Refuse Serial is a podcast about the podcast Serial, featuring Katia Delgado, Matt Jackson, Hedrick Sykes, and Manuel Luz. Yeah, he's, um... He saw that he has a monopoly and he's not taking advantage of it, you know? He's just trying to make a case for a monopolistic approach.
He was trying to make himself look good instead of just saying, yeah, it's what we do. Well, everybody else does it, but they just kind of keep it up and down and low. And he was just up front about it on Twitter and everything, like an idiot. But then buying that Wu-Tang Clan album, he bought this, like, unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album.
We didn't hear that part. Yeah, he spent millions of dollars to buy this Wu-Tang Clan album. And then, say, that nobody's ever heard before, right? And he bought this album and then was like, I probably won't ever listen to it.
He's just got it locked away somewhere. Oh, my God. All right, so how many people heard the second episode? I heard the first one.
We did not listen to the second episode yet, so we'll stick to the first and speculate slightly on the second, knowing that she is going to talk to the Taliban. Hajar, what did you bring for your breakfast? I brought, this is called Pinkfin. Pinkfin.
Yeah, it's a porridge. Madagascar, vanilla, and pecans, and then I just had myself do it. What? Oh, yeah.
I had, like, an idiot had breakfast at home. Oh, how was it? It was delicious. Was there a Russian divorce or something?
No, it's vodka. It's vodka bread. Potatoes, you guys. Potatoes, exactly.
Have you crossed over to rum due to the nature of your husband? I'm more of a bourbon kind of person. All right. Is it a combination?
Manuel, hit Starbucks. Yeah, so my chai and then my croissant. I see you're not outraged at the redness of the cup. Yeah.
Totally comfortable with the red cup. I'm okay with it, yeah. Don't they, doesn't, in Colombia, doesn't Jesus bring the gifts instead of Santa? Little baby Jesus brings the gifts instead of Santa.
He was asking me, how did Jesus carry on the gifts? I don't know. He's magic. Jesus is magic.
I know in Belgium, they don't actually celebrate Christmas on Christmas. It's called St. Nick's, right? So they do it on St.
Nick's, that's when they get the presents out, and Christmas is just the other day. Is it Belgium? I think it's very close. Like, it might be a week before.
Can't we all just align? No. No. In Russia, we don't do Christmas, but we do New Year's, and it's Father Frost and his granddaughter.
No. Father Frost, yeah. And Anna and Elsa? No.
No. In Spain, I think they might die on the 6th of January, and they also bring the gifts. Yeah, I get the gifts after the time. That's cool.
Murr. Tell us more. Is that what you're going? Murr.
He brought murr. Yes, but Mark's really just raised the price on Murr, so sorry, baby, Jesus, it's not for you. That was like a money. Is it the Netherlands that has the scene as helper in blackface?
Yeah, one of the countries in Europe has that. They've got an opposite Santa. Negative Santa. Kropos is Germany or something, yeah.
Yeah. The movie's coming out soon. He came out of the way. It's already out.
Wow. I guess there's some other big movie that's overshadowing everything else coming out soon, I think. Cool. So the first episode was really good.
Very interesting that the story broke about him, about them deciding to sentence him, or not sentence him, but trying him for desertion. Desertion and something endangering, you know, conduct endangering. Right, right. So I think I was surprised that she went to an military story.
That was my first thing about it. Was it just another criminal part? Yeah, I was in a military. Even Matt and I were talking about it yesterday.
I was like, well, I wasn't expecting it, but I think there's been so much about wars and stuff like that under you lately that it kind of makes sense, but it's still, like, you're going to get literally the guns that are unintended. But this, I don't know. That's the point. There is a guy who has certain statements, and the people would be agree or disagree with it, so kind of similar to Anasaya, because you either believe one part or believe another one, and she's going to try to go through all these things and resend the story, and at the end, 50% of people wouldn't believe one thing, and 50% would be the one.
There is a huge controversy, of course, in both of us. Yeah. But I think with the first one, though, yeah, there is after the fact, but I think with the first one, probably all the people that knew about Anasaya's story is people that were closely related to it in the Baltimore area that heard about it, right? Nobody knew about it.
This was international news about this story going on, so this is something that I think will, on her side, benefit hers, drawing more people to the podcast. I'm sure their listenership is going to be ridiculous. But it's just different in the fact that it's a current, ongoing story that she's reporting on almost live while it's breaking through the news, or at least the repercussions are breaking through the news, versus the other one that was a case that had been 10 years prior that she was dealing with. Has she found his records that he's been talking to the other journalists for almost a year?
Is that why it triggered her to start this investigation? What she said in the first one, I think, was that she was interested in the story, what she'd seen on the news, after it wasn't a normal hero's welcome kind of situation, like this guy was captured and held prisoner for longer than just about anybody, even going back to some of the guys in Vietnam and stuff. But she was interested in it, and then found out that Mark, the screenwriter, was interested in it, too, and had been having those conversations. Oh, I mean, the guy made the Hurt Locker in, like, and then what's the name of the director for both of us, Catherine Bigelow?
I mean, that's a main radar. He's not actually in the hybrid unit just yet. I'm sure she's in the works. She's in the works.
So my other thing was, was it ever, I was trying to find it, but was it ever in the news that he was captured by the Taliban five years ago or six years ago? Yeah. It was one of the ones that he was captured by the Taliban, but it still was at the point, like, that's five years, I mean, that was five, six years ago now, seven years, I mean, that's the height of the Kardashians, right? Nobody's paying attention to any of this stuff when you have Real Housewives on TV going at it.
Do you remember that moment where all the news we're talking about is war, war, war, and then they kind of started sweeping under the rug and started talking about it a little bit less and a little bit less, and all of a sudden there are no wars going on. Yeah. Yeah, because the troops are starting to withdraw. Troops are coming home, so there was a discussion in 2009, 2010, 2011.
Troops are coming back, so it's kind of a... But there was absolutely no coverage. Like, nothing was happening. In that news cycle that year?
Yeah. It wasn't a big deal that he was being held hostage. I don't remember. And it's not that I remember, like, a TV show so much better than...
How was the finale of Lost? Well, no. Like, at the moment. Yeah.
Yeah, how was the finale of Sopranos? Exactly. Turn story. That's another one you can do your podcast on.
Finale of Sopranos. What really happened? That'd be interesting. No spoilers?
No spoilers. All right. There you go. I still have, what is it, 15 minutes to watch?
Hey, you gotta catch up. I know. What is the special momentary shows in TV? Oh, spoilers?
I feel like you get maybe a month. No. Sopranos been off probably about five years. For longer than Bergdahl was held captive by the house.
Can I just say that? I was in another country then. HBO was not available. Okay.
All right. Foreigners. I know. I'm the minority.
75%, you know? Wow. This is different. So yeah, it wasn't that big of a story at the time, but it did get big when he was found or returned when they made the deal, and of course, immediately went sour when the Republican side decided to go after Obama for the decision to release the five detainees, who immediately went back in just like straight to the front lines, if you don't understand.
And yeah, good luck, guys. You're running one time, guys? Yeah. They were going to release six, but one of them died.
Oh, that's too bad for him. Yeah. I hope things worked out. So she does say something in the podcast on this episode that made me feel like, really?
Then why did you do that? It was the fact that they were packing out the platoon not even a month or two later. And I was like, yeah, grand finale, you want to leave with a band, you know? Just one.
At the same time, it is ridiculous to me that he did that. That's like the one point where I'm like, ooh, this is going to make me either, you know, love you or hate you for what you did, or it's going to make me trust you or just going to make me think that you're, you know, somewhat influenced by the Afghan police you've been hanging out with or whatever, you know? I think that's going to definitely come out is his tie with the Afghan police that he was hanging out with. Now, whether that is, you know, they're going to say, well, those Afghan police were power or it was just he was sympathetic to the Afghan cause and the extraction of the U.S.
troops, you know, and letting them kind of do their own thing. That has to come out in, those conversations with the Afghan troops has to come out in future episodes. He's got to discuss that. And I think about the mentalist.
For me, it's kind of the mentalist. He's a rational individual, right? Even when he was there because of all the situation, he kind of think, I need to get out of here somewhere or another. So it's kind of interesting for me to know what the state of mind of the individual.
He all of a sudden wants to say, okay, I'm going to make this plan because he creates a rational plan to get out of there as a solution for where he finds himself. Because I was like, oh, I want to complain about the situation. And that's a very strange story to me. So I'm just questioning about what was his state of mind at that time?
I mean, everybody was saying it was such a bad condition. But he was a different person to begin with. He was precipitated. He was against the actions of the U.S.
Army. He was a sensitive person. He was different. And pathetic to the people.
He wants to kind of know what the other person is. You like to read Ayn Rand. Oh, that hurts. He studied ballet?
Well, that's not a bad thing, I guess. So he's, I'm not sure why. He's a different guy. He's a different sort of soldier.
That is, yeah, right there. It's the right question to ask. Why did he enlist? Why did he enlist?
Why did he go? Well, then another question is, does the military have a standard way of evaluating their applications of military? If they have those standard tests, then he should have stood out in a way, somehow. Psychologically.
Yeah, psychologically. Military needs people. When it's a war, when it's a war, it's like, you don't look around. You just want to join.
Come on in. So he enlisted in 2006. Was the war going on? Oh, yeah.
So he had a war going on? 2001, United States. Well, essentially, yeah. I actually talked about his family situation.
I didn't really look at that, but understand what environment did he grow up in. You know, really understanding, again, his psychological background and why he's made the various choices he made in his life, including joining the military. And then, of course, piecing it all after how his own mind went. Yeah, I don't know.
It'll be interesting to hear what she goes through with that and his background and how she tries, I hope she does, try to break apart his, I wanted to be Jason Bourne and I wanted to bring to the attention of leadership the issues that my direct environment was facing because of that leadership, right? Like, if you want to get in front of the boss, the CEO of your company, to tell him that your lesser boss or other managers are doing things wrong, you want to have this kind of whistleblower mentality, is the way to do it, you know, starting a fire at the building. Like, no, that's arson. That's wrong.
That's a bad thing, right? So, how many go big or go home? That's it. But he did that.
And that's, that doesn't excuse it. He did not get a new home. So, it'll be interesting to see how she breaks that down and really, if, how much she actually gets to talk to him. Because so much, at this point, has been just listening to the recordings and not talking to him.
And that's a bit different from last episode, because, you know, here, if you only have her say what he says on the other interviews, you know, when they are really nice, it's not her kind of bringing different points to him. So, and I don't know, now that he's even being prosecuted. If she'll ever get the chance to actually talk to him. That's what I think is a big difference from last episode, that she would not have that.
But I think I would like to know a little more about, like, when he stayed with the Taliban, that he became, like, really friends, you know, like, Stockholm Syndrome, where, like, he started to do war, and he started to be, like, the pastor of the Taliban. So, I think in the second episode, we get a bit more into that. But I think, to me, that's very interesting to see the relationship we keep in two of those five years. Is this a really terrible thing for him, or does he, like, find that the culture is interesting or he kind of relates to people?
That could be something I don't know yet. But that also started when he was first place at the Taliban. He started building relationships, relating more to the Afghan people. And he's that good or bad, right?
Is that considered from the military? Is that good or bad that he's, like, trying to establish relationships with him? Or is it just something that the guy's doing? I could honestly almost buy his story of going to set off the dust one and move from the operating post to, or the outpost to the forward operating base, right?
And cause this commotion so that he could bring to attention whatever was going on. I could almost buy that, except when he said, I got lost because I was off in the woods trying to dig up intel on these guys that were planning IUDs. And IUDs? No, it's not IUD, right?
IUD. Okay. That's a D-Y. D-Ys?
Okay. Different planning. It's a different thing, but it's a different thing. Okay.
All right, cool. But when he tries to, it's like he's just trying to dig that even deeper and say, well, here's why I did this now. Here's why I did what you did. Yeah, he's had five years to think about it.
He might not be intentional because our memory is so playable. It is. And we start believing what we think. And if he's thought through it for five years.
Or is it Homeland? That's my favorite theory. I know who's not like that one. Yeah, that's been on my mind.
Ever since I first heard it, I was like, oh, this is going to take the Homeland plot to the storyline and stuff. Can you be the bipolar chick? No, I don't know. I feel like that's a plausible story, too, on that end.
That he got comfortable, to Manuel's point. And it's easy after a while. It's what is it called? Acculturation.
You know, when you start meshing your own culture with others and being a foreigner and having lived in so many different places, I kind of have gone through that experience. I'm in the UK and the US. But the cultures are so different. That he's got to have been, a little soft is not the word, but a little open to being different and wanting to learn more about other cultures.
And that's why I'm like, he might be a good candidate for a Brody-style type of personality. How many Brody is? Brody is the guy from Homeland. I think he's a good guy.
How many of you do now? Huh? How many of you do? What do you say?
I got my to spoil. Oh, yeah, sorry. Well, you guys should probably start watching it. Not now.
I always hit. All right. What's the point now? Well, I think that I'm very excited to listen to episode two today, probably a number of times.
And it is called, I had it pulled up just a second ago, something about chicken. The Golden Chicken. So I guess next week we will reconvene. Next Thursday is Christmas Eve.
So I don't know if anybody's taking the day off. How many of the days are you out? No. Okay, maybe we move it to Wednesday?
Christmas Eve? What? You're out? Are you at all next week?
I'm out, I'm out. You're at all next week, you're going? All right. Okay, so I'm Nocathia for next week's episode.
I guess we will... Celebrate. Send us your comments. Yes.
We will read your notes. And then we think of orange and green black chicken. Okay. Oh, yeah.
Another spoiler for people who haven't seen it. I was expecting a chicken. That chicken was fun. A few episodes.
You guys saw the Big Bang Theory, though, right? That was really good. No. Just like the show.
Jokes that are funny. All right. Back to work, everybody. We'll see you next time.
Okay.