Government Secrets Podcast · Lee Camp and Graham Elwood

Civil War Profiteers & The Bath Riots of 1917 - Gov Secs Ep 175

January 31, 2025·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

Government Secrets starts with the hosts catching up on the aftermath of the fires and the practical wreckage that comes with them. The mood is personal, irritated, and a little worn down. That quickly spills into a comic riff on sponsorships, bitcoin, and the absurdity of people sounding like they are accidentally running ads inside the conversation. The bit keeps circling back to hidden promotion and overenthusiastic product talk. From there the show slides into historical corruption without really slowing down. JP Morgan comes up as part of a broader joke about money and power. Jay Gould shows up as a symbol of ruthless profit, and the episode leans into the idea that scandal is often just business with better clothes. The hosts keep knocking down any respectful framing with jokes and mock-bureaucratic phrasing. They treat official explanations as something to mock first and investigate second. The Civil War profiteer material fits that worldview neatly, since the point is not only that people got rich, but that they got rich in ways everyone else was told to accept. The episode moves fast enough that the jokes never really leave the room. Even when the history gets heavier, the hosts keep puncturing it with side comments, absurd comparisons, and half-finished asides. That gives the whole thing a live, messy feel instead of a polished lecture. The structure is loose, but the argument is clear. Power corrupts, profit follows catastrophe, and the official story is usually there to launder both. The recurring duo dynamic matters because one host keeps pushing the research forward while the other keeps making it hard to trust the polished version of anything. The episode also closes with show plugs, a mention of the new book, the vinyl of the Christmas album, and a Patreon sign-off before naming itself episode 175, Civil War Profiteers.

As heard by us

A loud, skeptical history ride about profiting from chaos.

The episode moves from Civil War profiteers to stock-exchange chatter, and the through line is clear: crisis makes money for the people already positioned to take it.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want history that sounds like a fight with a ledger?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Government Secrets Podcast