want them requiring resources of the German state and so they killed 8 million Jews. I personally do not believe in utilitarian economics and I think that extreme and horrible acts are committed by using the utilitarian model. So there was a government policy about the stripping of the goods and property of the Jew/Gypsies/homosexuals/mentally ill/etc. and the eventual killing of them and not just the will of one man. The German people wanted it and they weren’t forced into it (A good book to show this is “Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).

I think the reason why we (western society) see Hitler as a worse than the others is due to propaganda and also the ‘closeness’ of this actions to our society’s fabric. Let me explain:
1. Propaganda: for all of world war 2 Hitler and the Nazis was seen as the villain with Stalin and, to a lesser extent, Mao was seen as our allies/friends and this was in all the movies and even now there are games and movies which show Nazis and Hitler as the bad guys. There is also the fact that there has been people in Western Society that have been apologists for the communist dictator/mass murderer which has blunted the villainization of these people, that should burn in hell. In all fairness there has also been apologists for the dictator/mass murderer that have been on the right side of politics and they also should burn in hell.

2. “Closeness”: That is the actions these other dictators did not have a direct effect on any Western Country’s population and so we didn’t ‘feel’ it as much. This can be seen by the different impact that occurred within western society when you compare the 1 million people killed in Rwanda to the 3,000 - 4,000 people who died in the Twin Towers. That is the tens of millions killed by Stalin and Mao (which can be argued did their genocide for the same reasons as Hitler) was not people in the affluent West and so their deaths count less in our eyes. I am not condoning this and I am not arguing that other people’s lives are worth less but that they are perceived as outside of our ‘group’ and as a part of another group and so the emotional connection is not there.

Interesting discussion!

(2nd try)

sorry to be nitpicky, but i think you are using the term "serial killer" wrong.
i read a lot of books about serial killers some 15 yrs ago, lets see what i remember.

iirc there seems to be a pretty clear definition of what constitutes a serial killer. for the most part serial killers have a clear profile for their victims (for example blonde gay hookers). they hardly ever kill people they know. they like to do the killing themselves (preferably by direct contact strangling, knifing..less so by guns or gas chambers). most of them have some sort of "artistic" image for a perfect killing. since they can't ever quite achieve this (like any artist) they must re-try over and over. for most of them the pauses in between killings get shorter and shorter, and the killer gets sloppier and sloppier, which most of the time leads to their arrest.

now check wikipedia to see what else i missed. somehow my definition of a true serial killer might have been polluted by hollywood :)

i remember there are books out by one of the first profilers for the fbi iirc they give some good insight. search for "john douglas".

I remember a Canadian movie that I watched once, and for the life of me I cannot remember the name, but it had a serial killer in it. He was very polite and from Northern Ontario. He was hitch hiking sourth. The person that picked him up asked 'what do you do for a living'

'Oh, I am a serial killer, it isn't that big here, so to make it big I'm moving to the States"

Just a quick "well, actually" - Godwin's Law isn't just the summoning of the name of Hitler, it's the likelihood of the comparison of someone else with him (or to the Nazis), also known as Reductio ad Hitlerum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

This was definitely one of the best shows in a while, if I say "back on form" that doesn't mean you've been off-form ...

I recently read a biography of Gutzon Borglum (the guy who carved Mt. Rushmore). He was a man who held very strong white supremacist beliefs. He was a member of the KKK and an outspoken Anti-Semite. At first, as I read this I was surprised. But then I did a bit of research and realized that this was far from uncommon. Anti-Semitism ran very deep in both American and European culture at the time. What makes this apply to the show though, was your discussion of why Hitler has been demonized more than other brutally murderous dictators. At first when Hitler was espousing his views on Jewish people, Borglum was a supporter. He agreed. It wasn’t until after he heard about some of the brutalities that his views changed and he became a vocal activist to get America involved in WWII in an effort to get rid of Hitler. I wonder if that was common. That people felt a kinship with Hitler on the basis of what seemed to be common beliefs and then when they saw where those beliefs ultimately lead, they were ashamed and tried to distance themselves from Hitler and so piled on more than they did to, say, a Stalin. Or maybe they felt betrayed on some level that the person they saw as their spokesman could do that sort of thing and anger led to the hatred.

My Friend pointed out about Germany and Japan relationship during WWII , my friend blurted out that the Germans outsourced the Japanese during WWII since they could not reach Asia to do their dirty work.

Great show keep it up

@Jeremy

I've have the same issue with other podcasts. iTunes is showing them to be longer than they actually are.

Strange ... second week in a row my iPod has thought the episode was longer than it was. This time it ended with 5 minutes left on the progress bar.

Good episode! I liked how you're on a first-name basis with some of the lesser dictators (Mao, Che, etc.) :-D

Common Roger, Hercule Poirot (ok he's Belgian, but the french part), and of course the awesome Inspector Clouseau.

Maybe remembering that people like Hitler/Genghis could not have done anything without willing humans around them.

It is said by the existence of our back cutting teeth that humans are omnivores. It appears, allegedly, we are designed to kill.

We have created a society that says it is wrong to kill. Did these people just "tap" into the instinct of humans to kill ?

Roger is right again, there is no such thing as a base tan that predicts. Sunburn is effectively DNA damage visualised.

Giving this another try very sorry if it turns up multiple times. It's not that great, just wanted it out there.

Your subject of serial killers outside the U.S. led me on a mild research tear this morning. I found a few interesting sites on the subject and put the links below.

www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-20-2002-28564.asp
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country
peter_jackson_online.tripod.com/frighteners/killers.htm (my fav)

Now my head is pounding and I can't quite make a coherent hypothesis out of the information. Originally, I thought it might have to do with our deep media penetration, and the glorification of serial killers. Now it seems it's much deeper than that, leading me down paths of cultural repression, narcissism, and sexual obsession.

Roger's assertion that there has been a lot of odd behavior displayed in Eastern Europe, seems to be played out on the lists, with several of the top dogs coming from Germany and Russia. Don't forget good ole Vlad the Impaler hailed from the region as well.

I feel icky now and am in need of a shower. A nice long hot shower then therapy.

My post not posting? Did I break some rule, written, or otherwise? Oh well, maybe it'll turn up. It was cool though, about serial killers and stuff.

P.S. You fellas got my last name right, thanks for the extra effort there, makes me feel squishy inside. Not like weird squishy, like toasted marshmallow squishy.

Rationing? On rice? On rice??? Oh the sheer and utter horror! No...uh, really? :/

By the way, we're in a recession. People say we aren't or we're close to being in one, but I fart in the media's general direction.

Finally, good to be back in the EMW forums! I still listen to my weekly dose of you guys ranting about stuff, just haven't had the time to comment.

p.s. i just joined twitter so feel free to follow me as I tweet away. It's twitter.com/KevinCee.

You know who else had a podcast in which two people discuss social issues? The Nazis. ;)

Really good episode, guys.